I thought I'd ticked off Beinn Eilideach 6 or 7 years ago when I first moved up to the Highlands and went to Ullapool for the first time. I took the Ullapool Hill route then went on to the trig point / shelter cairn of Beinn Eilideach on that occasion, which at the time, I thought must be the obvious summit feature. Alas no, I recently found out it's one of those hills where the trig point isn't at the summit, but about 130m away. (I suspect plenty others have made this error too!)

So on my way back from Assynt, having done 3 corbetts in beautiful weather (Cul Beag and Canisp the day before and Breabag on this morning), I decided I had time to do Beinn Eilideach properly before the forecast heavy showers hit.

I took a different route this time, prompted by chazzyboy19's report saying about a track heading up from Leckmelm. There's no nice parking spot at the track start which could be used without potentially impeding access, so I parked in one of the large lays-bys a bit further north up the A835 towards Ullapool. A busy road with fast traffic, but there was a verge to hop on to any time anything passed.

From the A835 at Leckmelm, a signpost points the way to a viewpoint, then another shortly after on to a track branching off to the left. This good track zig zags up the hill. I left it not long after passing through another gate higher up to then head more directly to the summit area through heather and grass. It felt like tough going, but my legs were probably a bit tired after the previous 3 hills, and it didn't actually take too long to reach the shorter vegetation at the summit and work out which rocky outcrop to head to in order to correctly bag the summit, now marked by a small cairn on the rock by someone.







Heading down was a much faster affair, and timed perfectly as the first heavy drops of rain only hit once I was back at the lay-by, changing out of boots into trainers for the drive home.