Sep 19th, 2015

Author: donich_admin

Fabulous day on Beinn Cruachan

We had a wonderful day for the last outing of our ‘staycation’ by climbing Beinn Cruachan and Stob Diamh. This was our first attempt at a couple of ‘big Munros’ and we were totally exhausted at the end of the day as the climb took us just over nine hours (plus an hour in each direction to get there and back).

Beinn Cruachan is the ‘hollow mountain’ which contains a huge hydro plant, and we had hoped to see the visitor centre and do the guided tour, but unfortunately it was closed for the day by the time we got back down, so it will need to wait for another day.

The mountain itself is quite a challenge (to neophytes like us anyway) with a scramble to reach the summit, and narrow ridge with some awkward places to follow. When we finished this part and looked back at it, I was just amazed that we had actually tackled it and succeeded without plummeting to our doom.

However nothing about the climb was any problem for us compared to the descent along a very narrow rough path through the forest. It took us nearly two hours to get down, and by the time we were back at the car I felt as though my toenails had been slowly pulled out one by one.

It was a brilliant day though, and I have literally never in my life seen anything like the views from the top. Also on the way back we stopped at Inverary and had some great fish and chips, a treat well earned considering the number of calories we must have burned that day.

Back to work next week sadly….