The Referendum trip....

After the success of the last trip to Skye, a plan was hatched in a local hostelry to spend a week in Scotland and do some two day walks in the Cairngorms and Skye along with some wild camping. Strangely enough everyone other than Paul T and Dave H suddenly were very busy.

The week we chose was the week of the independence referendum so we played an ongoing game of counting the Yes and No posters as a way of predicting the vote (for those that care - the mainland was evenly split whereas Skye was a strong Yes on the poster count).

The now familiar flight to Inverness over, we nipped into town to buy some essentials: fuel for the incredibly light stove, windproof matches and Paul T wanted a midgie head net in case the little blighters were biting. The first night was spent in a B&B in Aviemore which didn’t quite qualify as wild camping. A largely unremarkable evening other than a good curry, discovering Paul had bought a head net suspension kit (but no head net) and an ongoing conversation as to how Aviemore could be Scotland’s premier ski resort but not have any mountains nearby.

The following day we parked up at the Cairngorm railway with an aspiration to walk over 5 4000 footers in 2 days, and in clear weather slogged up to the Ptarmigan restaurant under full packs and immediately stopped for a drink. This trip was not turning out to be that hardcore after all.

Over the top of Cairngorm and then on to Stob Coire an t-Sneachda (and so began a week of incredibly bad pronunciation). The wind was getting up and clouds were rolling about but visibility was still decent as we walked across the plateau to Ben Macdui (best pronounced as if you were Frasier from Dad’s Army). At this point the route description gave two options to descend to the valley - one of which was described as marginally less awful. A jarring, steep, knee breaking descent down a stream bed ensued and on reaching the path at the bottom we were nearly Pope-like in our appreciation for the flat ground.

A saunter along the valley to the Corrour Bothy and then the joy of erecting the tarp, cooking tea and watching Dave continually slide off his shiny sleeping mat all night. Paul T slept well.

Day 2 dawned cloudy and climbing up from the bothy to the ridge on the other side of the valley put us in thick cloud which we stayed in all day. The day was then a series of joined up big lumps from which we could see nothing and a lot of navigation as we roamed around the only sub arctic tundra in the UK. Despite being soggy we managed to walk up all the 4000-ers that we wanted to and then it was a simple stroll back to the valley and a long trudge out via something called Chalamain’s Gap and back to the car (note the GPS track died in the gap - it obviously knew something we didn’t).

The route guide described it as ‘a sting in the tail’. It turned out to be a massive boulder field in a valley with lots of large gaps down which you could lose your poles, your ankles or indeed your entire body. This coupled with persistent rain meant an exceptionally slow period of slippy boulder hopping occurred accompanied by much cursing of the Chalamain chappy.

Having made it back to the car very late in the afternoon, we then had the joy of driving 2 hours to Skye to get to the Sligachan hotel in time for food. The details of the journey are best forgotten as Paul T imitated Stirling Moss in the dark. The next day was deemed a rest day so we went for a gentle valley walk and then headed off to the Talisker distillery for a nose around. A fine pub lunch ensued and then we headed back to the hotel for an evening of calories.

The following day we headed off to the top end of the Trotternish ridge, parked the car and free of all gear headed north to have a look at the Quirang (not a heavy metal magazine as I discovered), the Table and the Needle. They all looked like what their name suggested - other than the Quirang because we didn’t know what that was meant to look like. We nipped up to the round flat summit of Meall na Suiramach and then back down to the car for lunch. Thereafter we hoisted our packs on our back and left the sightseers behind and headed south along the ridge.

Lots of steep up and down on grass led us to the Bealach Uige which was where there was a water source (the only one on the ridge) and where we had planned to camp. We eventually found the water by listening for it and decided we would push on and camp on top of Beinn Edra as the weather was fine and clear. We had probably the best camp site in the world and enjoyed great sunsets and sunrise. Paul had another good nights sleep whilst Dave simply slithered off down the hill on his very light, highly polished, entirely useless inflatable crisp bag.

The next day we left our gear at the tarp and walked further along the ridge until our knees told us we had done enough and we headed back to camp, packed our gear and headed back to the car. Not the highest walk we have ever done but definitely the best camp site. The evening was a referendum fueled night of beer (they even had a beer called ‘Yes’ on tap).

The following morning there was much gloom as the vote had gone against them as we headed back to the airport - a great trip.

PreviousNext