Nor’ West News The NeWSletter of the Nor’ West Sgurramblers Issue No. 159 – July 2014 www.sgurramblers.org.uk Do NOT miss the club’s 300th Meet – Booking Details below. MEET REPORTS EASTER CONUNDRUMS: (Thursday 16 – Tuesday 21 April 2014) After picking up David Douglas (and a large number of carrier bags of food) on the Thursday I drove to Lochgoilhead where I parked opposite the post office in a car park adjacent to the shore of (unsurprisingly named) Loch Goil. This was opposite a track heading up onto the forested slopes of Cnoc Coinnich - a short 3½ hour hill we could sneak in before the Easter meet proper started. From the summit there were excellent views over Loch Long and the Loch (whose name I choose to forget) beside Lochgoilhead. It was a sunny day but we had difficulty walking into the wind when we left the summit. We got to the former Inveraray SYHA hostel at about 1900hrs and found that Brian Billington and Chris Knowles had already arrived. The SYHA put this hostel up for sale last year for about £100k and luckily they found a buyer who reopened it as an independent hostel. Should you wish to support it with your patronage, click on www.inverarayhostel.co.uk. At the rate at which the SYHA is selling off its hostels, this could be the first year since I started walking in Scotland that I will probably not stay in a SYHA hostel. Serves the idiots right. 1 Friday was another fine sunny day - and again windy. Brian solved the problem of how to get us all into one car and thus facilitated one of whose rare occurrences when all of us on a meet do the same hill – on this occasion it was Beinn Damhain. Brian showed an ability to think “out of the box” (or maybe out of the car) - he put my tomato and courgette seedlings into Chris’s car to make room in my car for us all. I drove to the Drovers Inn where Chris assured me we could park. This meant that we had to undertake a horrid walk of about 1km along the busy A82 to a landrover track which we followed until it petered out. From there it was a short climb on boggy ground to the summit where we spent about one hour eating our sandwiches and having a doze in the sun. We had different ideas about which way to go down. Chris went back the same way as we went up. Brian and I followed a direct route beside a burn back to the Inn. David took the track with the intention of seeing if he could catch Chris but he never did. Outside the Inn was the mangled wreckage of a hatchback and a motorcycle. The visible damage seemed to indicate that the motorcycle was on the deck at impact. We had a rather expensive but good pint of Deuchars IPA in the Inn in appreciation of the use of their parking. The establishment seemed to be staffed exclusively by people with Scottish accents (rather than the usual East Europeans). During the night Brian gave us a scare. He had a funny turn – shivering, racing heart beat and collywobbles. Luckily all these issues subsided after about an hour. After a disturbed night, we were up a bit later than the norm on the Saturday morning. Chris and Brian went off together - Chris climbed Stob an Eas and Brian did a shorter walk. David and I climbed the two most southerly of the Luss hills - Beinn a’ Mhic Chaorach and Beinn a’ Mhanaich - from Glen Fruin. The hills in the area have some splendid views and, considering how near they are to Glasgow, they seem to attract surprisingly few people. We saw only 4 other walkers all week. One we met on that Saturday was able to tell us that the island we could see in the distance was Arran. We had worked out for ourselves that the well fortified site we could see on Gare Loch was the Faslane nuclear submarine facility. The ridge down from Beinn a’ Mhanaich was somewhat spoilt by numerous firing range signs. I spotted a (probably common) lizard which for once didn’t disappear, enabling me to point it out to David. On the Sunday Chris climbed Beinn Lochain and Brian did a shorter walk nearby. David and I went to Loch Eck and climbed Beinn Ruadh, a hill which is seldom climbed. We followed what paths there were and then had to make our own way on steep ground through crags. We chose different routes and the classic happened - I waited for David at 2 a sub top only to find that he had bypassed this top and was nearly at the summit. We enjoyed excellent views of Loch Eck from the summit. On our way down we avoided the crags on the southwest side of the hill and went on a fruitless search for an alleged path near Inverchapel Burn. Back at the car I had a sleep in the sun while David ate the rest of his sandwiches. On the Monday Brian and Chris climbed Tullich Hill from which they had a good view of The Cobbler, with Chris going on to do Beinn Bhreac in the Luss Hills. David and I chose 3 Grahams just to the south of theirs and decided to climb them from the remote Glen Luss. Parking at the end of the tarmac road we followed a signed footpath (which avoided a farm) up to the summit of Cruach an t-Sidhein. From there we headed towards Doune Hill but I was having problems reconciling what I could see in front of me with the map. The hill on the correct bearing for Doune Hill had three bumps but my map didn’t have a hill with three bumps! David solved this puzzle. His map had three bumps on Doune Hill but my older sheet 56 had only two. After Doune Hill we set off for a hill named variously as Coire na h’Eanachan on my old map, Beinn Dubh in the Graham book and Mid Hill on some hill walking web sites. From its summit we headed down in the direction of the car to a bealach above which was Beinn Eich, another Graham. This is the only area where four Grahams are readily “baggable” in one day - if one believes what one reads in the Graham book. It was only 2.30pm and we foresaw that it should be a nice walk down the southeast ridge of the fourth Graham to the car. The hill was calling to us: so we went for it. As we expected, it was a long tiring climb - but well worth it. That evening, as it was the last night of the official meet, we went out to the George Hotel for an excellent meal and a couple of pints. Chris and Brian headed home on the Tuesday as the weather had turned to rain and clag. David and I stayed to do a few more Grahams. On one of these obscure hills we met Brian Johnson who has written several books on walking (published by Cicerone) including a two volume set on the Corbetts (which neither David nor I were aware of). Of more interest to us was that he was collecting information for a book on the Grahams but he did not think that Cicerone were interested in publishing it. Many thanks go to David for his faultless organising of the meet, and to him, Chris and Brian for their company. Roger Reeves 3 Views from the “Buzzards Nest” (Meet No. 298, Saturday 17 – Saturday 24 May 2014) Roger Reeves picked me up at Newark Castle railway station on the Friday afternoon and we travelled northwards in his car, staying overnight at Edmundbyers youth hostel where we were saddened by news from the voluntary warden that the YHA intended selling the building. Continuing onward the following day, clouds darkened as we crossed the Scottish border and by the time we reached Strathyre it had started to rain. It was not looking good before the meet had even started but, apart from the weather, our journey went well. We had arranged to meet David Douglas at Morrison’s supermarket in Fort William at 3.30pm but, arriving at the appointed time, he failed to respond to my phone call. Expecting him to be inside stocking up supplies for the meet, the only solution was to institute a search of the premises and he was quickly spotted carefully weighing up the best value in the trifle aisle. With two extra pairs of eyes to help, shopping was soon completed and we set off for Kinchellie Croft at Roy Bridge, which was to be our home for the duration of the meet. Our cottage - “Buzzards Nest” - had magnificent views across to the Grey Corries and Ben Nevis. It also had individual bedrooms and a comfortable lounge: so it proved to be a pleasant place to spend our week. The weather forecast on Sunday morning was not so comforting and we were only too aware of the pouring rain outside. With little enthusiasm for a soaking we settled down, anticipating a lazy day indoors. At ten o’clock, however, Roger leapt to his feet announcing that the weather was better further East, so we should head that way as he had identified a couple of Grahams which could be added to his tally. After a mad scramble to get ready, we drove 70 miles in improving conditions through Aviemore and Grantown-on-Spey to the village of Cromdale, parking the car by the entrance to Wester Rynaballoch farm.