Day 11 - Glen Clova to Tarfside

Mon 18 May
14 miles

As we walked into Glen Clova yesterday and I saw the hills over which we were to walk this morning I was really looking forward to the views we would get in the good weather that was sure to hold.

As I opened the door of our bunkroom at 6.15 this morning I gave fleeting thought to just turning around and going back to bed. The cloud was down and it was raining. This was not the day we had planned!

By 8.10, 20 mins into our day, we were up in that cloud and the light rain had become wind-driven heavy rain. The climb up to Green Hill (870m) got the blood pumping but we saw nothing and we made our way along the tops often with compass in hand.

The compass got even more use as we decided that we didn't fancy following the path as it descended 200m off Skuiley only to reascend 200m up Burnt Hill when there was an obvious route across the tops. The heather and hags
made it a strenuous option but it felt better than the alternative down and up.

As the morning went on the odd few holes started appearing in the low cloud giving us occasional glimpses of our apparently stunning surroundings but still the rain fell.

The best thing to do in the conditions seemed to be to keep moving so we motored along until at just after noon the rain stopped - which coincided with us reaching a wind shelter on Cairn Caidloch - our last hill of the day. We didn't need persuading to pause briefly for lunch.

Then all we had to do was to drop down to the road (took an interesting route there too) and follow it to Tarfside and as we did that the weather turned to heavy showers interspersed with a golden orb.

Arriving at 2.30 between showers the tent was pitched before we hotfooted it to the church for tea & chat & tea & cake & chat & tea & chat.

A damp day, with 5 hours of rain in the 6.5 we were out, but not a bad one all in all.