The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Saturday 15 August 2015

Meall nan Tarmachan

Saturday 15 August

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Another lazy day! You’d think we were on holiday, the way we’re lounging around.

Meall nan Tarmachan was our objective and it was lunchtime by the time we squeezed Colin into an available parking space and set off up it. Just down the road, the Ben Lawers Visitor Centre car park (which is what I’ll call it even though there is no Visitor Centre any more; in fact, the car park is also not where either of us remembered it being) was brimming – the combination of a good weather forecast and it being the weekend.

With a made-path leading all the way to the summit of our hill it was about as easy an outing as you’ll get walking up a Munro. We were at the top in just over an hour, where we chatted for a while with a couple of great chaps. The opening of the conversation involved the revelation to them that there were not standing on top of Ben Lawers. “Really?” said the chap. “It’s the third time I’ve been up here and I always thought this was Ben Lawers!”.

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About half of the gaggle of people atop the summit were doing the obvious and excellent looking walk, along the ridge. We were being particularly lazy, with our plan encompassing having lunch and walking back down. However, the cold wind stopped us from lunching on the top; we thought we’d just drop back down a short way, out of the wind, first.

That was all very well in theory, but then it started to rain. Then it started to hail. Suddenly a deferment of lunch seemed the best choice.

We had nearly dried off again by the time we were a quarter of an hour away from Colin, when another approaching shower was seen. We ran, arriving back at our start point just as the first spots were felt.

Tomorrow we’ll try to be a bit less lazy.

5 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed the walk up Ben Lawers even though as you say it’s not hard. We saw the biggest herd of deer we have ever seen up there and also some very strange flies around the summit trig.

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    1. The thing was, we weren't on Ben Lawers, or even on the same ridge. The chaps to whom we were speaking were a little misplaced...

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  2. I enjoyed Ben Lawers as well (the whole ridge of course) - perhaps you'll go there tomorrow.

    Unless you were mistakenly up there today - these Scottish summits can be very confusing!

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    1. That is exactly where we did go yesterday, although only for five of the seven. We left the other two for today.

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