Cruach Lerags (NM838258; 252m)

Another dawn, another cloud free sky, but we didn’t make haste this morning – or at least not in the direction of our hill. Far more pressing was getting some laundry done and hung out, and as our hill was small, and close by, we could afford to wait until our walking trousers were dry before we set out.

The view this morning from Bertie-the-Pop-up-Barber’s-Shop (where I carefully crafted Mick’s Challenge hair-do)

Thus it was afternoon by the time we left the campsite via the track which leads out the back. That track took us gently up for a while, before we stepped over a couple of fences and followed another fence uphill. It was a huffity-puffity steep haul up, before we entered a more gentle rollercoaster ride, going up and down over the bumps that sat in our way. The going underfoot was generally good and easy, but progress was slowed by stopping every few minutes to remove ticks from our trousers. I (a tick magnet) have not encountered a single tick in the last three weeks, but they were out in force today.

The standard start point for this hill is Cologin, to the east, which involves a circuitous route to avoid inpenetrable forest. Had we started from there we would have walked the SE shore of Loch Gleann a Bhearraidh (its right hand side, as seen in this snap).

The break through the forest which surrounds this top was easy to locate and, with not much more effort, we were on the first of this hill's two tops – the one which my information says is the ‘official’ high point. The other potential summit on this hill doesn’t sit far away from the first, but with mature conifers sitting in between the two tops, you can’t stand on the one and say with certainty ‘Yep, this is definitely higher’, so for insurance against needing to make a future visit, we visited both.

Then we went back down (up, down, up, down), during which I opined that of the 32 hills I’ve visited so far on this trip, this was up there in the ‘least inspiring summits’ category. We’ve got better views from our pitch on the campsite than there were from up there.
(3.2 miles, 320m(ish) ascent)