Cruach Mhor (NN057147; 589m)

Monday 1 May

The parking at the end of the forest track at Three Bridges wasn't ideal for abandoning Bertie* so Mick sat tight whilst I went in search of another summit for my collection.

Cycling hadn't been in my plan for this one, but as I was going alone, and starting on a forest track, I had a last moment change of plan and grabbed the bike as I set off (as much as a bike can be grabbed when it's sitting with a wheel missing and is hidden behind three crates and two water containers and various other bits and pieces). I wasn't sure how far I would get on it, but it turned out to be very cyclable for the first 1.6 miles - which happened to be the very distance to where I was to turn off the good track and onto an old abandoned one, which soon became an ATV track across grass.

Once out of the forest the ground was exactly as it looked in the map, insofar as it was a complex of lumps, bumps and ripples. It wasn't as it looked on the map in terms of wetness - the reality was surprisingly dry up there.

With the quandary of whether to keep going up and down the bumps, or whether to contour around them, I did a mix of both, arriving at the summit feeling like I had wiggled around unduly.


A summit shot without me in it! I do have the obligatory selfie, but I'll spare you from my mugshot today.

It was a touch breezy at the very top, but all other parts of the outing were notable for the warmth, not for the wind. The summer trousers were a good choice today.

I took a different line coming off the hill, and thus wiggled around and up and down in a slightly different area, scaring different sheep and deer (lots of the latter).

The real bonus of having taken the bike up the track was that I descended rather faster than my usual 3.8mph, thus arriving back at the front end of Mick's estimated time window.

I had covered 4.6 miles on foot with 450m of ascent and 3.2 miles by bike with 170m ascent.

^{(*although as I found out a while later, had we driven along the track a short distance, we would have found a suitable space just over the bridge)}