Cruban Beag (NN668924; 590m)

All has been quiet on this blog for a few months, which have been spent mainly in Germany. There’s been plenty of running, but no walking worthy of note here. We’re now in Scotland and hopefully I’ll have a few things to report between now and when we return home.

The purpose of our visit to Newtonmore this weekend was the TGO Challenge Scottish Reunion, attended by (amongst many others) Martin & Sue. Martin had sent an email a couple of weeks ago suggesting Aviemore parkrun on Saturday morning, followed by a Marilyn afterwards, which I agreed sounded like an excellent way to spend a day.

I only had two unbagged Marilyns in the vicinity of Newtonmore and the first plan, made over dinner on Friday evening, was to visit Creag Liath. It was only later when I measured the route that I realised the distance was a little too ambitious for the time available (taking into account a 9.30am parkrun and post-run coffee). We headed to Cruban Beag instead, a smaller hill sitting closer to a road.

I never expect to meet anyone on obscure little Marilyns, but we arrived at the chosen start location to find a car already parked in the one-car slot. Whatever was someone else doing on our hill?!

As it transpired, we didn’t have to backtrack to take the second-choice approach route, as another parking opportunity presented itself slightly further along the tiny lane.

Another person on an obscure little hill! He was doing a round of six Dodds. I’ve no idea, without looking it up, what a Dodd is.

A deer fence had to be crossed twice. There was a hole in it at the point shown in the snap below (good view along the glen beyond the fence too!), through which we took turns in contorting ourselves. Later we found a whole section that was down, so were able to cross again. We stayed on the other side on the return leg, which only required one crossing of a low fence.

Various trods were used for the majority of the distance from road to summit, making the going fairly easy. Relatively dry conditions underfoot, as well as from above, helped too. And our route avoided all of the crags which protect the summit from most approaches.

Four happy hikers on the windy summit

Summit view

Lunch would have been had whilst enjoying the views from the summit had it not been so windy. Instead a suitable rock was chosen in a sheltered spot on our descent, although we still cooled down quickly when not moving, in spite of donning extra layers. A bit of sunshine would have gone a long way, but at least the rain held off for us.

Our retracing of steps saw us back at the car having walked a modest 2.6ish miles with around 260m ascent.

Thanks go to Martin & Sue for both the company and the transport :-)