Overnight in Glen Banchor

Scotland is such a good place for wild camping, the autumn colours are so lovely just now, and I was owed a night in a tent after last weekend’s adventure. So, at 1530 yesterday I downed one final cup of tea, picked up my pack and my poles and headed off up the Old Glen Road in Newtonmore.

The relatively late start was because I wasn’t going very far. Dalnashallag bothy is an 8km walk away from Newtonmore, at the top of Glen Banchor, and my intention was to camp somewhere in its vicinity.

I walked the length of Glen Banchor in August 2023 and followed a trod the whole way, with just one patch of bog to negotiate. This time I was walking in the other direction and I soon concluded that either the path (using the term loosely) is harder to follow when heading west, or I just wasn’t paying enough attention. I found myself wading pathlessly through more bog than felt reasonable.

In the end I didn’t go quite as far as the bothy. As I approached I thought I could see something outside of it and it looked like a quad bike (there’s every possibility it was nothing of the sort, in the same way that sometimes you see a bit of plastic at the side of a track and are convinced it’s a rabbit until you get up close). I wasn’t after company, so I crossed the river where I was, then backtracked a bit to where the best-looking pitches seemed to be. Handily, that was also out of sight of the bothy.

The ground wasn’t as flat as it looked from a distance, and there were a lot of sheep droppings around, but I selected a flattish spot that looked about the right size for Connie Competition.

Both tent and bothy are in this snap.

Kettle’s on

My main objective for this trip was to sleep well, and I did. The tent didn’t flap (sheltered pitch), and over 6 hours sleep was had! I was, however, wide awake at 0400, but on this occasion I wasn’t going to employ the ‘well, I’m awake, I may as well make a move’ theory. I was aiming to leave just as daylight arrived.

I finally emerged from my sleeping bag at 0600 and had a leisurely cup of tea and hot porridge before slowly packing away. Not slowly enough, as I was ready to walk at 0710, sunrise wasn’t until 0750, and whereas two weeks ago I was able to turn off my headtorch 40 minutes before sunrise, today it stayed on until 0743. As I wasn’t going far, and thus had no need to conserve power, I put it on a ‘useful light’ setting, which helped me keep track of the line of the trod, and to repeatedly ford water (I’m sure the line I took yesterday, a distance away from the river, only involved wading one significant burn and the river; today I forded five times).

My goodness Glen Banchor is a bogfest! I thought, having strayed away from the trodden line, I’d just taken a bad route yesterday, but it turns out that the trodden line is every bit as wet, and maybe wetter. It was nice to make it onto solid ground just before the abandoned buildings at Glenballoch. (Incidentally, the woodland just W of Glenballoch would give a good sheltered pitch amongst the trees. I considered it yesterday, but it seemed too early to stop, given my stated objective of the bothy.)

I was back in Newtonmore just before 9am. Quite probably not the shortest overnight trip I’ve ever taken, but it’s right up there. (Definitely not the shortest: see this blog post from 2007)