TGOC25 Day 7 to Gleann a'Chilleine

Wednesday 14 May

Distance and ascent: 28km, 1150m

Weather: cool and cloudy start but it burnt off by late morning to give a hot sunny day

My disappointing B&B did have some positives: the room was big, the bed was clean and comfy, there was a plug socket next to the bed, and breakfast was incredibly good, even if the host was in no rush to give it to me. 

I declined the offer of whisky porridge (I'd already had porridge in my room), and was then offered an avocado salad with poached egg. That sounded right up my street so I gladly accepted. The salad leaves were picked fresh out of the garden, the bread homemade and the egg from her chickens. With a garlic, herb and oil dressing it was one of the best B&B breakfasts ever. It was about 2 hours later when I realised she'd forgotten to put the avocado in the avocado salad; glad it's not just me who can forget the headline ingredient!

Incidentally, one other couple stayed in the B&B overnight and when they arrived for breakfast they were not happy at all with the accommodation and were leaving after one night despite being booked in for two. The host couldn't believe it and said she never got complaints. What are the chances eh? Everyone has apparently loved the place for 11 years then two sets of guests are unhappy on the very same day...

Onwards with the walking:

Earlier in the morning I'd had a text chat with Mick saying I was torn between sticking with my planned route giving me a very easy 19km day all on good paths, or whether to go a different route to the same place giving me just 12km but with 5km off-path. Whichever route, I wouldn't be walking on further as the Rob Roy Way then takes to a road for miles, limiting camping opportunities. I was still contemplating between those options when I came up with a much more pleasing plan involving an unbagged Marilyn.

So, rather than rejoining the RRW I headed E out of Lochearnhead along a disused railway, following it for 8km to Glen Tarken. There, for 1.5km I was on ground I'd trodden before - in April last year when I visited the summit of Carn Each. I put some thought I to it and concluded that may be the only repetition of my entire route. 

Today I was heading to Creag Ruadh, Carn Each's neighbour, but not at all similar a hill. Last year I found the terrain of the latter to be pretty friendly. From a distance Creag Ruadh looked to be quite thoroughly covered in heather. 

I managed to string together grassy patches for the initial part of the ascent, but once the ground became less steep (around 550m, I would guess) the heather became less avoidable and considering how many sheep and deer I saw, there was a dearth of trods.

From the top my onward route was to a bealach to the NE, involving another 4km of quite consistent heather bashing, although this time I was significantly assisted by deer trods. I opted to contour around Meall Ruadh, rather than going over the top as the very presence of well-worn trods around the side suggested it would be the easier option. 

Second lunch (my meal times are all to cock at the moment so I can eat at antibiotic time; this was 3pm) was had part way around that contouring exercise, very soon after crossing the route we took from Lowestoft to Ardnamurchan on 2 May 2011. A memorable day being the day Osama bin Laden was killed, causing the TV to go into reporting overdrive at the expense of giving weather forecasts, which is all we wanted in our B&B in Killen). The night before had been memorable too as we spent it at the dam end of Loch Lednock (which was my lunchtime view today) whilst a wild fire ripped through miles of terrain on the W side of the loch. 

Anyhoo, time was marching on and I was changing my plan on the hoof again. I'd noticed that if I could just get myself over the Corbett, Creag Uchdag, then I would not only have a good choice of places to pitch but it would make tomorrow shorter AND it would remove quite a bit of road walking from the morrow. It wasn't the easiest possible end to the day and I didn't even get to the start of the climb until 4pm, but I was feeling good and after all those miles of heather it was a relief to see that this one was a nice grassy hillside. 

Definitely worth the effort I declared when I saw the views from the top. So many layers of hills seemingly going on for ever. Even better, when I descended far enough to get a view into where I was going, there was lots of campable ground. The only problem was that I ideally wanted to cover another 6km before stopping. 

Looking at the map again as I went, I spotted another hill that I would be passing and was sorely tempted to pitch at the nearby track junction and nip up it in the morning. I even found a good bit of ground there, although there wasn't good water immediately at hand. After a few moments of dithering, I opted to give it a miss. A shame, being so close, but the morrow's route was to be long enough without adding an out-and-back of a hill before I even got started. 

Arriving at the place that, based on distance alone, I wanted to camp I found some vaguely satisfactory ground (not too tussocky, but at the cost of being a bit boggy) and got the tent up and tea on as fast as I could. It was gone 1830, which is a pretty late stop by my standards. 

Looking now at the stats (having changed plans on the hoof, I hadn't even considered the ascent figure) it really had been a hard day when you take terrain into account, so it was pleasing to not be dead on my feet at the end of it.