It stayed dry for most of our drive to Glen Livet, and whilst we breakfasted on arrival in Tombrae car park. It then stayed dry for the first half an hour that I was out, during which time I walked the first 2.5km of 'Route 10', a waymarked route that goes around The Bochel, but for me was going to give me an easy route to walk in to the hill.
To avoid the buildings at Tullich, the route crosses Crombie Water and goes along a fence line on the SW side. There's a trodden line, but it's obviously not hugely frequented, and as it's through non-cropped grass, it was rather soggy today. My mind already turned to the thought of returning a different way and thus, when I got to the point where I knew (from an info sign in the car park) that Route 10 met Route 3, I dropped a note to Mick to ask him to send me a photo of the info sign, so I could see exactly where Route 3 went. First, though, I had a hill to climb, so I veered away from both of those routes and set about the 150m climb to the summit.
The top of the hill had been in cloud for the whole of my approach, and the heaviest rain fell whilst I was on the top, so it was a surprise, just as I left the summit, when there was a sudden brightening of the sky and a glimpse of view opened up on both sides. I mean 'glimpse'. I tried to take a couple of photos, but by the second one the cloud had closed back in.
The cows with calves in a field I needed to go through at Glack were a minor concern, but they ignored me, unlike the sheep in the next field that bleated at quite some volume. Even though the route wasn't particularly evident on the ground, it was easy enough to spot the pedestrian gates, and they led me to the access track to Glack, which in turn took me to a footbridge, then the road.
Walking the road back may not seem the most pleasing choice, but aside from it being the quick option in the miserable weather, I wanted to see how feasible it would be to drive Bertie up to the car park at the road end, and whether there was a phone signal there. If I'd wanted to take the chance on the former point (having already established that there was a better phone signal than at Tombrae), I could have messaged Mick to drive up to meet me, but instead I walked the 2.5km down the road, only to then almost immediately drive back up again - positioning for the hills I intend to do tomorrow.
The forecast is better for tomorrow, but in reality it hasn't been that bad today. It's raining as I type this at 4pm, but until about half an hour ago, there had only been a few relatively short showers since I finished my outing. Annoyingly, despite the rain whilst I was out, the cloud had cleared off the summit by the time I reached the road and it hasn't come back down since.
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