Cooks Cairn (NJ 302 278; 755m) and Corryhabbie Hill (781m)
Start Point: Allenreid car park, at the end of the minor public road running SE from Tomnavoulin
Distance and Ascent: Bike: 10.9km, 110m; Foot: 13.1km, 710m
Weather: Overcast but dry for the outward bike leg and the first 11k of the walk, then light rain the rest of the way.
Last night we'd taken a walk out to take a look at the quality of the track that runs S of Achdregnie, as the more obvious track that goes via Achdregnie runs between buildings, and thus may not be an acceptable route under SOAC. The riverside track was grassy, but looked firm enough (something I should have looked at when I'd already walked past it earlier in the day), so that's the way I went. It turned out that after a few yards of smooth grass, it was horribly lumpy. On the plus side, the ground was firm, but it wasn't happy riding, nor, for me, was it easy. Throw in a few gates and I was starting to regret not just going on foot.
The track remained largely grassy, with some rough stony sections, even once I joined the two-dashed-lines track that came from the farm at Achdregnie, and I was further slowed by having to shoulder my bike to carry it up the steps of a bridge, to avoid a mid-calf ford. I'm hoping my back soon forgives me for that, as it's very unhappy about it as I type this!
Eventually, at a fence 5.5km into my ride, and with the track beyond being two lines through heather, I abandoned the bike. It had taken me 56 minutes to get that far, which is approximately the same speed I would have achieved on foot. Worse, I knew that I yet needed to tackle the same ground in the other direction. That, however, was an issue for later, and I was soon striding out towards the abandoned, decaying buildings at Suie.
Beyond those buildings, the track became a modern engineered one, and the going up to the bealach between Carn na Bruar and my objective of Cook's Cairn, was easy. To my surprise, a finger post pointed from that main track, up the line of an ATV track, to my first summit and even though it became less distinct the higher I got, the going was still easy, on firm ground with short vegetation.
As you'll see from my map snippet above, I just dropped straight down the W side of the hill, which was mainly lovely springy terrain, with only the final section being deeper, woody heather.
Theoretically, I was on track now for the whole of the rest of the way, but when I got to the final switchback on my way up Corryhabbie Hill, I couldn't see the point of going the extra distance on the track when I could just deadhead to the top.
It was a unique (in my experience at least) trig marking the top, with it wearing a big metal (iron?) hat.
My plan (formed without seeing the lie of the land) was to retrace my steps down the track to the glen path, but on my way up I'd decided it looked perfectly feasible to take a much more direct line, so that's what I did, and only at the very bottom did the terrain get a bit tricky. Popping out onto the track, it was then just a fast walk the final 3.5km(ish) back to the bike, pausing only to dig my rain skirt out of my pack when a shower hit (it then rained on me the whole way back). I have to say, I must have looked a sight - on my way out on the bike, I'd paused at the ford to the S of Suie and put my knee-length waterproof socks on (which are quite brilliant, by the way), then I'd kept them on the rest of the way. The combination of leggings with knee high socks over the top was already a bold fashion choice before I donned the rain skirt (which is also quite brilliant, but looks like I'm wearing a black bin bag).
I nearly met a chap as I got to the convergence of paths by Suie, but with the rain coming down quite decidedly at the time I wasn't going to wait for him to get there, and figured he would catch me up when I was faffing with the bike anyway. I didn't look back until I got to the bike, and he was nowhere within sight.
Back on the bike, I was expecting another hard ride, but what I'd failed to notice on the way out was that the amount of uphill I was doing - it had seemed pretty flat at the time, with the hardness just coming from the terrain. To my surprise, the return was pretty easy (even if still rough, with the the final section still being horribly bumpy), I was able to negotiate most of the gates without having to dismount, and because I had the tall waterproof socks on, there was no imperative to carry the bike up onto the pedestrian bridge, instead opting to push it through the ford. I got back in exactly half the time of the outward leg.
With the outward bike leg now a distant memory, it was a good fun outing.
Blogger has decided we're having photos in reverse order again today:
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