Meall Buidhe

Friday 14 August

Looking out of the window upon waking this morning it was to the sight of cloud just covering the lowest tops. We went back to bed with our books and gave it an hour to clear. An hour later, that cloud was lower. An hour later still, even the valley was misty. Our plan to visit the Corbett of Stob a’Choin was abandoned, on the basis that the effort that would be required to walk up it demanded some reward from the top.

I pored over the maps for a suitable alternative (something small and easy) and found that there are few small and easily accessible Marilyns in these parts. I did, however, spot that Meall Buidhe looked perfect for the conditions: we would park at 950’, take a gently meandering track up to a mast at 1920’, which would leave us with just 0.8 of a mile of distance to reach the summit at around 2350’. Admittedly, the shaping of the contours for that final 0.8 of a mile did scream ‘ROUGH’ and ‘WET’, but overall it looked very much like a good balance of effort versus reward.

The bonus was that, whilst there was low cloud all around, we stayed in a clear pocket for the entirety of our ascent (the final bit of which was exactly as promised: rough and wet). Alas, as we wandered around the summit, in came the cloud and our descent back to the mast was undertaken with compasses in hands.

The track sped us back to our start point, and off to Killin we tootled, after a very modest outing totalling 5 miles with 1350’ of ascent.

(Incidentally:

1) After the number of tractors met on the very narrow 6-miles of road back out of Glen Voil this morning, Mick may well be of the opinion that we should have stayed in Glen Voil until we’d exhausted the hills best accessed from there. As it stands, we’re going to have to negotiate that seen-better-days, long single-track-with-passing-places again sometime to finish the job.

2) On arrival in Killin, and having emptied my daypack so that I could use it to carry groceries back to Colin from the Co-op, I discovered, tucked down in the water-bladder-pocket, a map of the area surrounding Fussen (the Fussen that lies in southern Germany). It seems that I have carried that map around with me on every single walk I’ve been on with my daypack since July last year. That’s a lot of walks. It must be the most travelled map in my collection!)