Gaick Corbetts Backpack, Take 2, Day 3: Luibleathann to Newtonmore

24 April

Distance: 6.4km

Weather: Overcast but dry

I think I would have slept the whole night through if my cold hadn’t progressed to the point that my nose was completely blocked. That kept me awake for a couple of hours, during which time I came to realise that my feet were, once again, blocks of ice. Eventually I stirred myself to heat some water and make myself a hot water bottle. I then had two blocks of ice on a hot object, but they never did warm up. If only I’d packed my down booties!

I eventually dropped back off, and woke again (still with cold feet) at 0530. I’m not sure quite how I filled the next 2.5 hours, given that I didn’t even have hot porridge, but it was 0800 by the time I walked back along the track and in the direction of Newtonmore. 

As may be deduced from the map snippet, it’s a shame that there’s a river and a railway line that sits between my start point and Newtonmore. Potentially even more so today, when I came upon this:

Obviously, I carried on regardless, hoping the road would be passable to pedestrians. When the works came into sight, I was reassured that if the workers did object to my passage (which wouldn’t have been entirely unreasonable, as they were operating a digger on a narrow road) I could easily hop the fence, walk through the field adjacent and hop back once I was beyond the work. As it went, they had stopped work and were all standing around having a chat when I walked through; they greeted me but made no reference to the closure.

I was back in Newtonmore just over an hour after setting out. If it hadn’t been for feeling under the weather, I would have swapped some of my kit and headed back out for one more night, but as it was, I had a big bowl of the kedgeree Mick had made the previous night (third breakfast before 0930!) and not long after that I took my weary body and stuffy head off to bed for a few hours.

 

Day 1 of the trip had been the highlight. The start of Day 2 was good too. The rest of Day 2 (after the Corbett) was blighted by my back hurting every single time I lifted my right leg, which became rather trying after a while, not to mention feeling sub-par due to having a cold.

Because of the back issue (15 months old now – not a new affliction), my confidence in being able to complete the TGO Challenge has been fluctuating between 70% and 30% confidence. At the end of Day 2 it was down to 10%. The discomfort was back to being tolerable on Day 3.

I will likely work on my usual basis of ‘If I don’t start then I definitely won’t finish, so I may as well start’, although given the location of my start point (Portavadie) and the fact that Mick won’t be available to rescue me (so if I don’t finish it will be costly and time consuming to get myself over to Montrose), I do wonder whether it’s the right decision.

What this trip told me is that I definitely will not be using my Osprey Exos backpack, as on the three trips in the last year when my back has been really sore, that is the pack I’ve been using. It’s funny that I’ve carried that pack for literally thousands of miles, yet now find it so uncomfortable (or maybe it’s because I’ve carried it for thousands of miles and it's worn out?!). That leaves me with my OMM pack, which is smaller and has fewer pockets, meaning I’ll probably have to revert to using the Terra Nova Laser Competition as my tent, as it packs up smaller, even though it’s heavier than the Duomid - it’s also a lot warmer, so that could be a bonus.  

Gaick Corbetts Backpack, Take 2, Day 2: Allt Loch an Duin to Luibleathann via A'Chaoirnich

23 April

Allt Loch an Duin to Luibleathann via A’Chaoirnich

Distance and ascent: 27.5km, 630m

Weather: Frosty night, glorious start, becoming overcast then rain for 5 hours of afternoon.

It was a clear-skied night and thus a cold one, but I had taken my long, warmer Thermarest this time, and I took the precaution of donning two pairs of socks before bed, so I was warm enough. I even had warm feet until around 4am.

During my wakeful periods in the night I’d pondered my morning plan. Would I leave the tent pitched and attack A’Chaoirnich via it’s W flank, or would I de-pitch, walk 2.5k up the glen, re-pitch (so as to leave stuff I didn’t need on the hill in the tent, and to let the tent dry out) and use the slightly less vertical NE approach? After churning over the issue many, many times, I resolved on leaving the tent where it was and walking the extra out-and-back distance.

When I emerged from my sleeping bag at 5am, I measured the distances involved and reversed my decision – no point walking an extra 2km when I would be all-but passing the NE approach anyway.

 

Frosty glen

Tent re-pitched

Sun eradicating the frost as soon as it meets it

The NE approach to this hill may have been friendlier than the W, but it was still awfully steep in the upper reaches, where (as with An Dun the previous afternoon) the map makers had been unable to fit in enough contour lines. It was as I toiled up there (it involved a 50 minute kilometre! Although, I suppose I did have a couple of prolonged layer faffs) that I contemplated that it would be a real shame not to do my intended high route on such a gloriously sunny day, but as I had a head cold and was tired, an easier day would probably be the more sensible option.

Thus from the summit…

Obligatory selfie

…I sent Mick news of my revised plan (once I’d hatched said revised plan).

Intended route in green; revised route in red

Back down at the tent, what I really wanted to do was to crawl in and have a kip, but given the purposes for which I’d pitched it (to be a shed, and to dry the fabric) it wasn’t on ground suitable for sleeping (lumpity bumpity). That was a shame, as the sun hadn’t long reached it and it hadn’t yet dried out, and sleeping would have been an efficient way of waiting for the sun to do its work. Instead, I sat on a nearby rock, had a snack, changed my socks (I no longer wanted the waterproof ones in which I’d tackled the boggy hillside; isn’t it incredible how bogs can cling to such steep ground in Scotland?) and filtered some water. Finally I took the tent back down, wondered if I’d accidentally picked up a few river rocks, given how my pack seemed so much heavier than earlier, even though the tent was now dry, and set off along the glen.

Last time I walked this glen, last October, it was in a storm, in the dark. It was far nicer today to see my surroundings. It was also easy to cross the Allt Gharbh Ghaig without getting anything but the soles of my shoes wet, unlike last time when it overtopped my waterproof socks.  

There was something going on in the vicinity of Gaick Lodge, and when a security chap stopped me with a warning to expect traffic on the track, I asked what was happening. Preparing for filming next week was his answer, and I didn’t enquire any further, assuming that it was some TV programme. There was, however, an incredible amount of infrastructure, new quarries had appeared and great stretches of the track had been resurfaced. Various vehicles passed me (the security chap had told me everyone had been instructed to drive slowly and, with the exception of one estate vehicle, so they all did as they passed me. However, they certainly weren’t abiding by the speed instructions as they approached!). Maybe I could have availed myself of the lunch truck, had I been a little behind myself. It was only when two Warner Bros ‘Lighting and Rigs’ HGVs trundled past that I discerned that this wasn’t something like Country File, but a more major production. (Okay, curiosity finally got the better of me and I just Googled it. Apparently it’s the new HBO Harry Potter series)

As much as I enjoyed the glen, I was really flagging by the time I reached the end of Loch an t-Seilich, but I resolved to make it the extra 4km to Bhran Cottage for lunch. Before I sat down, I took a couple of little detours to see whether the bridges there are still missing and a kind estate worker (not the one who had sped past me earlier, kicking up dust in my path!) stopped an offered me a lift across the water. I thanked him kindly, but despite giving all indications that I wanted to cross by poking around on the river bank, that wasn’t where I needed to cross.

There’s some lovely cropped grass next to and behind Bhran Cottage (and currently a full-sized articulated lorry, laden with filmset gubbins parked in front), and I would have been sorely tempted to cut short and pitch there for the night, had it not been for not having a phone signal to let Mick know (there’s usually a signal there, but nothing today). Having told him he would hear from me later, I assumed that if he didn’t, he would think some nasty accident had befallen me (as I would, had our positions been reversed). He now assures me that he would have just assumed I’d stopped short and not had a signal.

I only had a kilometre more to cover of the glen track before I was to ford the river and head across country. Reaching my fording point, my first reaction was “I’m not crossing that!”. Even though, barring one rainy night last week, it’s been a dry spring thus far, the River Tromie is not an insignificant obstacle. After a few moments of contemplating my route options, I explored the river bank a little further upstream and decided I could ford after all. I thought about taking my socks off, but with nowhere (other than potentially tick infested grass) to sit, I decided to just plough on through as I was. The water came up to knee high, but there was only a short section where there was a significant flow.

Once on the far bank, there ensued 3km of the roughest and wettest sorts of terrain, with no animal trods to ease my progress. To add insult, it started to rain on that section, and contrary to the weather forecast of occasional showers, it continued for the next five hours. Light for quite a while, I was finally forced into my waterproof trousers as I descended the track towards the Military Road.

I found another good looking pitch down there, but still having no phone signal, I pressed on, reaching my destination at 1600. With a 0630 start, and a couple of hard-going sections, it had been a long day.

A welcome sight (snap taken the next morning, when it was dry)

Spot the tent

I ate and drank inside, gave up on waiting for the rain to stop, and pitched the tent outside, taking with me a book from the extensive (for such a location) library. Thus I spent the rest of the evening snuggled in my sleeping bag, reading. I managed sixty pages before I declared ‘lights out’ (which is to say, I pulled my hat down over my eyes).

Gaick Corbetts Backpack, Take 2, Day 1: Dalwhinnie to Allt Loch an Duin

Tuesday 22 April 25

Dalwhinnie to Allt Loch an Duin

Distance and ascent: 19.7km, 870m

Weather: Sunny intervals. Daytime high of 13, but much cooler higher up and in N wind.

The main objective of this trip was to bag what I refer to as the Gaick Corbetts. It was the same objective as I had when I set out from Dalwhinnie last October on the trip that met a sudden and unexpected end, but this time I was taking a different route from Dalwhinnie, was going to do the Corbetts and evening/morning excursions (rather than a whole-day circuit) and was then going to head NE for another Corbett before dropping down into Glen Feshie.

Today’s route is in blue. Last October’s Day 1 route is in green.

Modern engineered track for the first few kilometres. Look how little snow there is for the time of year. That cornice is at about 900m.

A more pleasing old track higher up

At the point where it felt like lunchtime, I started looking around for a rock to sit on, but by then there were none in the immediate vicinity. With the sky turning grey and the wind picking up, I didn’t want to go much higher before pausing, so when I saw a likely rock about 50m off the track, I yomped across to it. It promised more from a distance than it delivered; I found myself uncomfortably perched, rather than seated and it was a short break. Rejoining the track I’d only gone a couple of hundred more metres when the perfect bench of a rock appeared right on the track. Hey ho.

Easy walking across the top. Excuse my face in the way; for reasons I can’t recall I decided to send Mick a selfie from here.

On paper I’d assessed this as a harder route than the one I’d taken last time, but in reality it was easier, with the terrain linking the track and the stalker’s path to the SE being much friendlier and less peat-haggy than the ground linking the two stalkers’ paths just 3km to the NE. I did, however, make one error of judgement (with the benefit of hindsight).

When I reached this delightful burn…

 …it seemed to me that walking down it would be a nicer option than ascending the other side of the burn and yomping across rough ground to pick up the stalkers’ path. That was true in its upper reaches but then I met a series of small waterfalls, only the first of which was easily bypassed, and then the burn was suddenly running much deeper through steep terrain than I’d perceived from the contour lines.

Illustrating the above. You may notice that there’s a good trod on the other side, but I reckon that hillside was even steeper than the one I contoured around, so probably best left to the deer!

An ankle-stressing contouring activity took me over to the stalkers’ path I'd originally intended to use – another of those paths that is long out of regular use, but perfectly followable as long as you pay close attention and don’t overshoot a switchback.

Lower down the path turns E to a bridge, which wasn’t the direction I wanted to go until the morrow, so I veered off and headed for where it looked like I would find a good pitch for the tent.

Yep, I reckon I’ll find a pitch down there. The hill on the right was my 'evening excursion' (although it turned into more of a 'late afternoon' affair).

When Bertie was getting lashed by the rain at Shap last week, I assume these burns were in spate, as the grass alongside was still flattened by recent flooding. However, the water was now low and there was no significant rain forecast, so I was happy to pitch where water had obviously recently rushed.

Spot the tent

Closer to

Cup of tea before the next activity.

With everything set up in the tent, I took just the essentials for my late afternoon out-and-back jaunt up An Dun.

You may notice from the above snippet that the map-makers were unable to squeeze in many intermediate contour lines between the 50m lines on the side of the hill I ascended/descended, denoting that this terrain is steep indeed. The downside of an out-and-back was (to state the obvious) that I had it steep in both directions. It was on my way up that I discerned that I was coming down with a cold – not entirely a surprise as I’d been spending time over the previous days with someone already so afflicted.

I got to the 827m spot height, which I’d expected to be the summit, to see that the ground 6/700m to the S looked higher. A quick check of hill-bagging.co.uk told me that was indeed the case, but it was an easy stroll to get there. As Marilyns/Corbetts go, I found it a disappointing viewpoint, being such a broad summit the views from the ‘top’ weren’t as good as I’ve come to expect from such hills (by ‘top’ I mean that patch of ground that’s 3cm higher than everywhere else, which happened to be somewhere in the middle of the width of the plateau). The views from the edges were, however, superb:

Spot the tent again.

An hour and three quarters after leaving, I was back at the tent, ready to settle down for a less eventful night than last time I tried camping hereabouts!

 

Ettrick Head to Moffat

18 April

Distance and accent: 13.3km, 130m

Weather: fine start but turning to rain on approach to Moffat.

A deflating thermarest that was skating around the tent floor like a Hessian sack on a slide, a pillow that refused to stay anywhere near my head (I refer back to the Hessian sack/slide analogy), and worst of all, and the thing that kept me awake, feet that refused to warm up.

If I'd had my long thermarest, the pillow would have been on the mat and wouldn't have slid. If I'd had my long thermarest my feet might have been warmer (it's also a warmer mat, not just longer, but then my feet usually require a hot water bottle even at home). If I'd had my long thermarest I could have laid on my back and my back would have been a lot happier. I rued my sleeping mat choice. 

The only thing that stopped me from getting up silly early was that I'd packed a lesser head torch fort this trip and whilst I could do a night walk with it if I had to, I didn't much fancy either the limboing-under-trees route, outer the over-Croft-Head route with it.

I managed to stay put until 4.30am and it was just before 6am after a nicer bowl of hot porridge and a cup of tea, that I got walking.

A kilometre later, I finally had some warm blood in my feet for the first timer since 10pm. That kilometre saw a prolonged pause when I got a phone signal and a notification that I had a voicemail. I nearly ignored it, but curiosity got the better of me. Retrieving the voicemail was a trial as my network provider had randomly decided that I hadn't set up my mailbox (I've been with that provider for years and it definitely used to be set up), and it then kept rejecting my responses to every stage of the set up process. I eventually retrieved a message from Mick telling me he was going to get up early and drive back to where he'd left new the day before, whereas I'd just sent him a message saying I was walking to where he was in Moffat. A quick phone call woke him up (turned out he didn't mean *that* early), but also told him that her could go back to sleep.

My walk back was uneventful, albeit a bit damp as it rained on me for about half of it, and I was back at Bertie by half past eight. Concerned about whether I needed to announce myself as a visitor at reception, it turned out that Mick had not only prewarned them of my arrival but had also sought permission for me to have a shower, which was a welcome treat.

 

No photos today. I took not a single one.  

 

Ettrick Pen, sitting as the only unvisited Marilyn in a sea of visited ones.

E of Moffat to S of Capel Fell via Ettrick Pen

17 April

Marilyn: Ettrick Pen (NT 200 076; 692m)

Start Point: Turning circle opposite minor road, at NT 109 046
Distance and Ascent: 19.3km, 1000m
Weather: sunny intervals, dry save for one hail shower. Cool (max 10) but feeling warm when in sun and out of wind.

My original intention had been a quick overnight, on Wednesday 16th, from our usual park-up just off the M6 near Shap, and the obvious choice from there would have been somewhere near Mosedale Cottage. Then I remembered that I still had one Marilyn to visit in the vicinity of Moffat, where we would be passing today, and that seemed a much more fruitful idea*. I was glad for the change of plan when Bertie spent last night by Shap getting bashed by the wind and lashed by the rain.

I wasn't in the market for an early start so on arrival at Moffat I tarried a while and had an early lunch, before I set out at noon, leaving Mick to go and take up the booking I'd made for him at Moffat Camping & Caravanning Club site.

My route was straightforward: the Southern Upland Way to Ettrick Head, the boundary line to Ettrick Pen, then down to Over Phawhope bothy.

I'd plotted taking the high level SUW alternative over Gateshaw Rig and Croft Head, but we did that route in 2015 so today I took the low level route instead. That involved an old path through the forest where storm damage, both old and new, was evident. A whole section of trees has been snapped half way up their trunks some time ago, and more recently others had been wind-felled across the path. Someone had been out with a saw and made the path passable - just - but it involved hands and knees at times. 

Trees snapped by a storm

Obstacles across the path

Lovely path other than the blow-down-obstacles  

The only other obstacle was a short section of very wet peat hags as I struck off from the SUW at Ettrick Head. Had there been anyone around to witness, I'm sure my antics there would have provided amusement.

Having negotiated the soggy bit and gained a bit of height, I looked back and recognised the hillside opposite. We'd ascended that side (to Capel Fell) in 2015.

There are three little nobbles on the ridge leading to Ettrick Pen, but the minor effort of going over them was rewarded by the views. I do like this area.

Between Hopetoun Craig and Ettrick Pen I went from plenty warm enough in my short sleeves and windshirt to feeling quite cool in my Paramo jacket and Bufallo mitts. Then a hail shower came along. It had passed by the time I reached the summit, but the brisk wind up there was biting.

My descent was to Over Phawhope bothy, where there was a very slim chance that I may have chosen to spend the night. I opted against (the Thursday of a bank holiday weekend and a vehicle track running right by - too much risk of unwelcome company) and didn't even pop my head in. I'd only seen one good-looking pitch on my way in and being just 3.5km distant, that is to where I headed.

The section of SUW between Over Phawhope and Ettrick Head is currently being clear cut and my goodness, they've made a mess of that track. I trudged through unpleasant sloppy mud, finally making my shoes look other than brand new (the first time those shoes stepped outside was 4 hours earlier).

It wasn't much further, along a lovely grassy path, until I reached my pitch and, with relief, saw that nobody else had nabbed it. Given that I'd only seen one group since I set out, and they were in the first ten minutes, It was an unlikely scenario. (Talking of the first ten minutes after setting off - a farm dog tried hard to bite me. He was foiled by my walking poles. Not what I expect on a National Trail.)

...later: between 7-9pm I reckon eight people passed my pitch. I was facing away from the path and didn't trouble myself to look out, so my count was based on voices (there could have been more, passing in silence). Surely heading in to the bothy at that time of day?

My plotted return route went down there. My actual return route didn't. 

Such lovely scenery - so few nice flat untussocky pitches!

Summit selfie

Over Phawhope Bothy 

This photo does not do justice to the nature of the mud!

Good pitch!
 

(*It also seemed fitting, in that I was going to be using a late friend's tent in hills with which he was so familiar. I felt he would have approved of my choice (tent and location).)

Arenig Fach & Moel y Filiast

Arenig Fach (SH 82029 41595; 689m)

10 April 2025

Start Point: a bit of hardstanding on S side of (but definitely not blocking!) the cattle grid at SH 82584 39955 (read on as to why this is not an acceptable place to park)

Distance and ascent: 4.8km, 370m

Weather: Clear sky, but hazy and with an inversion to the E.

 

It was a couple of minutes before 7am as I set out up this hill and the temperature was zero degrees. This was a hastily researched trip and I only noticed as I was setting out that my route crossed two non-Access-Land fields. I wasn’t concerned, but even if I had been, it wouldn’t have lasted for long. Across the road was a stile, with a ‘Permissive Path’ sign, and a series of posts led me up to the gate that granted me access through the barbed-wire-topped wall and onto Access Land.

Photo of the trip!

Summit selfie

I’d managed mainly to keep to trodden lines on the way up, although at some points it was a toss-up between two vague trods through heather, where occasionally I made the wrong choice. On the way back down I took a much more direct route, straight through whatever lay before me, to the gate in the wall (from where I followed the posts marking the permissive line).

Mick had reckoned I’d be back from this one in an hour (although I had missold it as only 4km). I reckoned 1.5hours, and I was only two minutes adrift in my estimate. It wasn’t fast-going terrain.

Whilst I’d been on my way down the hill, Mick had a car pull up next to him. With Erica-the-Campervan's tinted rear windows, the woman who got out didn’t see that Mick was inside and she was quite startled when Mick suddenly emerged just as she was about to put a note under the windscreen wiper. We were parked on private land, and she wanted to know why, explaining to Mick all the problems they have with people parking there and leaving litter. She was perfectly happy when Mick explained his purpose, and it was a genuine mistake on my part (I thought I’d seen on the map that the track was a byway, but when I checked again I saw that it was just a footpath. No defence, but we hadn’t passed any sign (not even a farm name sign) that indicated that it was private). It turns out that there was a layby on the other side of the road only a very short distance further E. Had I done any level of research, I would have known that!

Carnedd y Filiast (SH 87119 44599; 669m)

Start Point: end of track at SH 86177 41038

Distance and Ascent: 11.25km, 550m

Weather: Still glorious, and warming up nicely too.

 

Until this had ceased to be a backpacking trip at about 7pm the previous evening, when I realised how close I was to Erica-the-Campervan, I had intended to approach Carnedd y Filiast by continuing N from Arenig Fach and walking the boundary line. I knew not whether there would be a trodden line there, or whether it would be a multi-kilometre yomp through heather, and it had occurred to me that ascending these hills separately from the road might be the easier option.

Given that it was no longer a backpacking trip (although I did still carry an almost-full pack up today’s hills too, just for the training benefit), I had no hesitation in making both of today’s hills out-and-backs, with Mick driving me between the two.

Initially we’d parked in the layby about 400m west of my ascent track, but when Mick suggested for the third time that he could just drive me the extra distance I conceded, and it was a good call as there’s plenty of room at the track-end for an Erica-sized vehicle.

This turned out to be my favourite hill of the trip. That it was also the easiest probably helped, but the track that made it so easy was an old one, grassy in places and not of the ‘sticks out like a sore thumb’ variety. It led me through extensive heather, dotted with the ruins of very old buildings.

The 100m dip in the track (that, of course, I had to negotiate in both directions) wouldn't have ordinarily bothered me, but by the time I was retracing the final few hundred metres of my steps back to my start point, my body was telling me quite clearly that five hills with a backpack after six months of not hauling any significant weight up (and more particularly, down) hills was enough. Fortunately I only had the five on the agenda for this trip, and I’m sure my shins will forgive me soon!

Gorgeous!

Nicely demonstrating the nature of the track, the 100m dip in the track and the ruined buildings all in one snap.