It was, I think, a good choice. I enjoyed the route up to Loch Mharaich, first a grassy sunken path through the trees then through clearings, where the map suggests there should have been evidence of hut circles, but I didn’t notice any.
(photo out of order because that's what Blogger likes to do, when it finally agrees to upload them at all)
By the time I was approaching the loch, I could see: 1) that, per recent aerial photos, a big chunk of the SW section of the forest has been felled; and 2) there were some rough felling-machinery tracks that could potentially be of benefit to me. I dithered for a few moments contemplating whether I would be better continuing towards the loch, or taking the track heading SE. I opted for the latter and at NO123566, I gambled on taking a line that had been created by the felling machines. As these things go, it was a friendly one – not horribly strewn with bits of tree causing endless tripping hazards and only a couple of small boggy wallows to be negotiated. Even better, it led me right to the forest’s boundary wall. I was feeling quite smug about my choices at this point, even as I made my way up the rough ground next to the wall, trying to avoid catching a foot in any of the old fence wire hidden in the grass.
Friendly, as lines left behind by felling machines go
My smugness lasted until, 20 vertical metres below the height of the summit, I found myself atop a cliff – not a crag through which I could pick my way, but a line of vertical rock. Fortunately, I had hit it right at its NW end, so it wasn’t much of a detour to find some steep-but-descendable ground through felled trees, to another felling-machinery track at the bottom of the dip. If I could have just found that track to start with, the going would have been even easier than the way I’d gone.
I was soon at the summit and a couple of minutes later I was on my way down to the road.
The map snippet above shows that I took an indirect line after leaving the summit, again because of the escarpment, but even with that bit of a wiggle it was relatively straightforward to make my way down to the road, using trods where I could find them, and just yomping through the rest. My line across the final couple of hundred metres to the road certainly wasn’t to be recommended, as I was wading not just through grass but through standing water (four days later my shoes still haven’t dried out); a line nearer to the forest would have been drier.
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