Mount Blair & Meall Mor

Monday 27 October

Start Point: Parking by county boundary on B951

End Point: Minor road by Blacklunans

Distance and Ascent: 12.4k, 600m

Weather: Sunshine and showers, mainly at the same time.

With it being such a cool morning, I opted for a beanie and (stupidly) didn’t take a peaked cap with me. I thus walked up Mount Blair (and part way down the other side) without being able to see anything ahead of me, with the autumn sun shining straight into my eyes. At the same time, I was being lightly rained on. The resultant rainbow apparently ended on Bertie-the-Motorhome’s roof, although we found no pot of gold there later in the day.

With a good grassy track the whole way to the summit, it was an easy hill. Continuing down the S side of the hill I was surprised to find a good trodden line through the heather.

A slightly cluttered summit with cairn, trig, an extensive topograph and a mast.

My plotted route had me dropping down the SE spur, but now I was in a quandary: to see where the trodden line went, or to see what the going was like if I veered off into the heather. As I was recceing this route for Ali, I phoned her to ask what she wanted me to do, as a result of which it was the trodden line that I followed. Surely such a good line, with sturdy stiles over fences, had to go somewhere?

At Glack of the Barnetts, the line petered out and as can be seen from the map snippet above, I took a rather indirect route down to the road (looking to see if there was a trodden line that was being illusive; there wasn’t).

Reaching the road and easily negotiating the wall/fence combo on the way, I went directly across the tarmac and up the forest track towards Meall Mor.  

Once I’d run out of track/ATV track, I continued alongside the wall, switching sides a couple of times in search of the best ground. Being now dry and with the effort of the hill, I divested myself of my outer layer on the way up here, although the bite of the wind at the top nearly had me putting it back on.

 I'd like to claim that the hair situation was a result of the wind

I didn’t fancy descending the grassed-over rocky ground of the wall line, so took a slightly more direct line down through the heather, which would have been hard going in ascent, but was fine with gravity on my side.

Back at the road, it was a simple 3.5k march along tarmac to my pick-up point – even that wasn’t a bad walk, with various points of interest along the way (if you’re interested in things like decaying boathouses, abandoned hotels and ‘Grand Design’ type houses).