I'd thought that Corryhabbie Hill would be my last of this trip, but thanks to Mick having had a cold, and wanting to give it an extra day before we started visiting people, we had a day spare, and it was Mick who suggested that it would be worth the 5-mile each-way detour to visit this hill.
I should have given more thought to going up it from the west to save some driving distance, but it didn't occur to me until too late, when we were already parked up at The Lecht. At a glance this looks like the obvious starting point, sitting at an altitude of 650m, whereas Chapeltown (to the NW) sits at 350m. However, as the route from The Lecht goes over various intermediate lumps, the total ascent must be similar on both routes, plus, on the route we took, for most of the distance there is at best only a trod and there are plenty of peat hags to negotiate, so I suspect that the other route may have been easier. Still, if it was easy then everybody would be doing it...
To my surprise, Mick volunteered to come up this one with me, even after I'd said I didn't think it would be his cup of tea. To my greater surprise, he really enjoyed it too. I think we can safely say that he was over his cold!
Initially following a track up from the ski centre, we then took to the fence line, until that veered off, whereupon we continued along the notional boundary line. Just before the final dip on the ridge, a path suddenly appeared in front of us (due to a change in the terrain having allowed one to appear just from the passage of feet; it wasn't an engineered one) and it was an easy final stroll up to the top. From there I could point out to Mick the hills I'd been up the previous day.
We didn't vary the route much on the way back, except that I nipped up to Spot Height 800 (the next little lump S of Carn Mor), then as we left Spot Height 747, we couldn't see any point in going over the final undulation, when we could take a more direct line down the hillside to the car park.
It was as we left the top of Carn Liath that the only shower of the outing hit, with moderate violence and with a significant chill. For me, it wouldn't have been cause for a pause, as I'd opted for full Paramo again (the temperature was around 6 degrees when we'd set out), but Mick needed to scramble into his waterproofs.
Getting back to Bertie it was to find that the upper of my right shoe (Altra Timp) had ripped all along both inside and outside edge, with only 500km on them. I gave passing thought to whether it was the effect of the heathery traverse of the steep hillside on the final descent, but I've used plenty of other trail runners on identical terrain and I expect to get over 1000km from a pair of runners, even if I abuse them on pathless Marilyns. I didn't need to Google at length to find that it's a common problem with that model. I think I can safely say that I won't be getting another pair!
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