Munros & midgies

Cruach Ardrain, 21 June 08
Near Crianlarich 5 of us went on a hill walk up Cruach Ardrain (one translation from the Gaelic is ‘Stack of the High Part’- catchy, eh?) which is one of the mountains that stand in Glen Falloch - a few of us have been doing quite a few walks recently and are getting quite fit but we had a newbie with us who really struggled up the first slope meaning it took us much longer than expected with lots of stops. It was a long walk anyway with lots of up and downs and very steep sections - 12 miles of walking! It took us 5 ½ hours.

Lunch stop - Romain, Cath, Roser & me

There were beautiful wild flowers including pink and white spotted orchids, butterflies, and drifts of stems with soft cotton wool-like seeds. There were lots of scruffy, pooey sheep and lambs very near the summits where it was cold and windy– they seemed a bit pissed off to see us and baahed at us loudly for ages! We saw a couple of dead sheep on way up - poor things.

Lunch with the midgies & mountains for miles around

There were paths on the mountains worn by humans and sheep which also use the paths. I was a bit surprised that there were actually paths to follow on the mountains but some routes are so popular that it’s fairly easy to follow the way without a map (as long as it’s not cloudy/ rainy when you could fall off the mountain).

When we stopped for lunch we were hassled by insects- I wasn’t sure if they were midgies or not as they were very small, looked innocuous and it’s been a long time since I’ve been attacked by any (we got mozzies down south!). The next day I knew for sure by the itchy, swollen lumps on my arms, legs, ears, and neck that, yes, they were definitely midgies! 3 day’s later they were still driving me mad itching (even woke me up in the night) and now I have scars!

Top of the world!

The summit, called Stob Garbh is 959 m (3146 ft) high (I don’t quite understand why a mountain has a different name for its summit…). As it’s over 3000ft it’s classified as a ‘Munro’ named after Sir Hugh Munro who was the Scottish mountaineer who created a list of mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet (914.4 metres). A popular activity among some (sad) hill walkers is ‘Munro bagging’ basically climbing as many munros as you can just to say you’ve done it!

The obligatory summit shot - left to right Roser, me, Toni & Cath

White cotton flower seed-heads in foreground & Toni & Romain descending

When I got down the mountain my legs were like jelly and were trembling when I stretched them – later my thighs felt bruised after such a hard climb.

The weather was good until we got back to the car when it finally rained. On the return journey we stopped off in the Lade Inn (har, har) by Callander for real ale – I’d never been before and it was really nice - one of the Spanish guys knew of it. I didn’t get home till 8.45 pm - Michael had been worried as had not expecting it to be such a late one and I’d had no phone reception all day.