What do you buy for a little girl that has everything? It was Beanie’s birthday and aside from a squeaky copy of the ‘Dogmopolitan’ (on sale for 70p in Tesco) we couldn’t think of anything she might like that she hasn’t already got. At four she’s a bit old for birthday parties so we decided upon a birthday camping trip to the West Highlands.

We set off at the crack of dawn on Thursday morning and got settled in with just enough time left for a walk up the Pap of Glencoe before darkness fell. At just 742 metres high the Pap of Glencoe isn’t a particularly big mountain but its steep and distinctive cone-shaped summit is a real landmark in the area around Ballachulish.

We’d read that the final ascent is very rocky and scrambly – which makes for a very tricky descent when attached to our Beagles. We decided to invest in a pair of cheap walking poles to see if they’d help any. I found them to be a real hindrance on the way up – they made me feel (and look) like an OAP. I can’t comment on how helpful they might be on the way back down as the boggy slopes of the mountain had swallowed the bottom section of both poles before we reached the summit leaving me with two useless stumps.

We approached the summit at about 5.00pm leaving us just an hour and a half to enjoy the views then make our way back down before dark. As I scrambled up the final few feet it occurred to me that Beanie’s line was much longer than Biggles’ – how could that be? She was now quite a distance from me. Then it dawned on me – her lead had somehow unclipped and my wayward little Beagle girl was loose on a mountain. I forced down the sheer panic building inside me and called out a cheerie “Beanie – here!”. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when my little angel turned her head, wagged her tail and trotted over to me. Clearly she hadn’t realized she was loose – if she had, I think she’d have legged it in search of the bellowing stag on the neighboring mountain and we’d have been shivering at the top of the mountain in pitch darkness waiting for her to get bored and come back to us!

Beanie safely back on lead. The views are so spectacular in all directions that we couldn’t agree on what way to look!

We got back to the car just as darkness fell.