We’d been waiting for a spell of  clear, dry weather to go up Ben A’an and on Wednesday our chance finally came.

Ben A’an is generally regarded to be one of the easier mountain walks in Scotland. Most guides estimate that the full round trip – from the car park at the base to the top, and back – takes less than two hours. It also has the advantage of being just a few minutes drive from the Byre Inn, which serves great food and is dog-friendly.

The walk may be relatively short, but it’s still not without its challenges. There are quite a few steep sections and – after heavy rainfall – plenty of mud to go through.  For once the mud was more of a problem for our Beagles than for us. Both of them ended up thigh deep in bog, barely managing to scramble free before we had to haul them out. I think Beanie’s pride was hurt by her little mishap, but Biggles didn’t have any hang ups in that department. Later when we had to cross a small stream Beanie regained some street cred by leaping across it athletically, but Biggles just stood staring at it until I picked him up and carried him across.  I can’t really imagine pack Beagles on the hunt waiting at a stream for their Dad to give them a lift, but then Biggles is more adept at nicking socks from the tumble dryer than your average pack Beagle.

Lead tangling – one of the other challenges for the Beagle walker

After a while the path emerged from the woodland and we got our first close-up view of Ben A’an.

Up the steps..

..and there it is

This seemed like  a natural place for snack before the second part of the ascent, but we had to take a little care to make sure only legal snacks were consumed by the four legged contingent.

Strictly no nibbling!

Apparently there are two paths up to the summit from this point; a well trodden tourist track, and a tougher route suitable for those seeking a challenge. If you’ve got a Beagle tied to your belt then this is a good time to shorten the lead and not let her dictate the root you take. We only found this after Beanie led us up what appeared to be a path only to get stuck when it hit a dead end.

Follow the path..

.. NOT the beagle!

After short quad-burning climb you reach a plateau with some really beautiful views.

Click to see a larger version of this panorama

Even Biggles found the view impressive

The final walk to the summit continues up to the left.

It takes hardly any time to reach the top from there, and the view that greets you looks something like this:

All that walking and all I can see is Biggles’ bum

The highest point is marked by a little pile of stones. Biggles being the kind of boy he is couldn’t resist investigating these stones, and predictably there was a little mishap.

The stone went down there Dad!

Let’s just say that Ben A’an is now a couple of inches shorter than it was before we visited. Sorry about that.

We spent a bit of time chilling out on the summit, taking in the views and eating our snacks..

Once the snacks were all finished our thoughts quite naturally turned to the need for yet more food. The Byre Inn’s lunch time runs from noon to 3pm and it was already heading for 2 o’clock so a rapid descent was called for, though we never intended it to be quite as rapid as the one we got.

Just as we started on the return journey the wind picked up slightly, presumably bringing all manner of exciting scents from the surrounding countryside. Our resident baying expert Biggles had been remarkably quiet and well behaved up to now, but these new scents pushed him over the edge  and seconds later he was grunting, squealing and aaarfing his head off.

Earlier in the morning I’d been watching a program on the Discovery channel about the new Wembley stadium. Among other things, the clever designers had found a way to make the stadium acoustically better for concerts while holding on to the atmospheric “Wembley Roar” – a sound magnifying effect caused by the reverberation of fans’ cheers during football matches. What does that have to with Ben A’an? Well, Biggles’ initial cries bounced right back at him and spurred him to even greater vocal effort. Beanie soon joined in and it sounded like we had a pack of thirty or more Beagles baying their heads off. In addition to the noise they were both pulling like crazy on their harnesses, but with our lunchtime window of opportunity in jeopardy we decided we just had to go with it, and continued downwards.

We moved fast. Very fast.  In fact I don’t think it would be possible to return from Ben A’an’s summit much quicker without the aid of a parachute and/or the need for urgent medical attention, but the reward was some really good grub at the Byre Inn and a quiet ride back home with two sleeping Beagles.

On Saturday – the last decent weather day before the rain started – we headed out to Loch Achray. Susan had stumbled on a little website with a nice 1.5 – 2hr walk around the loch and the surrounding woodland. It sounded ideal.

The walk starts out at the friendly Byre Inn (FK17 8HZ), heads up a farm road and then supposedly follows an old, sometimes narrow path through the woods to an observation point before returning along the edge of the loch. Unfortunately the site must be some years out of date because we couldn’t find any trace of the path we were meant to follow. It’s shown on current OS maps and is even present on the maps in my mobile phone, but it just ain’t there any more.

Somewhat disheartened by this early set back, we went back to the Byre Inn for an early lunch and a chance to work out our own route. I don’t know if the Inn is truly dog-friendly, but it does have outdoor seating which is good enough on a dry day. I’m happy to say that both our two hooligans were quite well behaved, though one or two cyclists did earn a stern woofing from Biggles. I didn’t really mind that – I’m not particularly fond of cyclists and if I were a little teenage Beagle boy I reckon I’d woof at ’em as well.

Anyway, by the time we’d eaten our nosh and Beanie and Biggles had dispatched their rawhide chews, we had a new route to follow. This is what we came up with, using cycle paths which are for the most part in pretty good shape:

So suitably refreshed we set off back down the farm track and rather than going left to do the woodland section, we carried straight on along the loch.

Here’s a panorama taken at the edge of the loch. You can see Ben A’an around the mid-point of the picture – that’ll be our next walk when the weather turns good again.

Click to view in a larger size

All too soon we left the loch behind us and headed into woodland, but there were still some fine views to be had:

A little more than half way through we came fairly close to the observation point advertised on the original walk. A narrow path would supposedly lead us off the cycle path and straight to it. Looking carefully around we did see what may have been the remains of an old path – it was badly overgrown, but it looked like we could follow it. And so we did.

It was not at all easy going – a machete would have come in very handy at times. After a few minutes the “path” kind of disappeared but we spotted white tape encouragingly tied to some of the trees. We pressed on, using my GPS mobile phone to ensure that we were still heading for the observation point. As we gained height the ground looked a little marshy, so I tried to stick to the drier areas. Unfortunately what looked like dry ground was actually just a thin covering of dried out dead foliage. My foot went straight through it and I ended up knee deep in brown bog water. It was surprisingly challenging to extract myself from this predicament and of course Biggles & Beanie – who’d both been quite happy to pull on their harnesses up to this point – now decided not to pull at all.

We went on a little further, clambering over trees and splashing through more brown foot spas before we called it quits and turned back. It had been a struggle to get to this point but the return journey was twice as hard. There was no path to follow, no footsteps to retrace and the ground was treacherous. After what seemed like an age we caught site of another white tape marker and knew we were close to the main path. One big obstacle stood in our way – a huge fallen tree. I wanted to go over it, while Susan and our two intrepid explorers favored a gap underneath it. The thing is, while Beagles can crawl under almost anything by spreading their legs and crawling on their bellies (I call this the “Spider-Beagle” technique), humans.. can’t. Susan got most of the way under the tree only to be stopped by the very thing that enables our species to walk erect while other primates just plod along on all fours: her arse. It took nearly two minutes of wriggling before she was free. As for me, well I did make it over the tree but there were a few close calls as I nearly impaled my own rear end on broken branches. It was only my determination not to have to explain how half a tree got stuck up my rectum to some spotty A&E doctor that gave me the strength to prevail.

Eventually we made it back to the main path and trudged back to the Byre Inn. The walk should have taken less than 2 hours, but our little excursion easily added another hour onto that.

Heading back.. at last!

Our feet were still soaking wet and we were both sweaty and smelling of bog water, but there was no way were going home until we’d had a sit down and another helping of quality pub grub.

The Byre Inn from the Beagle perspective

Next time if the weather is kind we’ll go up nearby Ben A’an, and I’ll just accept that somehow, somewhere along the walk my feet will end up drenched in bog water. It’s happened every time so far, and it’ll happen again.

We’ve been to Muirshiel Park a few times now, and to be honest the regular signposted walks have become a little too familiar. That’s why on Saturday we decided to be a bit more adventurous and head up to the Hill of Stake which lies deeper inside the park. Now the last time we went off the beaten path at Muirshiel we ended up with soaking wet feet which kind of dampened my enthusiasm, but with so much hot, dry weather recently I was confident that wouldn’t happen this time.

On arrival at the park Susan went into the visitor center to get directions while I got our dynamic duo into their harnesses and hooked them up to our cani-cross belts. When Susan joined us, she was carrying a map of the park which cost seven quid and dire warnings from the staff about how easy would be to get lost if the weather turned. It reminded me of a sketch in the Fast Show, except there was no mention of an owl. Anyway we didn’t need the map, or a compass or any other kind of orienteering gear because the mobile phone I got for Beanie & Biggles’ Retrieva tracking collars has GPS and a map that covers the whole park.

The first part of the route to the Hill of Stake follows the old mine track. It’s very easy going, but when you reach the site of the mine itself you have to head off the path into fields of heather, moss, reeds and whispy white topped wild flowers that may or may not be called “bog weed”. Susan warned that we should steer clear of the aforementioned bog weed, just in case there were still some marshy bits. We carefully worked our way round the weedy patches.. and promptly received soaking wet brown feet as our shoes submerged into a particularly sodden part of the field. It seems even a prolonged heatwave can’t dry out Muirshiel park.

Marshland doesn’t just attract unwary tourists with non-waterproof footwear, it also attracts insects. At one point we stopped for a drink and were beset by some really annoying little winged beasties. Our little tailed beasties did their level best to eat ’em, but we still got some really itchy bites..

Biggles and Beanie guard each others backs

Beanie makes a valiant attempt to snack on our attackers

She nails a few, but they just keep calling in more reinforcements

Eventually we reached the Hill of Stake itself. Its base is surrounded by prickly thistles but once you’ve got through that, you’ve got a very short, easy climb to the top. Despite it’s modest height, the Hill of Stake has a very grand looking summit marker, and some fantastic views of the countryside. Here are a couple of panorama shots taken right at the summit – click on each one to see a larger version!

And some more shots..

The next day we went for a much shorter, supposedly less hazardous walk in one of our local parks. As we passed one of the areas that had ben turned into a kind of adventure playground for kids, we noticed that Beanie had got hold of something very, very unsavory: a pair of heavily soiled knickers. Just to put you in the picture, I’m not talking about a severe “skid mark” here – this was the whole damned tyre plus half the rear end of the car, so to speak. Presumably the adventure playground had been a bit too much of an adventure for some poor soul. Anyway, our lovely little princess had this disgusting thing in her mouth and we really wanted to get it off her, and so did Biggles, albeit for different reasons. All the “leave” and “drop” training we’d been doing went out of the window. I managed to trap part of it under my foot, while Susan hauled on Beanie’s lead to pull her away. It took a lot of effort, but eventually we succeeded.

So on Saturday we ran the risk of being stuck down a hole, in the fog, in the middle of the night, with an owl, while the next day we played probably the most disgusting tug of war ever seen in Glasgow. Given the choice, I’d say the owl would win every time.