The title of this post immediately creates the expectation that a bit of Beagle nibbling/clawing has permanently deflated a previously inflated bed. I should therefore state clearly at the outset that this has not in fact occurred, and bursting an inflatable bed cannot (yet) be added to Mr Biggles’ ever-growing list of misdemeanors. Nevertheless, his Biggleship does feature prominently in this latest tale of Beagle-induced hardship, as does an inflatable bed, so the title is still justified.

The story begins pretty much where the last one left off: thanks to a visit from Susan’s brother, we’d found a new Beagle-friendly route up GoatFell mountain on the Isle of Arran, and I was eager to have Beanie & Biggles try it out. Well, as it happened Ayrshire was treated to a brief spell of amazing weather earlier in the week and we hopped back onto the ferry to Arran.

The plan was this: test out the first part of the walk with Beanie & Biggles, head back down to wild-camp overnight by the car, then get up super-early to do the whole thing, getting a sunrise on the top of Goatfell. Given that our most recent wild camping adventure on Ben Narnain had gone rather well, I had high hopes for this one. What’s more, the fact that we were camping by the car allowed us to have a level of comfort in our tent that we hadn’t experienced before: proper pillows, thick sleeping bags and best of all, an inflatable double bed to lie on. Yep, this was going to be a good one!

The try-out walk on the first day went very well. It was sunny but not too warm, as the mountain itself gave us shade during the steepest parts of the climb, and there was plentiful running water to slake Beagle thirsts and cool furry feet. The only slight negative was the midges; we hadn’t seen much of them this summer, and now it became clear why: they’d all migrated to Arran. Even during the briefest of stops, clouds of the little buggers would quickly form around the four of us. Liberal applications of Deet cream mostly prevented bites, but still it wasn’t pleasant having hundreds of them landing on us and crawling around. Of course there couldn’t be any protection for the Beagles, but if Beanie & Biggles were getting bitten by the flying pests, they didn’t show it.

Susan and the Beagles on the ridge between neighboring peaks Goatfell and “Mullach Buidhe” (try saying that after a beer! in fact try saying that even without a beer..)

Despite the midges, or possibly because of them (they kept the recovery stops short), we reached the ridge between Goatfell and Mullach Buidhe just as “golden hour” was beginning. This was as far as we were going to go on this first day, and the views were spectacular; easily the equal of what we’d seen during our first over-nighter on this amazing mountain.

That’s Susan and the dynamic duo perched on the mound to the right

A slight breeze brought a welcome break from the midges, but they were replaced by a group of deer, further up the ridge and close to the summit. Nothing winds up Beanie & Biggles like deer, and Goatfell suddenly became very noisy. In years gone by a single whiff of Bambi would have caused Biggles’ aaarrf! button to stick in the “on” position for hours at a time, but now, at nearly seven years of age and truly a man of the world, he managed to calm down in as little as ten minutes. And did I mention that he managed to get up and down all the steps on the ferry without a carry? What a guy! What a Beagle!

So Mum.. about those biccies in your pocket.. er.. can we have ’em?

Almost the last of the sun on Goatfell that day, and my favorite shot..

We hung around for sunset, then packed up and made best possible speed back to the car. After all, the sooner we could get back down and pitch the tent, the more sleep we could have before our pre-sunrise sortie, and I was confident I’d have no problem falling asleep on that uber-comfortable bed.

Even the after-glow is pretty

As the light failed the midges went into hiding, and by the time we reached the car we knew our over-nighter would be mostly insect free. I popped Beanie & Biggles into their crates in the car while I hunted through big the pile of bedding, spare clothing and shoes to get their bowls. When I found them, two little bags were sitting in them: two tea-time servings of kibble, already measured out and ready for serving. Such was the level of preparation for this little adventure! Susan erected the tent and opened out the inflatable bed inside, while I hooked up our air pump to the car’s power socket. Within two minutes the bed was fully inflated and securely stoppered, and all that stood between me and a sound sleep was to give the pups a last drink and an opportunity to pee. What could possibly go wrong now?

Well, as I’ve already noted, one of the things that didn’t go wrong was a sudden, Beagle-induced deflation of our bed. In fact the bed didn’t deflate at all, which in a strange way was a pity, because in its inflated state the bed was slightly too big for out tent and would not allow the entrance flap to be zipped fully closed. What kind of idiots plan wild-camping trip an island with a bed that doesn’t fit their tent? Er, that would be us.

Ordinarily a tent that won’t close wouldn’t be that big a deal (especially when insects aren’t an issue) but when you’ve got two furry Houdini apprentices in the tent with you, it becomes a very big deal indeed. We didn’t want to leave their leads attached to their collars in case they somehow throttled themselves in the night. Equally, I wasn’t happy about putting the two of them in their crates in the car because it could get pretty cold overnight, and in any case the car was just a little too far away from our tent for comfort. So instead we tried to get Beanie & Biggles settled at out feet, and Susan did her best to block the unzipped part of the entrance with her pillow and her head. Now all we had to do was fall asleep, but not so deeply that an escape attempt would go unnoticed. Needless to say not much sleep happened that night. The fear of waking up and being one Beagle short would have been enough to deny any meaningful amount of shut-eye in itself, but Mr Biggles and to a lesser extent The Beanster both contributed to the problem.

At first he settled down quite well, but it wasn’t long before he began to fidget. He tried curling up behind my knees and resting his chin on my calf. That worked for a couple of minutes, but then it just wasn’t right. Treading carefully over my legs in the way that Biggles doesn’t, he tried snuggling into my tummy. That didn’t feel right either, so he tried to sleep on my head. This of course was much too close to the exit flap so I turned on to my back and hauled him down between my legs and back towards my feet. He stayed there for a few minutes before trampling my testicles and curling up in the space between Susan and myself, taking the covers with him. After a quite a struggle I managed to tug them free and for a brief moment, all was well. Then he started panting rapidly. I feared at first that he was about to be sick, but as it turned it he was just too warm. It wasn’t easy to uncover him without uncovering myself and Susan, but somehow I managed it, and finally there was the potential for a restful period of almost-sleep.

It was around this time that Beanie – who we often call “Beanie-pops” – lived up to her nickname and started popping. You see when she’s dreaming, her virtual woofs come out as high pitched popping noises. This dragged me back to full consciousness, but at least it put a smile on my face, because no matter how sleep-deprived you are, it’s quite cute. But then suddenly the pops turned into full-on, wide-awake, red-alert woofing, and Biggles joined her, even though he had no idea what she was woofing at. Come to think of it, I had no idea what Beanie was woofing at either, but clearly there was some noise outside the tent that had triggered her panic button. Susan and I grabbed their collars to keep them from bursting out of the tent, and held on grimly until the disturbance passed. Eventually peace was once again restored, but then Biggles started fidgeting again.  His fidgeting was more pronounced this time, and pretty soon it was accompanied by whining. The part of my brain that interprets Biggleisms was translating this as “pee – need pee now”, so I fumbled around for his lead, attached it, and handed it to Susan. Thanks to our over-sized bed there was no need to unzip the tent flap; Biggles just scrambled straight over Susan’s head, out through the open gap and began relieving himself while Susan held onto his lead.

Now Biggles has done some really, really big widdles in his time, but this was a new personal best. It just didn’t seem possible that so much pee could actually have been stored inside him. I mean even if you were to construct a life size replica of Biggles without any bones or internal organs and fill it completely with pee, you still wouldn’t have as much as he emptied out in that single session. And being Biggles, he made sure that a substantial portion of it was aimed at the tent. Next time you’re looking at the “hydrostatic head” rating of a tent, just remember it only covers rainwater, not Beagle pee.

By the time morning arrived, we’d abandoned any thoughts of another trip up the mountain. Instead we drove round to Lamlash bay to get a look at Holy Isle, a little island off the southern end of Arran.

This killed just enough time until the next ferry back to the mainland. So, we never got to view the sunrise from the summit of Goatfell, but given that the morning was pretty cloudy I doubt we’d have seen anything to rival the previous sunset.

Even boys who’ve kept us awake all night get a biccie on the ferry home.

Them’s the rules!

Our intrepid Beagles can now add Ben Narnain to the list of Scottish mountains they’ve conquered. In fact they can add it twice, because we went up it twice in the same week.

The first ascent was done very early in the morning in the hope of reaching the top in time for sunrise. We succeeded, in fact we over-achieved, arriving a good hour ahead of the sun. Ordinarily this would be a good thing but on this particular morning the weather was intent on misbehaving. While the rest of the UK was enjoying a heatwave, Scotland was having unseasonably chilly temperatures. On the summit this was coupled with a strong, bitingly cold wind (a gentle breeze had been forecast) and clouds that couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be above us or below us. We spent most of our time covered by a cold wet mist which parted only briefly to reveal tantalizing glimpses of the surrounding landscape. I was reasonably confident that once the sun appeared it would burn off most of the cloud, but an hour was an awfully long time to wait, especially for Beanie.

We are NOT amused Dad. Not one little bit.

As you can see I’d brought the doggy coats with me this time, so there was no need to give up my balaclava, but still the Beanster was shivering. Even Biggles was feeling the cold; he insisted on sitting on my camera bag to insulate his little furry bum from the rock. To kill some time I took them for walks round the large summit plateau, and we lasted out until sunrise. We saw the sun briefly, but then cloud covered everything again and the temperature dropped still further, leaving us no choice but to pack-up and head back down. This proved much more challenging than expected because I mistook a sheep/deer track for the path, and our descent became more of a scramble than a walk.

About half way down a group of sheep turned up – possibly the same buggers that had made the decoy path in the first place – and ignited Biggles’ prey drive. He immediately broke into his warbling, grunting and aarfing routine, but the sheep just stood and stared at him, apparently unimpressed and unafraid. Ordinarily I feel sympathy for my boy’s bruised ego when this kind of thing happens; he tries so hard to put on a manly baying voice but he always falls short (imagine Michael Jackson trying to do a Darth Vader impression and you’ll get the general idea). On this occasion however I was just glad that the sheep were standing their ground; as long as they did so, neither of my two hounds would start pulling, and I really didn’t need any pulling at this point. Of course this was the very moment that Beanie decided to show Biggles how it should be done. She was the runt of her litter, she only weighs 11.5kg, yet she has the loudest, most blood curdling baying voice of any hound I’ve heard. She turned the volume up to eleven, the sheep ran for their lives, and now I had two frenzied four-legged pulling machines to steer down the steep, slippery slope of Ben Narnain. By the time we reached the base of the mountain, the sun had burned away all the cloud and the wind had dropped. It was a beautiful warm day, but we were all too knackered  and too long without sleep to do anything with it.

Obviously we couldn’t leave it at that, so later in the week we made a second visit to Ben Narnain. This time we had some of the heatwave that the south had enjoyed, and we went up during the day, well-rested and armed with a tent for an overnight stay.

This time everything went right. It was warm, there was scarcely a cloud in sight, and there still was just enough breeze to keep the midges away. We got to the summit in plenty of time for sunset, and found a great place to pitch our tent. And here’s the really amazing thing: we human types actually got a decent sleep in the tent. All previous Beagle-in-tent experiences were best regarded as sleep-deprivation experiments, but not this time. There were no midnight raid attempts on the rucksack, no repeated migration from one sleeping bag to the other, and no digging of claws into human flesh to steal more than one’s fair share of the limited space. Biggles curled up by Susan’s feet, and Beanie snuggled into my stomach like a little furry hot water bottle.

Of course that’s not to say there wasn’t an escape attempt first thing in the morning..

But Susan got a firm hold on their collars, thus avoiding an unplanned extra night on the mountain

So Ben Narnain has been done, but there are so many great views up there I’m sure we’ll climb it again next year. I think it’s actually replaced The Cobbler as my favorite hill!

Having finished at Ardnamurchan lighthouse we got back on the road and drove round to the start point of the main route up Ben Hiant – a hill that’s modest in height but big on views. We wanted to be up at the top in plenty of time for sunrise, but given that it was only mid-April we still had a good few hours to kill. Out came three sleeping bags – one each for me and Susan, and one to drape over the pups’ car crates – and we did our best to fall asleep in the car. For once we did in fact nod off a bit. Obviously car seats don’t make great beds and it was cold even with the sleeping bags, but we did get just enough shut-eye to recharge our batteries for the walk.

The outline of the hill above us, with a galaxy full of stars on display

I think Beanie & Biggles got some zzzzs too; I heard gentle snoring coming from behind my seat a few times. On the other hand I also heard someone telling off their bed quite vigorously. Regardless, they both seemed extremely perky the instant we got them out of their crates and into their harnesses.

The ascent was mostly gentle, with a few short but very steep sections, but once again I found myself trudging through bog. My main hillwalking shoes were still drying out in the caravan, so I was wearing my backup pair which have even less water resistance. It didn’t take much squelching through the mud and swampy vegetation before my feet were soaking wet. As the walk progressed the pups became very animated and Biggles had a grunting, squealing and baying session, but it wasn’t until we made it to the base of the final climb that I saw confirmation that we had company: a pair of green, glowing eyes was looking down at us from the summit. I stopped and stared at them, they stared back, and then a second pair of peepers came into view. I have to say it was a little spooky, especially as I couldn’t make out what manner of creature they belonged to. I guessed from Biggles’ moderate level of noise production that we were probably in the presence of sheep; conspicuous silence I now knew was indicative of a giant highland cow, while manic baying is usually reserved deer. A little more height confirmed the sheep theory, but they’d sensibly decided to move on by the time we reached their position.

We camped out by the summit pillar with more than hour to go before sunrise. There were no decent shots to be taken and it was really chilly, so Susan extracted a sleeping bag from her rucksack and opened it out to make a windbreak for the two of us. Never one to miss out on a chance for snuggle, Biggles soon clambered under the sleeping bag and squeezed in between us. I tried to get Beanie to join us too, but she wasn’t interested. All her attention was focused on some point off in the distance. I’m not sure if she was spying on a sheep or if she was studying the lights from a nearby hamlet, but when sunrise came she was still intently watching the same spot.

Beanie keeps her silent, shivery vigil..

..completely missing the beautiful sunrise.

Only once it was properly daylight was she finally free to take an interest in the other sniffs and views that were on offer

Even in the full sun it was way too cold to stay up there any longer, so we packed up and trudged back through seemingly never-ending bog to our car.

Post-hillwalk breakfast, and another pair of water-logged shoes..

Back at the car Beanie and Biggles had their full, normal breakfast while we shared half a packet of leftover cashew nuts. As I exchanged my soaking wet shoes for my very last dry pair, we decided to make a little stop off at one of the beaches on the peninsula, then try to find a cafe somewhere that would serve a more substantial breakfast to us humies. As it turned out, both of these objectives involved an improbable amount of driving on that hairy single-track road.

A paddle for Susan & the pups on the beautiful beach at Sanna, with the lighthouse in the background.

Somehow I managed to keep my feet dry on the beach, but as we walked towards some interesting rocks a little further north we had to squelch through yet another bog and suddenly my final pair of shoes weren’t dry anymore.

The next objective was to find a cafe. Susan had visited Ardnamurchan about thirty years earlier and back then it’d had almost nothing but a single shop that sold two-day old newspapers and vegetables that were still covered in soil. Surely during all that time things had improved? Absolutely!  As the miles stacked up we passed no less than three shops, and about twenty minutes out from the ferry terminal we finally found somewhere serving breakfast. The food was great, but it’s worth noting that payment was by cash only; that newfangled credit card thing hasn’t quite made it to Ardnamurchan yet. Maybe in another 30 years?

Part 1: http://www.fourleggedpal.com/2015/04/23/a-tale-of-ice-and-fire-and-bogs-part1/
Part 2: http://www.fourleggedpal.com/2015/04/24/a-tale-of-ice-and-fire-and-bogs-part2/
Part 4: http://www.fourleggedpal.com/2015/04/26/a-tale-of-ice-and-fire-and-bogs-part4/
Part 5: http://www.fourleggedpal.com/2015/04/26/a-tale-of-ice-and-fire-and-bogs-part5/