We’ve just bagged our first mountain sunrise of 2019 on Beinn an Lochain in the Arrochar region.

It was our second visit to this vertically challenged but unusually steep hill; as before we drove down on the evening before our walk, parking up near Butterbridge. Initially I was keen to set up directly in the Butterbridge car park but I soon changed my mind. For one thing, the parking area has become a bit of mess due to ongoing roadworks, and for another Butterbridge itself has seemingly become a popular site for wild-camping drunks. We ended up in a quiet layby which was actually closer to the start of our walk.

Butterbridge with Beinn an Lochain behind it; sadly not quite as peaceful as it looks in this shot!

I’d planned to head off at 3am in the morning, so at 9pm I called it a night and began to prepare our bed. All I had to do was pull out the rear seat, put a bit of air in our two inflatable bed rolls and zip two sleeping bags together et voila: one bed ready for use.  How hard could it be? In practice the procedure was a bit more complicated than that because I had assistance from The Bigglet. He’s always fancied himself as a bit of a bed-making expert despite the fact that his efforts usually turn any comfortable-looking napping surface into a lumpy misshapen mess. The instant I unfurled the bed rolls and tried to blow air into them my lungs had to overcome the resistance of 13 kilos of furry Beagle boy, and when I tried to zip the sleeping bags together I had to wrestle the other end of them out of his lordship’s mouth. Beanie just watched the whole thing from the driver’s seat, making occasional sighs as if to say “uughh, boys!”. I did eventually get the bed made and got the three of us settled in it, but my slumber was punctuated by an occasional kick in the nethers when Biggles had one of his more active dreams. When 3am came it was kind of a relief.

The lasting impression from our previous walk up Beinn an Lochain was that it was a shorter climb than most other hills, but a really intense workout. Maybe last time I’d been so keen to beat the sunrise that I’d rushed the ascent, or maybe I’ve got stronger and fitter since then; either way, this time around the climb up didn’t seem nearly so bad. We hit the top with enough time to have a drink and celebratory treat then hunt out a good spot to catch the rising sun. This turned out to be just below the summit, where the steep ridge we’d just climbed was in clear view.

It’s counter-intuitive but sunrise on a mountain is usually accompanied by an abrupt if short-lived drop in temperature; this time however the hilltop just got warmer and brighter. It was absolutely glorious up there, but pockets can only hold just so many treats; all too soon we ran out of  Goodboy Chicken Hide Twisters and the furry sherpas got rowdy, forcing us to begin the descent.

It was on the way down that my glutes and quads reminded me that Beinn an Lochain is in fact still quite the workout; I was very glad when we finally made it back to the van. I dealt with the high priority items first: two bowls of Chappie and fresh chilled water. Once that had been speed-swallowed I was able to  attend to my own needs, and I had a treat in store…

Yes, I’d  seen a flavored coffee in our local Aldi store that carried my little girl’s name and I just had to try it. Unfortunately this coffee really did taste like it had been made by a Beagle. As I took my first sip I was immediately reminded of that scene in the second Austin Powers movie where our hero fills his cup from the wrong jug.

I haven’t had the heart to tell  Beanie, but the contents of her little jar has been quietly replaced with something more palatable. If your Beagle ever offers to make you a coffee, I suggest you politely decline –  unless you like your beverage to be “a bit nutty”.

What do you need if you’re going to camp overnight below a mountain then walk up it in the early hours of the morning to reach the summit by sunrise? Water, food, appropriate clothing, a powerful headtorch and maybe a small human/doggy first aid kit? That’s pretty much what I piled up by the door of our house as I made preparations for our adventure on Stob Coire Creagach. Later when I returned to the door to start transferring everything into our campervan, I saw that someone had added what they viewed as a crucial item to my pile: a sock.

The sock was contributed by Biggles of course, but I’m reasonably certain that he hadn’t actually intended us to take the sock on our adventure; rather he’d just been touring the house with his latest plundered sock in his gob, spotted my pile of stuff by the door and went to investigate, dropping his sock in the process. Nevertheless at first sight it did seem like a deliberate, well-considered act by my boy. “Hmm.. let’s see.. bag of clothes with no food inside it, cooler bag with food but zipped tightly shut, walking boots (those smell great!), warm bedding.. that’s all fine but you’ll be needing a sock to go with that Dad!”

In the end I left the sock at home, and after about 2 hours’ driving we parked up by the Butterbridge then set about trying to get some sleep before our scheduled 5am start the next day. For once I slept surprisingly well; Beanie and Biggles snuggled into me providing much needed warmth and their gentle snoring helped me to drift off, but I do remember waking a couple of times and wondering how we were all still breathing with so much Beagle and human fart contaminating the air.

The walk up the hill was short on distance but long on effort. The first 45 minutes were done in darkness, following a clear but very boggy path, but the upper part of the hill had no official path – just various trails of flattened grass left by other walkers, sheep and deer. When faced with a situation like this I pretty much set my eyes on where I want to be and start walking in a straight line towards it. Undoubtedly a more sensible approach would have been to zig-zag up the hill, trading distance for a less severe incline, but after another 45 minutes or so of seriously hard slog we popped up by the primary summit of our hill.

I say the “primary” summit, because that’s the high point of a ridge that winds its way to another summit point, this time with a trig point to mark it. I took a couple of snaps, swapped my sweat-soaked top for a thermal base layer, then spent the next few minutes struggling to get Beanie and Biggles into their warm winter coats. It was so windy up there I decided to use the elastic leg straps on the coats; these things are very unpopular with the furry types but at least they hold the rear end of the coats in place, resulting in significantly warmer bottoms.

As is often the case it got even colder when the sun first appeared above neighboring mountains, but later it did start to contribute a bit of warmth, making the journey back along the ridge and down the mountain that bit easier.

This was the first hill I’d ever done where I could see our van in the car park for pretty much the whole way down. While that did offer some comfort, it made the trudge back down that steep, slippy mountain-side seem to take forever; all I could think about was getting the waterlogged bog-filled boots off my feet and drinking a hot instant cappuccino. I reckon the pups were mostly thinking about having a chase after the deer and sheep they kept spotting, and maybe finding a way to make me fall on my bum so that they could raid my pockets and get the last of their cheese and beef chewy treats. As it turns out I did fall on my bum several times, but none of the raids were successful because the treats were tightly zipped in my jacket pocket with phone. That caused some frustration in the short term, but it made the breakfast feast back at the van all the more rewarding. Beagles may not understand the concept of delayed gratification, but they do enjoy the result when it’s forced on them!