Stob Coire Creagach

Posted on November 27, 2018 by Paul

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!

Bones Not Bangs

Posted on November 11, 2018 by Paul

Another firework season is mostly behind us. It’s left Beanie a bit jumpy in that she’ll look at me for reassurance if someone slams a car door or drives over a loose manhole cover when we’re walking by a road, but for the most part I think she’s coped better than last year.

This time around Bonfire Night landed just after a weekend, with the result that local organized displays were scheduled a day early on Sunday, with many unofficial sessions still going off on the following Monday night. For us the Sunday was pretty painless thanks to two things: an extra long, extra sniffy daytime walk to tire the pups out, followed by the most absorbing treat we’ve yet found for our Beagles: meaty filled bones.

I chose Culzean as the location for our walk, parking by the sea front in Maidens and taking the pups straight across the sands and into the woods near the castle. The area is teaming with wildlife – birds, deer, rabbits and so on – so noses went into overdrive almost as soon as we started. We stuck mainly to the quieter coastal paths, getting to sample high level sniffs from the cliffs and ground-based whiffs from the beach below the castle itself. It’s easy to while away a good few hours at Culzean, and the sun had set by the time were heading back to the Beaglemobile.

As we arrived back home the fireworks were already in full flight, but I quickly carried the pups into the house where the routine of their tea-time meal – followed immediately by meaty filled bones – distracted them until most of the whizz-bangs had stopped. The next day I didn’t have time to get more filled bones and consequently things didn’t go quite so well. The Beanster spent an hour or two cowering in the bathroom wrapped in her Thundershirt, followed by an extended period on my lap, during which a little bum-hole print mysteriously appeared on my t-shirt. As usual Biggles was much less affected, but even he dived under a blankie and snuggled with Susan when things got really intense.

At some point in the future fireworks may be a thing of the past; a recent episode of The Gadget Show featured a very effective alternative display using brightly-lit drones. Until then it’ll have to be extra long walks in the daytime and a copious supply of filled bones, because it seems that even in the most desperate times a tasty bone can beat a loud bang.

Falling at the Falls of Clyde

Posted on October 28, 2018 by Paul

I can’t remember quite what chain of Google searches led me to it but I landed on a page about the Falls of Clyde; one of its waterfalls is apparently so grand that it inspired JMW Turner to sketch it and got a mention in one of Wordsworth’s poems. When I discovered it’s only around an hour’s drive from our home it went straight onto my “let’s go there soon” list, and in this case “soon” was last Sunday, when the Autumn colors were at their height.

I instantly knew the visit was going to be a hit when I released Beanie and Biggles from their travel crates; Beanie dived straight onto the passenger seat and stuck her nose against the biggest air vent, while Biggles excitedly stood tall on his back legs to peer out of the side window. There was a bit of frustrated whining and woofing when I took too long to get my walking boots on, and the two of them almost exploded out of the van as we set off on our walk. We hadn’t gone far before I witnessed a memorable sight, and it had nothing to do with foliage or waterfalls: Beanie and Biggles found a large deposit of fox poo and immediately set about rolling in it. I was too slow in unpacking my camera to capture the scene, so you’ll just have to take my word that it was an almost balletic performance. Slowly and deliberately they lowered their heads and rolled their shoulders onto the ground in almost perfect sync, ending up wriggling back to back like two curly hound-colored pieces of scampi in a basket of leaves, smothered in a dressing of finest quality fox shit. It was a great start to the walk for the pups, and there was just enough breeze to keep the pong to an acceptable level.

For the most part the weather was overcast – though there were occasional periods of blue sky and sun – but with all that glorious color around us it felt like a bright day throughout. The path we were on mostly kept us above and away from the water, but at one point I spotted an unofficial trail leading down a bank and onto a rocky ledge right by a couple of smaller waterfalls. The going appeared wet and probably a bit slippy, but there were no big drops to worry about. I looked down at Beanie and Biggles as I weighed up the the pros and cons of giving it a try; Beanie looked right back at me and her face was saying “Let’s do it Dad!”. Generally when Beanie thinks a bit of off-road exploring is a good idea it turns out that it really isn’t, and oddly enough that turned out to be the case this time as well.

The initially grassy bits were fine, but once we got onto the wet rock my boots gave me almost no grip. A couple of times my feet slipped out from under me but using my arms I managed a controlled fall/slide and somehow the three of us made onto the target ledge. The view from here wasn’t as good as I’d thought it would be but I took a couple of shots anyway, and packed up ready to return to the official path.

This was when the real fun started. As I now discovered, you can do a controlled slide to get down a slippy decline, but the same trick doesn’t work in reverse. I only had to clamber up onto a small ledge to access a relatively easy flat section, but my feet just couldn’t get any grip; the eight Beagle feet next to me weren’t doing any better. I lifted Beanie & Biggles onto the ledge to take them out of the equation, figuring that I’d somehow manage to get up there myself if I went on all fours. I was wrong; that surface couldn’t have been any more slippy if it had been carved from ice and sprayed with silicone lubricant. I soon found myself sliding backwards on my knees and elbows, losing all the hard-won progress I’d made up to that point. Before I came to a stop, the leads in my hand tightened and suddenly Beanie and Biggles went skating past me. They seemed unconcerned by the experience and happily we all stopped well short of the final drop into the water, but anybody watching our performance would have had a few chuckles. I struggled back to my feet and did the one thing that experience has taught me is always a bad idea: I deliberately walked on all the green, mossy bits I could find. Wet moss-covered rock is slippy as hell, but on this occasion it was still less slippy than the bare rock. It took ages but we eventually made it back to the path, and I continued the rest of the walk with big wet patches on my knees and bum. That’s what listening to Beanie gets you!