A tale of ice and fire. And bogs. Part#3

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Paul

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/

A tale of ice and fire. And bogs. Part#2

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Paul

The next day on the campsite got off to a leisurely start. I let the hooligans out of their travel crates and while Beanie went for a snuggle with Susan, I got a head-end cuddle with The Bigglet. Then came breakfast, a jump onto the worktop, a stay in the naughty room, and a short local walk to see Inchree Falls. Whenever a campsite boasts about local attractions such as a waterfall I always expect it to be a bit of a let-down, but that wasn’t the case here. The light wasn’t quite right to let me do it justice, but trust me: Inchree Falls is well worth seeing.

If you’re prepared to do a bit of scrambling you can get to the bottom without breaking anything!

Soon it was time for lunch, another visit to la chambre de naughtie for Beanie, and whole lot of preparation for our first proper adventure of the holiday: a ride on the ferry and an overnight stay at Ardnamurchan!

Although Ardnamurchan is very much part of the mainland, it’s so remote that little inland Corran ferry is by far the quickest and cheapest way to get there.

The Corran ferry is quite unlike any other I’ve encountered. Once it’s in motion, it crosses from one side to the other in about two minutes. There’s no time to get out of your car and stroll about the deck, let alone pay a visit to the galley for an exorbitantly priced coffee. Nope, you queue a bit, you drive or walk on and a few minutes later you’re on the other side, having saved more than an hour on the road. Despite this huge saving there’s still a lot of driving ahead to reach Ardnamurchan. There’s pretty much just one road along this remote piece of western Scotland, and it’s mostly a winding narrow single track with a nominal speed limit of 60mph. Piloting the car through all the twists, turns and blind summits is like playing a really intense video game, except that you don’t get any spare lives if you mess up. It’s made even worse by the locals who (presumably) know the road so well that they can go barreling along at 60 leaving the tourists to stop appropriately at passing places in the hope of avoiding a head-on collision.

It took about 90 minutes of sweating, breath-holding and underwear soiling to reach Ardnamurchan point, but somehow we made it. Following the signs to the lighthouse, we turned up an even narrower road and encountered the largest Highland cow I’ve ever seen. Another driver who was coming down the road in the opposite direction reached it first. He was in a fairly tall vehicle and I’m not exaggerating (much) when I say that the cow’s spine was nearly level with the roof. Sensibly avoiding using his horn, the driver steered around the mutant at slower-than-parking speed. Just as the passenger side window drew alongside the back of the creature’s head it turned to have a really good look at the puny human inside. From the look on the driver’s face, I’d say his underpants were now in a worse state than mine. But he’d made it past the monster and now it was our turn, but unlike him we had a pair of Beagles in the back.

If there’s one thing you can count on with Beanie and Biggles (especially Biggles), it’s that they’ll always open their gobs at the worst possible moment. If I nip behind a bush during a run to discretely answer nature’s call, there’ll be a baying frenzy. If we’re leaving a campsite in the dead of night for a sunrise hillwalk – desperately trying not to wake anybody – they’ll kick off for sure. This time however, the two of them both kept very, very quiet. Perhaps they realised that even the car wouldn’t give them enough protection if this ginger behemoth decided to “have a go”. People say Beagles are stupid dogs, but they’re not that stupid.

Safely past the walking roadblock, we got to enjoy the lighthouse in all its glory, and for the time we were there Beanie and Biggles could legitimately claim to be the two most westerly doggies on the entire British mainland.

Part 1: http://www.fourleggedpal.com/2015/04/23/a-tale-of-ice-and-fire-and-bogs-part1/
Part 3: http://www.fourleggedpal.com/2015/04/25/a-tale-of-ice-and-fire-and-bogs-part3/
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/

A tale of ice and fire. And bogs. Part#1

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Paul

If you live in Scotland and a bit of good weather comes your way you’d better make the most of it, because you never know how long it’ll last. With that in mind, we packed up the caravan and towed it up the Bunree campsite, just outside of Onich. This seemed like a good base for day trips to old favorite Glencoe, but also to new locations such as Ardnamurchan and Appin.

On arrival I opened up the rear of the car so that our furry crate-dwellers sample the air. I didn’t let them out yet though; I didn’t want them to get in the way while Susan and I wrestled with the awning. And “wrestled” is definitely the right word to use, because a fairly spirited wind was blowing and the hard-standing area was not doing a very good job of holding onto the awning pegs. Inevitably we started swearing at the awning, at the pegs, at the wind, and each other, and Biggles joined us by swearing at anyone and anything he could see moving on the campsite. When we’d finally won “The Battle of The Awning” I freed Beanie & Biggles from their car crates for a quick toilet walk. They were so desperate to escape you’d think they’d been locked away in there for days, not three hours, but somehow I held onto them long enough to attach their leads, and we went to make our first deposits in the Bunree poo bank and sniff and pee on everything that needed sniffing and peeing on. Which was quite a lot of things, as it turned out.

Once back at the caravan we saw the first hint of the kind of Beagle misbehavior that would run through the entire holiday. The moment Susan set up our George Foreman-type grill on the work top, Beanie was right up there with it. On previous holidays she’s been up there during unguarded moments to lick plates and drink from discarded cups – you know, typical Beagle stuff. Now however she was boldly going where no Beagle should even when our full attention was on her, and worst of all, she was at risk of burning herself or worse. We tried shouting at her (instinct more than thought drove that response) but of course it had no effect because Beanie is 100% shout-proof. We tried the “leave it!” plus pointy finger technique which worked, but only for as long as the finger was in position. I guess the smells coming from that grill were just too good, so in desperation we tried a more powerful control method: exclusion. I picked Beanie up off the worktop once more, dragged her over to the washroom area of the caravan and closed the door, sealing her in there for a good few minutes. When I released her she seemed duly chastened for nearly a whole second, then leaped straight back up on the worktop. Little bugger! Three repetitions later and the washroom had acquired a new name: “the naughty room”, but Beanie genuinely seemed to have learned her lesson. Content that we’d finally got an obedience technique that worked, I headed off on a solo photography trip up a Glencoe mountain called Garbh Bheinn, leaving Susan to give the pups a longer walk round the campsite then chill out with them in the caravan for a few hours.

My guide for the walk came from the excellent WalkHighlands site. It mentioned that the start of the walk would be quite boggy, giving it a “bog factor” rating of three out of five. Half an hour into the walk and barely able to keep the ground from sucking the shoes off my feet, I felt that an urgent re-assessment of the bog factor rating was required. Six out of five? Yep that sounded about right to me. I don’t mind wet feet on a run, but I hate it on a walk and right now my feet were soaking. Still, the guide promised drier conditions and great views higher up, so I just kept plugging away. The initially sunny conditions gave way to heavy grey cloud, then to rain, then to a hail storm, and then to sun, and back round again. My waterproof jacket was on and off more times than a blanket on a waggy Beagle girl’s bum.

The view back towards Loch Leven and The Pap of Glencoe, caught in a transition between hail, rain and sun

Just as the weather kept changing its mind, the walk itself kept offering me what looked like a summit, only to reveal yet another one as I got higher. Eventually I reached a point just below the true summit (as confirmed by the gps app on my phone) that had great photographic potential, and I decided to camp out there and wait for sunset rather than pressing on to the top. I didn’t fancy the final scrambly bit over a ton of loose scree, and what’s more I’d seen plenty of good shots from part of the way up, but none from the summit itself. A couple of hail and horizontal rain phases came and went before I finally got these shots, maybe half an hour before sunset..

Although it’s not so pleasant to be out in, this dramatic, changeable weather and rugged scenery is what the highlands are all about..

The walk had certainly delivered on it’s promised views, but now my still soaking feet were turning to blocks of ice from being stationary in high wind for too long. I packed up and headed back down as quickly as I could, but by the time I reached the really boggy section I needed my head torch. That final trudge back through the bog seemed to take forever in the dark, and if it was possible, my feet actually got even wetter.

Back at the campsite I showered and put on dry footwear, then returned to the caravan hoping to hear a tale of peace and relaxation. Unfortunately I was greeted by a somewhat tired and stressed Susan, who revealed that a certain little Miss had made numerous visits both to the worktop and The Naughty Room. Hmm.. maybe the exclusion technique wasn’t proving so effective against The Beanster after all..

I don’t mean to be naughty, Dad. It just sort of happens..

Part 2: http://www.fourleggedpal.com/2015/04/24/a-tale-of-ice-and-fire-and-bogs-part2/
Part 3: http://www.fourleggedpal.com/2015/04/25/a-tale-of-ice-and-fire-and-bogs-part3/
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/