Duncan & Hermione's holiday

Itinerary & Film

Our Journey North

We travelled by train from Brighton to Inverness off peak open return tickets (which cost us £148 each). In Inverness we collected a hire car (£240 for a Nissan Micra for the fortnight) and drove to Achmelvich Youth Hostel (map). We've stayed here before and knew what to expect. It's a hostel set back in time. If only it were commercially feasible to have all the Scottish hostels as rustic.

Suilven

The next day was forecast to be the best weather for a week. We parked the car a short distance from the Southern end of Lochinver and set off to get to the top of Suilven (map). Duncan has previously been on top of Suilven but Hermione has previously only got as far as the empty gate in the dry stone wall near the bealach. The building of that dry stone wall puts other great monuments into perspective! Why did they build it? This video was filmed whilst we stood in the gate hole in that wall:

The top of Suilven is 2,389 feet above sea level and the 'walk' covers every inch of those feet. Why measure in feet rather than metres?

Well, one foot is height gain of every step on a steep slope. One foot is as one foot does. However, one metre doesn't relate to any part of the physical experience. It is an abstraction.

Duncan's Folks: Iain and Fiona

Next, we drove down to Rhue, near Ullapool, to spend a few days with Duncan's folks, Iain and Fiona. We knew that they would want to go walking up something special...

Stac Pollaidh

This is even lower than Suilven but we still didn't get to the top. Duncan has never been to the actual top but this time we didn't climb onto the ridge proper, again because of the wind. Stac Pollaidh is hardly a mountain at all, at only 2,008 feet, but it has a monumental character and stands in great company, with Cul Beag, Cul Mor and Suilven its immediate neighbours to the North. (Click here for a map of Stac Pollaidh.)

Standing Stone

This stands in an unnamed glen behind Ullapool:

Stone Seat

This is a naturally occurring stone seat - although it didn't occur naturally in a convenient location!

Ben Cruachan

After the Easter weekend, we travelled to the improbably named Bridge of Awe in the Brander Pass. From there, we decided to take on our highest mountain so far (on this trip): Ben Cruachan (3,694 feet above sea level, which was more or less where we started). (Click here for map of mountain.)We made a number of elementary mistakes, chief of which was inadequate route planning, which caused us to get into difficulties near the top on melting snow fields, barely clinging to the more precipitous slopes, in the late afternoon.

Needless to say, these sort of situations do not lend themselves to getting the cameras out. We got within, literally, a few feet of the very top and a safer way down when we were defeated by the conditions. We descended by a steep and untested route and finally came off the mountain in the dark. We called our hotel to tell them that we were safe. To our shame, an RAF helicopter in Glasgow was ready to take off with a mountain rescue team a few minutes later. It was a salutory reminder that plenty of experience does not necessarily overcome basic precautions. We came quite close to spending the night at 2,000 feet (for which we were prepared). It was a collection of frightening experiences, which included clambering over a smooth rock pavement which fell away steeply with nothing to break your fall should you slop, trying to find a way off said pavement and finding myself looking over an abyss, testing melted snow and feeling it slip away down a very steep slope into oblivion, etc.., ... anyway, here's the moments we managed to record (the first few shots in this next clip are from the Bone Caves near Inchnadamph - click here for map).

That little lamb gambolled towards Duncan at the reservoir (which lies one third of the way up the mountain) after we had overcome the biggest dangers. It could tell he was more scared than it was and decided to befriend him.

Glen Coe & Glen Etive

Ben Cruachan exhausted us, physically and mentally, and we took it easy for a few days. Then we headed North again to Glen Coe (map), where we stayed at the King's House Hotel. An excellent location for mountaineers, it nestles between the Eastern end of Glen Coe and the Western end of Rannoch Moor. Glen Etive (map) runs away to the South and we explored it first. Duncan climbed Ben Starav many years ago and wanted to remind himself what it looked like from below. Unfortunately the quietitude of the Northern end of Loch Etive (the Southern end of Glen Etive) was marred by the presence of a film company which was preparing a scene for the next installment of Harry Potter. This pissed Duncan off considerably. From the end of Loch Etive we could once again see Ben Cruachan, this time from the North. Unrecovered from our traumas on its Southern slopes, it appeared more ominous than ever.

Sgurr Breac

Hermione went home after Glen Coe and Duncan went back to see his folks for one more week. Together they got to the top of one of Sgurr Breac and here's the videos to prove it.

and here's the rest of it, beginning with Iain Roy casting his eyes around the panoramic views from the top of Sgurr Breac: