Sgorr nam Fiannaidh

Perhaps three girls and a small Corsa wasn’t the most ideal combination for a camping trip to the North of Scotland. Nevertheless, after purging Karen’s jumpers and Rosie’s shoes we managed to fit everything in. I of course packed super light and efficient!

We had all managed to swing a day off on the Friday so decided to head up to Glencoe to catch up with each other and hopefully do some walking in the sunshine. On the way up Karen managed to get a couple of nice pictures of the scenery including this one of the Glenfinnan Viaduct. She was particularly clever getting motion shots from the car!

Once arriving at the Red Squirrel Campsite and spending 20 minutes wandering and procrastinating around the site, we finally decided on a perfect spot to pitch our tents which was a good enough distance between the ‘bikers’, ‘families’ and the ‘midge infested burn’. We were hoping this would guarantee a noise free, itch free night’s sleep and of course we weren’t going to make any noise at all so felt quite justified in our earlier loitering.

As tradition has it, once the tents were up in quick time (who needs the boys!), we uncorked the wine, got the iPod on and recovered from our drive up. Once the sun started to disappear we walked the short distance to the local Clachaig Inn and had a lovely meal and interesting chat. Predictably, the next morning our tent positioning plan backfired and we were woken by the noisiest children in the Highlands at about 6am!

Never mind, it got us up early enough on the Saturday to make a head start on our walk. After parking in Glencoe and getting some provisions from the local shop, i.e. chocolate, we agreed to try climbing the Pap of Glencoe (Sgorr na Ciche), which is the distinctive hill rock shown in the picture below, taken by Karen.

The obligatory stretching before we start…

Oh how innocent we were! As it turned out not only did we climb the Pap of Glencoe (742m) but we also ended up climbing the Munro ‘Sgorr nam Fiannaidh‘ (967m) next to it. Karen took the original picture but you will notice I took quite some time to photoshop our route of ascent (on the left) and descent (on the right)!

The following shots were taken just before the climb to the top of the Pap and then at the summit itself… hence the smiles! Karen’s tripod came in handy at the top where she got a photo of all three of us.

After chatting to a fellow walker he managed to convince us to nip across to the next door Munro which should take us about ‘half an hour’. Thankfully, we didn’t realise how long it would actually take us otherwise we probably wouldn’t have tried! We did see some stunning scenery on the way, especially panoramic views of Loch Leven. Unfortunately, it was a bit cloudy when we got to the top so no fantastic landscape shots this time.

At this point we were discussing Chaos Theory and how to bring about world peace. Thanks again to Karen for this shot.

After some tough scrambling and climbing, Rosie and I finally reached the summit; what a feeling! The weather got a bit misty and rainy so we didn’t waste too much time at the top. We wanted to get back to Karen where we had left her about 20 minutes previously… she was soooo close! So, here are the pictures to prove it.

Now… coming down… this is a different story!

There was lots of this…

and this….

.

Naturally, we couldn’t do all that without one of us catching a tick. I won’t tell you who it was or where it was… OK…… it was Karen and it was on her bum!

You would think we would have been glad to have passed the ferns but the next hurdle was bouncy soft heather with big hidden holes and boulders underneath… Fun!

When we all started to fall each of us were very concerned, stopping to comfort each other and making sure there were no sprains, strains or bruises. After about the 20th time we didn’t even look back when heard… bump… crack…. ouch!

Eventually, we met up with the welcoming path and could virtually taste the fish and chips we had been dreaming about for the last three hours. I must post this picture of Karen and Rosie’s cheery faces when we neared the end. Ho, ho, ho….

After a long shower and tick check we headed to the Clachaig Inn and had our well earned plate of fish and chips and soon forgot about our arduous experience that afternoon, except when we wanted to get up and down from our seat it all came flooding back.

Here we are enjoying the folk band playing in the background.

I’ve got to end on the funniest picture of the trip. “The tick was this big…”

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