An Early Tick

Friday 18th September 2015

Scotland - Day 2 - Schiehallion

Today is the first full day of a 2 and a bit week holiday in Scotland. We travelled up as far as Loch Lomond yesterday afternoon/evening and stayed overnight in the van in one of the small car parks by the loch. As we're heading to Newtonmore, which is just south west of the Cairngorms national park, this probably wasn't the most direct route, but we always come this way when we come to Scotland and were on autopilot. I think that the journey north of Glasgow is probably nicer going this way though.

We haven't got an itinerary for this trip, apart from spending the day with my cousin Phil and his wife Anne tomorrow. After that, we will go where the weather is best. However, we're hoping that some of the time the weather will be good in Skye, the Cairngorms and Fort William. We haven't brought the canoe this time, as unless you use it a lot it's a bit of a pain because we can't put the pop top up without taking the boat off the roof. We have brought our mountain bikes though, which we hope will help with some of the longer walks, a lot of which start with a long walk along a track.

Our original plan for today was a lie in, a lazy breakfast and then a slow drive up to Newtonmore to arrive at about 5pm. However, when I was checking the route last night I couldn't help but notice that we were going to drive right past a hill on the Trail 100 list called Schiehallion. It didn't look like a long walk, and when I checked some of the route plans we've brought with us, it said it would take 5 hours. Claire was reasonably enthusiastic when I broached the subject of not being so lazy after all, and we decided we'd do it if the weather was fine. This would be a significant break from the norm, as we usually spend the first two days travelling and generally being lazy, and then another two days trying to get motivated to do something.

We woke up to blue skies and sunshine at 8.30am, which is still more of a lie in than I've had for a while. After a slightly disappointing breakfast (we'd forgotten the bacon to go with the bagels and cream cheese) we were on the way by 10am.

After an hour of walking, we soon realised that it was not going to take us 5 hours to finish the walk. Granted, we thought we were approaching the summit at that point, when it actually turned out to be the first of 2 false summits, but we were still way ahead of schedule. The last mile or so was a bit tougher as the route was strewn with ankle turning rocks, but we eventually reached the true summit after about an hour and three quarters, where we stopped for a late lunch.

We'd passed some ladies not far from the summit, who were on their way down. One of them looked like she was about 90, with pure white hair and some pretty serious wrinkles. We hope that we're that sprightly when we're 90, although I don't mind if I'm less wrinkly.

I'd like to write a bit about the importance of Schiehallion, but I can't because I can't remember why it's important and I've got no phone signal to ask google. All I can remember is it's something to do with science and possibly an experiment to do with gravity, where Schiehallion was chosen because of it's symmetry and conical shape. I tried talking to Claire about this, but judging by her bored reaction, it's a good job I'm not better informed about it or you'd all stop reading. The photo below is of Schiehallion but was taken later in the trip.

We could see for miles from the summit, although it was a bit cloudy so the only photo we took was the obligatory summit selfie. After that we made good progress back down, to arrive back at the van three and three quarter hours after we'd left. We're feeling quite pleased with ourselves for the energetic start we've made to our holiday, with a hill ticked off the list as well!

Tomorrow we are going out with Phil and Anne, and if the weather forecast is good enough, we may be doing an overnight camp or bivvy on the hillside! We have just bought ourselves some bivvy bags which we are dying to try out, so fingers crossed for the weather.

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