South West Scotland
We set off on our much anticipated holiday on Friday. We'd both had some time off in February, but the weather was terrible so we didn't really make the most of our time. So we were both ready for a good break.
We managed to be quite organised this year and get the van and everything ready the week before going on holiday. So we set off dead on schedule at 10am on Friday in the hope of getting past Glasgow before it got busy. And for once, everything went according to plan. We reached the southern end of Loch Lomond by about 4pm and ate a very sickly chocolate orange flavoured cake that we'd bought at Tebay services on the way up.
By about 5.30pm we'd found a new overnight spot and had opened some wine. I'm not saying where the overnight spot is just in case I have a secret following of campervanners who decide to use my favourite spots when I want to. But it was deserted, quiet, secluded and had a view of mountains. We spent the evening updating our Munro/Corbett/Graham/Donald map/tick list and the newly laminated Trail 100 ticklist.
On Saturday morning we were up before 8 (it took a bit of encouragement to get Claire up), had breakfast and drove the short distance to Arrochar to start our first walk of the trip at 10am. We'd decided to go up The Cobbler (a.k.a. Ben Arthur) which is not a Munro but is a Trail 100 hill. The route guide (from Trail magazine) made it sound a bit tough to be honest, and we were a bit uncertain whether we would manage the scramble up the to summit block.
The route guide describes it as a grade 2 scramble, which are normally scary (grade 1 is the lowest, grade 3 the highest. Sharp And Striding edges in the Lake District are both only grade 1). Then the instructions say there's no shame in using a rope, talk about a ledge overlooking a serious drop, and suggest memorising handholds as its harder going back down. To make matters worse, a chap called Dave Macleod who Claire says is one of the worlds best rock climbers had to make several attempts before he succeeded in getting to the top as a teenager.
Claire decided that she wasn't even going to risk it, but I decided to have a look. The first part involved going through a hole in the rock to exit onto the aforementioned ledge. Which was about a metre wide, almost perfectly flat, with a rock wall on one side. The ledge was a few metres long, with a slightly tricky bit of vertical rock to get up at the end, but that was it. It was exciting but not quite the Tomb Raider experience I was expecting.
I shouted to Claire from the top and persuaded her to come up, which also attracted two other ladies to come with her. Within a few minutes we were all standing on the now quite crowded summit block. One of the ladies commented that she'd been up the Cobbler loads of times before but had never gone to the very top. When I asked her what was different about today she told me that she'd watched me do it, which made me feel quite proud and inspirational.
We headed back down after a few minutes (the handholds that I'd forgotten to memorise weren't required), got a bit lost trying to find the South East ridge (don't know why), but were soon on the way down.
We both felt a bit more tired that we should have done after what was a fairly short walk, but put it down to it being the first mountain for a while.
After a quick coffee and snack we set off North towards our next destination - Torridon. I had underestimated slightly how far away it was (it turned out to be a 4 hour drive from Arrochar!) but we made good progress and have stopped for the night about 45 minutes drive from Torridon.
Tonight's overnight spot isn't anywhere near as good as last night's, but it's level, there's no one else here, and there aren't too many cars driving past so we can't complain really.
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