Old friends above the valley of the deer

This is the first of two "catch-up" posts from the end of October.  A bright and breezy day looked good for a hillwalk, and looking at the map I realised that it had been a while since I'd been over the hill to Speyside. I decided to climb Corryhabbie Hill, but not via the usual route.

My route from Donside to Speyside climbs up through high farmland and across the Cabrach, an area of moorland studded with mostly abandoned buildings.  It wasn't always so and there's a good history of the Cabrach on "Lenathehyena's" blog.  The play of light was marvellous on this October morning, rainbows appearing and disappearing as showers passed through.

I started my walk at Bridgehaugh where there's space to park a couple of cars clear of the estate road and entrance.  A steep slope covered with bracken was virtually glowing against a blue sky.

A look at the map in the link above will show that the track leading southwest from Bridgehaugh goes upstream alongside a river which is by no means large, but has a name known throughout the world.  This is the River Fiddich, and this view looks along part of Glen Fiddich.  Downstream the river runs through Speyside's "whisky capital", the village of Dufftown.  Along the banks of the river are some of the best known of Scotland's distilleries; Mortlach, Balvenie and, of course, Glenfiddich among them. Nowhere else in Scotland (or indeed the world) has a higher concentration of distilleries than this corner of Speyside.

I walked alongside the river past the now delapidated Glenfiddich Lodge, a former shooting lodge, and took a track climbing above a bend in the river up into a landscape of rounded hills covered in wind-clipped heather.  the track made for fast walking and I was soon swinging around between two hills and beginning the climb to the broad ridge which forms Corryhabbie Hill's summit.

From the higher ground the views open up to be really expansive.  To the north west, the most distinctive hill in the area, Ben Rinnes, is prominent.  It's a hill which has given some great days.  The "normal" route to climb Corryhabbie Hill from Glen Rinnes comes up the track in this image - my route would only coincide with that one on the summit ridge itself.

To the north, the slopes of the wonderfully named Thunderslap Hill fall to the Dullan water, and rising beyond is the Dufftown "double" of Meikle and Little Conval.  Looking to familiar hills - old friends-  is one of the small joys of hillwalking, and the more hills one climbs, the more joy there is to be had!

On the upper ridge of Corryhabbie Hill I was exposed to a biting north wind - to the north there's no higher ground between these hills and the north pole....and today it felt like it.  I stopped to put on another layer, gloves and a hat. 

Crouching down to sort out my kit I noticed the stunning colour on tufts of Deer Grass (Trichophorum cespitosum).  The name is misleading, it's neither a grass (actually a member of the sedge family) or particularly favoured by grazing deer.  The name derives from the wonderful shade of the plant in autumn, reminiscent of the coats of Red Deer.  There was a theme here too, because "Glenfiddich" is valley of the deer in Gaelic. 

Wrapped up against the chill of the wind, I walked on along the ridge.

The wrinkles of Ben Rinnes

Ben Rinnes is one of those really popular hills which inspire affection in folk.  It has all the right attributes in having a prominent character, being visible from a wide area and being relatively easy to climb. It's also a very well-trodden hill; the path to the summit is very noticeable from a distance.

A brief visit home from working away with a forecast of good weather in the morning followed by gales and squally showers in the afternoon had me looking at where I could go to get a good hillwalk before the poor weather arrived - Ben Rinnes fitted the bill perfectly.

I started out from the minor road which leaves the B9009 Glen Rinnes road - there's parking for several cars by a gate giving access to the start of the track which climbs Round Hill.

The fact that Ben Rinnes is visible from such a wide area means of course that it has a correspondingly wide view.  Almost from the start of the walk there is a great view down the length of broad Glen Rinnes to the distant Cairngorms, still bearing substantial snow patches in the first half of May.

As the appropriately domed top of Round Hill is reached the view ahead is dominated by the summit cone of Ben Rinnes.  The broad scar of the old path stretches straight up the hill, with the less direct line of a path constructed by the Friends of Ben Rinnes.  In time the scar of the older path will fade and the less obtrusive and robust new path will be far less of a scar.

It takes little more than an hour's steady climbing to reach the granite tor which marks the summit of the hill, and bears the resounding name of "Scurran of Lochterlandoch" (Scurran is an anglicisation of the Gaelic Sgurran - little pointed peak).  At 840 metres/2756 feet Ben Rinnes is one of Scotland's 220 Corbetts, a classification of lower height than the more famous Munros, but which give nothing away in quality to their higher brethren.

The vast majority of folk seem to descend Ben Rinnes by the route of ascent.  I prefer to make some kind of traverse or circular route whenever possible and I felt that walking north west from the summit across the broad ridge to another tor - Scurran of Well (which can be seen on the high ground to the far right in the first image of this post) - would give the possibility of returning on a lower level track below the northern slopes of the hill.

Getting off the main track was rewarded almost straight away with a nice close view of a hen Ptarmigan (Lagopus mutus), and then, thrillingly, two Dotterel (Charadrius morinellus) another avian mountain specialist, but much less common than the Ptarmigan with an estimated population in Scotland of only 500-750 breeding pairs and a real treat to see here.

Crossing a broad and peaty bealach (saddle or col) brought me to the Scurran of Well.  I've seen this place many times from below on the road and from the summit of Ben Rinnes on a previous winter ascent, but hadn't appreciated that what appears from a distance to be a single rock formation is in fact a whole group of contorted granite outcrops.

The distinctive appearance of granite tors (there are other great examples on Beinn a'Bhuird, Ben Avon and Bein a'Mheadoin in the Cairngorms to name but a few) has been a subject of debate among geologists and geographers......

...but the general consensus is this: granite is a hard, crystalline igneous rock formed of three main constituent minerals; quartz, feldspar and mica in varying proportion.  In areas where tors are found the granite has been intruded into the surrounding rocks as a batholith.  Because the batholith formed deep in the earth's crust it cooled very slowly to produce a rock with large crystals.  Over geological time the rock above was eroded away and the reduction in pressure caused the granite to crack, creating joints and bedding planes.

As the granite (harder than the rock into which it was intruded) was exposed it has been weathered, mainly by freeze-thaw action, along the joints and planes.  Where the joints were closest together the most rapid weathering occurred and the rock eroded away; where the joints were furthest apart the weathering has been much slower and.......

.....a granite tor is the result, although of course the weathering process continues to shape the rock.  I really like granite tors; they're a striking and unusual landform as well as being surprisingly difficult to climb!  The view between this pair northwards extends across Moray and Speyside all the way to the Moray Firth coast.

My route of descent went steeply down to get below Scurran of Well and then across rough ground to pick up the track on the north side of Ben Rinnes.  This made for a nice circular route, though the track, even in a dry spell of weather, was very wet.

 It's well worth the diversion over to these wrinkles on Ben Rinnes, even if intending to descend back down the main path, they are great features to explore.

A Speyside "double" - the first sip

A 45 minute  drive from home saw me in Dufftown in the heart of Speyside's whisky country to sample my own "double"; the hills of Meikle Conval and Little Conval which are well seen from the town.  The weather was bright and cold but a rapid increase in the strength of the wind to violent storm force was forecast for the evening so I wanted to be well home before it got too wild.

Dufftown sits at the confluence of the Dullan Water and the River Fiddich and is surrounded by well-known distilleries such as Glenfiddich, The Balvenie and Mortlach among others.  In fact, there are so many distilleries and bond-warehouses that it's claimed Dufftown raises more revenue for the government per head of population than anywhere else in the UK!

Due to the forecast westerly winds I wanted to walk the higher ground from west to east in order to have the push at my back rather than slogging into a gale.  This conveniently also meant that I'd have the sun at my back too.  A relatively new path, part of the local path network runs alongside the B9009 road for part of the way to the start of the track up Meikle Conval, though in summer the road is quite busy.  On the way I passed Dufftown Golf Club, one of the highest in the country.  The second of the hills I was aiming for, Little Conval, can be seen above the golf course.

After a few kilometres of road walking into a stiff breeze I approached the base of Meikle Conval (big conical hill).  A straightforward climb up a vehicle track gives access to the domed summit area, when I was quite suddenly exposed to a blasting westerly wind which was as cold as it was strong, but also exposed to a great view.....

over to the Corbett of Ben Rinnes  , a fine hill visible from a wide swathe of the north east of Scotland.  If it was windy at a modest height of 571 metres (Meikle Conval is a "Marilyn"), the cloud banner tearing off the summit of Ben Rinnes indicated that it would be even more windy up there - and that this was definitely not a day for the higher hills.

I didn't linger but headed off over towards Little Conval, having to "lean on the wind" as it was behind but also to my left side as it compressed around the shoulder of Ben Rinnes - but what a fine, wild day it was to be on the hill for a whisky country "double" !