A re-boot

 When I started this blog back in 2009 it was primarily to create a record and to share some of the sights and experiences in Scotland's outdoors.  When things got busy with work or family life, the natural tendency was to post less, but lately I've really let it slip.  The last posts were some eight months ago - and they were recalling a trip in April 2022!  "Retirement" from a long career at sea in March 2022 was quickly followed by setting up a new venture in "retirement", so there has been a lot going on.

In my defence, I've been posting a lot on the Mountain and Sea Instagram page  and while enjoying the ability to post more or less instantly, I have missed the research and reflection that blogging offers.  

It's not like I haven't been getting out and about whether solo or with friends....  There have been some great sea kayak trips.... 

To the west - here on Loch Hourn

On the "home" patch of the Moray Firth in the northeast 

In the very heart of Scotland, here on Loch Ericht.

And in the far northwest, a here in Assynt.

The hills haven't been ignored either, whether in challenging weather

or in fair weather.

And talking of weather, the range of conditions experienced have been simply marvellous!

So that's the re-boot started, and hopefully I can do much better in posting here than of late!

A perfect pitch

It turned out that our day could and did get better!  The camping spot we'd originally planned on was a few more kilometres up the coast, and given the wind direction we realised that it would be right in the wind.  So when a flash of white sand backed by bright green woodland caught our eye at the back of a small bay, we had to take a look.

Landing near low water we found ourselves in an enclosed bay, sheltered from the wind and in full sunshine.  A few folk were enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, indicating that the bay was fairly accessible, but it did look very promising as a wild camping spot.  Our preference is for fairly remote areas which are little used, but never look a gift horse in the mouth!

As the day visitors started to leave, we pitched our tents, Donny and Douglas pitched on the level turf above the beach itself - where there was even a picnic bench......

Allan and I chose spots in a beautiful wood of birches at the back of the bay which was alive with birdsong.  At the time and in the memory, this felt a perfect pitch.

Once we'd pitched up we wandered the bay, just enjoying the sunshine and the location.  We came across this lovely piece of beach art which must have taken both patience and real creative talent to produce.  Transient and perfect, it would be washed away by the evening's high tide.

Much of the beach was covered in pieces of white "coral" - actually Maerl, a corraline algae which when living is a purplish colour.  When they die, the calcereous remains of Maerl are broken and crushed by wave action, then bleached in the sun to form dazzling white "coral" beaches such as this one.  

A rare and fragile environment, Maerl beds have comprehensive protection, but are at risk from scallop dredging - one pass by a scallop dredger's bottom gear can destroy a bed which might be hundreds of years old.   Loch Carron has some of the best examples of Maerl beds and as a result is protected by designation as a Marine Protected Area (MPA).  

In the wood, Primroses were in flower on sunny banks - perhaps my favourite of the early Spring flowers; such a cheery sight at the back of a long winter.

After dinner we wandered over to the edge of the bay and climbed a rocky outcrop to photograph the setting sun - it was a really lovely evening.

Our fire below the Spring tide mark was lit to get going while we took our photographs and brought snacks and drinks down from the tents.

 Across the sea, beyond Skye and Raasay, the setting sun slipped down to the horizon to end a truly great day on the water.  We sat with a dram by our fire and chatted into a glorious evening.

Note: Since we camped here, the bay and its beach have been featured in a national newspaper and on a well known travel website as "one of the most beautiful and accessible in Scotland".  This is undoubtedly going to increase it's popularity and perfect as it is, we will avoid camping here for the foreseeable future in order to go a small way to reducing future pressure.

An evening to savour

The Loch Fyne Light Show started with a distinct softening and warming of the light quality.  We picked up cameras to watch as the sun sank through a cloudbank over the Kintyre shore.

Donny walked to a vantage point on a nearby rock rib to take some video - you can see Donny's film about our trip on his YouTube Channel here.

I joined Donny to get a view with no rocks in the foreground and was rewarded with this lovely path of sunlight beaming across Loch Fyne.

I spent a good twenty minutes just taking it all in; the last two years have seen few trips due to Covid restrictions and work pressures....it was so good just to "be" in the outdoors again, in the moment with a lovely sunset.

The sun dipped below the Kintyre hills and the sky put on a final flourish of gorgeous light....just superb.

As Donny and I wandered back over to join Raymond and Allan at our camp site the light show faded to a pastel finish, but there was one last and beautiful element to come.

After sunset the pale, ethereal light was as gorgeous as the sunset had been, though in a completely different way.  My photographic skills don't do the light quality any justice whatsoever, the softness and opacity of a calm evening.  It's this changing "Solas" (light) which really makes a day.

The temperature dropped after sunset and we got our fire, built well below the Spring high water line, lit and away.

Contained by a few big logs, it soon built a very satisfactory heat with remarkably little refuelling required due to the lack of wind.  We sat around and enjoyed after-dinner treats and the odd dram - life seemed particularly agreeable on this Fyne evening!

Days like these - a spectacular morning on Loch Hourn

I slept really well at our camp on Loch Hourn, waking early as the light grew stronger.  Stepping outside, this was my first view of the day - the majestic Ladhar Bheinn rearing into a flawless blue sky across the loch.  I've climbed Ladhar Bheinn twice, once from each side of the hill, and had remarkably good weather both times.  It's one of the Munro "superstars" in my opinion and anyone who climbed it on this day would have an unforgettable ascent.

The view in the other direction up Loch Hourn wasn't too shabby either!  The low early morning sunshine was silhouetting the tangle of ridges and spurs around Kinloch Hourn, a very different aspect of the same scene we'd watched the previous evening.

Rather than rush away we took our time to enjoy being in this utterly remote spot on such a great morning.  Everywhere we looked was stunning scenery and we found lots of interest all around, including some strange miniature fountains where the tide was pushing water and air up thorough the saltmarsh areas.

But it was Ladhar Bheinn which held our attention.  We had breakfast facing across the loch so that we could watch the light change on the cliffs at the head of Coire Dhorrcail (on the left of this image) and the gullies and faces at the head of Coire Odhair.

Eventually we decided to get underway and enjoy the view from the water.  We took down the tents and erased all evidence of our second fire; the tide had taken care of the remains of the first one!  We paddled out onto a mirror calm loch for a truly memorable morning's paddle.

It was now mid-morning and the warm sunshine had started to form clouds.  These didn't detract from the views at all, in fact the pattern of light and shade enhanced features and gave depth to the whole scene.  Douglas and I blazed away with our cameras and Donny filmed from "Guppy".  

The backdrop of Ladhar Bheinn was hard to beat, the kayaks tiny underneath the bulk of the mountain.  I took a tremendous amount of images and even now I can't decide which I prefer, so here's a few of them....Douglas' bright red P&H Volan providing a real splash of colour against deep shadows....

...a colour and light gradient as a passing cloud accentuated the warm sunshine against the shadow...

.......Lorna and Allan in a perfect reflection of the dramatic skyline of the summit ridges.....

....Donny motoring Guppy along below Druim a' Choire Odhair (ridge of the dun coloured Corrie)....

Already this was an outstanding day, and it was only mid-morning!  Days like these, they stay with you forever.

 

Light and labour - a winter walk on Culblean Hill

The start of the year has seen some really cold conditions in northern and eastern Scotland.  For days either side of New Year the temperature has rarely been above freezing and there's been steady accumulation of snow, coming in showers on a north to north easterly airflow.  Sunday 3rd January looked to be a good day, so Allan, Lorna and I looked for a suitable hill to walk.

Given the prevailing wind and the complete snow cover on high ground we could see from our homes, we looked for a hill which had a north or easterly aspect to climb.  this would mean that the bulk of the snow would have been scoured off to be deposited on south to south westerly slopes, and so give us easier going underfoot.  We chose Culblean Hill - and it wasn't until after we chose that we realised Allan and I had climbed this hill three years previously to the day - in quite similar winter conditions though with less snow cover.

One of the hardest parts of the day was getting to the bottom of the hill - the roads were quite treacherous as there had been a re-freeze of lying snow followed by freezing rain and snow overnight - it was a slow and cautious journey to the starting point.  The initial track is quite steep, but in light powder snow cover under a blue-and-white sky it seemed no real effort; we stopped frequently to admire the views anyway!

Across to the north, Morven (Big Hill) retained cloud cover all day as forecast - which was another reason for choosing a slightly lower hill.  Just the lower shoulder stayed clear, the upper ridge of this super hill generating a cloud banner as cold air was forced upslope.

The view behind us over Cromar towards Pressendye opened up as we climbed - another hill which has given great winter days.  To the north clear air and bright sunshine predominated.....

...but over our shoulders a change was heading from the east as a big snow shower built up.

With the great majority of the climbing done we headed onto the flat and featureless summit area of Culblean Hill.  As we were on the northern edge of this mid-height plateau the snow cover was still quite light, having been scoured by the wind.

The good going didn't last and it was a real labour in knee-deep snow across the plateau towards the summit cairns.  The light was ethereal with shifting tones and constantly changing light levels as cloud streamed across close overhead.  A couple of compass bearings were needed to keep us on track as we waded through deep snow cover whilst trying to avoid the peat hags we knew to be hereabouts.

At the southern edge of the highest ground the view was quite a contrast to the sunny conditions up to the north.  Here, dark clouds with a defined edge lowered over the valley of the River Dee - the town of Ballater a darker patch below wooded hills.

To the west the views were of rolling snow-covered hills off into the far distance, much less clear than that day of three years ago but no less impressive.  It was wild, cold and utterly magnificent; a small hill of just 604m/1982ft giving us some really great winter hillwalking.

It's a truism that every winter hillwalk in Scotland should be treated as a mountaineering venture.  Our hills aren't as high or as remote as in many parts of the world, but have very changeable conditions and experience weather of a ferocity usually associated with much higher mountains.  We'd brought full winter gear including crampons and needed all our spare layers on a small hill.  We'd planned our route carefully to avoid the deepest snow, but still found hard labour - and we needed accurate navigation to locate the correct gully between two tracks we could use for our descent.

Just 200m of descent took us into a different world.  the snow cover very much lighter, the wind a whisper of what we'd felt on the high ground and visibility restored.  Still though, the play of light was in evidence with cloud streaming in from the North Sea trailing curtains of snow.  I tried to capture the quality of light on this walk, shooting lots of images which just failed to capture the wild, luminous light.  This image does no justice to the scale of the cloud streamer overhead - and I'm still not sure whether I prefer it in colour.....

 ...or in black and white!

Three years to the day since climbing this little hill in the earliest part of January, it had again given us a day to remember.  We'll be back - but with new Coronavirus measures limiting meeting up outdoors to just one other person, it may be a while before we can all get back on a hill together.

Reflecting on a Loch Etive journey

Sleep was a little disturbed at our camp on the shore of Loch Etive; the Red Deer stags continued their roaring all night, the sound echoing across the loch.  Just as dawn broke they seemed to quieten, allowing an extra hour's sleep for the humans.  

We woke to a morning filled with promise; a light cover of cloud was already starting to be burned off by the rising sun.  We were pleasantly surprised that there was no condensation on the tents and no dew on the ground, allowing us to pack tents away quickly.

We got on the water before 0900 and headed out to the centre of the narrow loch.  Behind us the ridges of Ben Cruachan looked very atmospheric with streamers of morning cloud hanging in the corries of that great and complex hill.

The north west shore of Loch Etive is more wooded than the south eastern side and was beautifully lit by the morning sunshine, gorgeous shades of autumnal colours were picked out wherever sunlight broke through.

We headed over and paddled slowly up the shore towards the head of the loch alongside woods of oak, holly and birch, set off with a deep russet carpet of brackens which had already "gone over".  We felt that the morning could scarcely be better....until we turned a small headland and got the view we'd come for.

Landing on a shingle shore we just stood and stared before reaching for our cameras.  The dramatic hills at the head of the loch were reflected perfectly in the still water and we took image after image after image.  I'm still not sure whether I prefer the images with the shoreline boulders......

......or the ones without the boulders!  The  head of Loch Etive lies between the Blackmount and Glencoe and the hills in view are some of the best of both those grand ranges.  The sharp peaks at the ends of Buachaille Etive Beag and Buachaille Etive Mor are prominent, with the passes of the Lairig Eilde and the Lairig Gartain between them.  In shadow on the right of this image is the base of Ben Starav, a hill I'd put in my top ten of Munros...it was all pretty special!

We sat for a considerable time just absorbing the views and enjoying the stillness of the morning - after our initial amazed exclamations about the view, words seemed a little superfluous.  Coffee was taken along with snacks to prolong the sitting around, but eventually we knew we'd have to get back on the water if we were to take advantage of the ebb tide further down the loch.

The views as we headed back down the upper part of the loch were hardly poor either!  What tiny breeze there had been had died completely and we paddled on absolutely still water, the only movement was that created by our paddle strokes - and we felt almost guilty when we created ripples on such perfection!

Stands of trees on the shore created great reflections; at times these seemed similar to the fractal patterns in children's kaleidoscopes.  I positioned myself to photograph first Allan..... 

...and then Raymond in the middle of these reflected geometric patterns.

 A wider view shows just how perfect this morning was as we paddled under the sweep of Ben Trillieachan (hill of the sandpiper - though many climbers who've had experience of the famous slabs on the north end of the hill would claim it's "sandpaper"!).

As we left the narrow upper part of the loch we took a last look back at the view.  Our passage back to Taynuilt was assisted by the pull of the ebb tide and we averaged a healthy 8.5km/h without much effort, popping through the narrows on the last of the ebb.

This had been a great overnight exploration of Loch Etive, we'd had great views and amazing wildlife encounters as well as a comfortable camp -  it's a loch I know that I'll return to paddle again.