In hindsight

I've put a full account of my walk so far, complete with pictures, on the walkhighlands website, click here to see it.  I will be uploading one here but it takes time...!

To be continued...

Thanks to some problems which need dealing with at home, I've had to cut my trip short for the time being.  I managed to walk from Glenfinnan to Cluanie over 3-and-a-half days, some 80km, and climbed two munros and a corbett en route.  I fully intend to pick up where I left off when time permits, although it may not be for a couple of weeks.  Watch this space for a full account of the Stravaig so far, complete with pictures...

Hello everyone! Today Ben went up Gairich which was a lovely easy scramble to the top and the view was fantastic with hills in every direction for miles. He saw a golden eagle and two ptarmigan. After having lunch at Quoich Dam he started heading along the north shore. More updates soon!!

Hello everyone. Whilst my husband is off on his big adventure, I will be posting updates on his progress. Yesterday, upon arriving to Glenfinnan, Ben walked to A'Chuil and spent the night in a
the bothy. By 11am today he had reached Glen Kingie and proceeded to climb Sgurr Mor (Munro) and Sgurr An Fhuarain, which is a corbett just to the East of Sgurr Mor. Thanks to the weight of his pack, he thought it best to leave it at the bottom of the climb and retrieve it on his way down from Sgurr Mor. Due to the heavy wind and rain he was forced to alter his route slightly and is no longer going to go to Knoydart, instead he will spend the tonight in the bothy at Kinbreack. More updates soon!

Mmm

Last one of these for a while!

1 day to go

Unfortunately, due to the nature of modern life, sadly sometimes it's necessary to make sacrifices.  In this case, due to an absolutely unavoidable work commitment, I have had to revise my plan from the original Aberfoyle to Cape Wrath route to a (slightly) more modest Cape Wrath Trail variation (still over 200 miles through some of the wildest and remotest land in Britain- contrary to the name it's not a marked trail), with an annoying split in the middle to spend a week with an extremely well reputed Scottish orchestra (though that will deduct from the annoyance).  I still fully intend to climb as many peaks as possible, and hope to reach Ullapool before joining the orchestra, finishing the route after my time with them.

And, having just got back from a week of work in London and Europe, that means I've got only today for my final preparations for the Stravaig.  Today's checklist is as follows:

- Prepare individual maps for the whole route, complete with escape routes and alternatives
- Organise transport to Glenfinnan and back from Ullapool (with alternatives from further South if I don't make Ullapool (Cluanie, Glen Carron, Kinlochewe)
- Give my route details to my wife so that she knows where I should be and knows when to get worried if she doesn't hear from me
- Explore possible rendezvous en route, and send some supplies ahead
- Buy batteries and a new headtorch (mine died), and the rest of my supplies that I haven't got already
- Sleep well!


When I'm away there will be a couple of other people keeping the blog up to date on my behalf, so you'll hopefully be able to keep updated on my progress.


And it'll all be worthwhile thanks to your continuing donations to this brilliant cause!

Ben Ledi

Went up Ben Ledi from Callander today. It was lovely until the weather got foul! Now we're sitting waiting for the bus in the rain getting midged, yum.

Grey Corries Plus

On Thursday, Joe and I headed up to Spean Bridge to take on the Grey Corries munros and a couple of neighbouring corbetts, a massive walk of 25km and some 2700m of ascent.  



The weather forecast has been so dire the last few weeks that we decided to make the most of the best forecast of a bad bunch - admittedly we were pretty sceptical of our chances of having any views or dry rocks to clamber over, and whether either of us was fit enough to complete the challenge we had set, but neither of us told each other about these doubts until much later.  In contrast to our expectations, we were never in the cloud, never got rained on, and my hands have what could be described as mild sunburn!  We also completed the route, as outlined in this walk report on the walkhighlands website.


Yes a biggy, especially considering neither of us has been able to get out in a long time - my last munro was in October 2011!


Setting off at 8.30 we followed the old tramway, very boggy in places, with views of Aonach Mor gradually opening up as we continued.

An old tram bridge

Aonach Mor

When the tramway joined another track, we turned uphill towards the dam, crossing the river just above the dam and heading up the hillside to join the ridge.

River crossing

Looking back to the Dam

Arriving on the ridge, the views towards the Aonachs opened up even more, with Ben Nevis eventually coming into view as we ascended to Stob Coire Easain to join the main Grey Corries ridge.

Aonachs and Ben Nevis

Looking along the Grey Corries Ridge

Our first summit:

Arriving at the first summit we had panoramic views, couldn't see a single summit in cloud - a vast improvement on the 30% chance of cloud-free munros given by MWIS!


We retraced our steps to Stob Coire Easian and followed the ridge round to the second munro, Stob Coire an Laoigh, before following the ridge along and up the massive Stob Choire Claurigh.  It was at this point we got our first view of what I might call the 'coolest' hill of the day, Sgurr Innse.

Along the ridge towards Claurigh

Sgurr Innse on the left

Stob Ban looking small and insignificant

We descended steeply before ascending up unstable scree slopes to Stob Ban, our fourth and final munro of the day. 

The screes of Stob Ban

Sgurr Innse from Stob Ban

After a quick descent to the bothy, we headed up towards the crags of Sgurr Innse, legs beginning to feel a wee bit tired.  We traversed around the foot of the crags to meet the main ridge, and clambered up over the rocks onto the summit of Sgurr Innse.

Joe and Sgurr Innse from the bothy

Stob Ban from Sgurr Innse

Cruach Innse, our next and final objective

We descended to the bealach below Cruach Innse, and now with knackered legs climbed up our final ascent onto the summit of Cruach Innse, before heading down the steep NW slopes to the bothy track and back to the car.  Passing Fort William we picked up a well earned Fish Supper: job done!

Descent to the track

Not so gentle

Mornings this early never helped anyone...

A gentle start

Yesterday I got out in my local hills for a 'gentle start' to my training.

25km, 600m ascent, 5 hours in total.  Here's a map of my route:

Overall a pretty good start - a fair distance, a heavy rucksack, and most importantly plenty of bog, clag and midges!


These are lovely hills with lovely views I'm sure, but aside the odd glimpse through the clag there wasn't much to see up there yesterday.  Here are some pictures:

All in all a nice start to the regime. Tomorrow I'm heading up North to take on a few munros and corbetts in Glen Spean, possibly a wee tad more challenging!

Thanks for all the donations so far, keep em coming for this brilliant cause!

Apologies for not having posted in a while - from tomorrow I will find myself in Scotland and the fun will start.  Weather forecast for the next couple of weeks looks amazing (or not) so I'm sure there will be plenty of moist activity to post about on here!

In the meantime, here's an interesting weather forecast, perhaps this sums up what I might have to endure in August...

An alternative route

In many ways Cape Wrath isn't really the finish line for anyone walking there - arriving at the most North-Westerly tip of Britain, suddenly you'll realise you have to get home, which could take a couple of days unless you're a logistical genius.  

Regardless, instead of walking the road back to the ferry or taking the minibus, one could do this:

The startpoint is Strathchailleach bothy, and after reaching the cape, the hills climbed are Sgribhis-Bheinn (371m), Fashven (460m) and Ben Akie (288m), totalling 20 miles and 1300m of ascent - a long way but not that much ascent really - we'll see if I do this come end of August...

This is the best bit of the map:

Start Line

Took this picture yesterday from the Wallace Monument in Stirling - the distant hills mark the Highland Boundary Fault and my start point is somewhere in the middle of the photo - lets hope the weather stays like that for the whole of August!

 

My Just Giving page is now active so get donating!

Click here to donate now

Travel Tap

Another essential piece of kit has just arrived - having walked in the Highlands for years, upon running out of water I've always taken some from high streams and springs and have never had a problem.  But because a lot of my route this time is not at particularly high altitude and after reading the second comment on this thread I decided to take precautions.  I bought this:

It's called the Travel Tap, and it means you can basically drink water from anywhere (except the sea) and it will be safe to drink!  Great little piece of kit - am a bit reluctant to try it out in the Thames though!

Chiswick to Richmond

Have been making the most of the brilliant weather today with a spot of 'training' if you could call it that.  I've put a full walk report on the walkhighlands website, but here are some photo highlights:

 

 

What great weather

Feel like I should be making the most of the brilliant weather and getting out in the hills, but being stuck in London at the moment the options are limited, though watch this space later today... Regardless, would walking in baking sunshine without masses of midges really be a fair representation of what I'm going to endure in August?  I think not!

Regardless, working in this weather does have some advantages if you're a musician:

Knoydart

On my walk I'm going to visit some really brilliant parts of Scotland, and one of these is the Knoydart peninsula.  These days Knoydart has a formidable reputation amongst hillwalkers as it is quite inaccessible, uninhabited (with the exception of one settlement) and the mountains themselves are big and rocky.  Knoydart hasn't always been so empty though - prior to the Highland Clearances of the mid 19th Century there were up to 1000 people living on the peninsula, many of whom either chose to emigrate or were forced off their land.

Knoydart is an area I have been desperate to visit for several years, and the hill that most excites me is Ladhar Bheinn (for reasons that the pictures on this blog sum up pretty well).  Ladhar Bheinn (hill of the hoof) is not only the most westerly munro (3000ft Scottish mountain) on the mainland, but is also one of the furthest from a public road, and normally people wishing to climb it have either got to walk huge distances over rough terrain just to get to it's foot, or make use of a boat across Loch Hourn or Loch Nevis.  I'll be coming into the area over the mountains above Glen Dessary to the South East known as the 'Rough Bounds of Knoydart', the highest and most prominent of which is called Sgurr na Ciche (peak of the breast).

New toy

The GPS arrived today so we went out on a little excursion to try it out.  Not sure that you could quite call this training day 1 though...

It's brilliant.  Exactly what I need for the Epic Stravaig when my own senses are not completely reliable. 

We had a bit of fun with the tracking feature to try it out

 

Although the height tracker went a bit haywire - must be something to do with being in a built up area

Kit items

Have spent today researching some of the various kit items that I may need to buy, mainly in the IT department.  After looking into ways of keeping my smartphone charged on the go and deeming it not really feasable (15 hours of direct sunlight to charge by solar panel - not likely in August in the Highlands; the various AA battery chargers, though really cheap, from what I've read online not really effective), I've come around to the idea that getting a cheap handset with a really long battery life (eg. LG A100) is a safer plan. 

I've also ordered a GPS unit as a back up for my navigational skills when the going gets tough.  The principal features I wanted in addition to robustness and weather hardiness to withstand the elements were an onscreen display of OS 1:50000 maps with position, the option of running it on AA batteries (as there will be lots of time between potential mains recharges), and a unit which didn't necessarily require to be connected to the computer in order for routes to be programmed.  After lots of thought I opted for the Satmap Active 10.  Now to wait for it to arrive so I can play with my new toy!

The Challenge

This Summer I am going to brave the Scottish weather and midges and attempt to walk from the Highland Boundary Fault at Aberfoyle to Cape Wrath at the North Western tip of the British Mainland in aid of Cancer Research UK.  I don't want to do it by the shortest, quickest or easiest route, but via as many mountain tops as the weather will allow me to.  I plan to set off at the end of July and hope to be at the finish line by the end of August.  Over the coming weeks as I plan my trip, watch this space for updates of my plans, training, and how to donate to the cause.