Winter Walking

While the news from much of the UK is of heavy snow and grim transport problems, we continue - as we did last summer - to have our own weather, a stiff wind that has backed into the east, bringing a grey overcast, temperatures hovering just above zero, occasional flurries of snow, and flashes of bright sunshine.  While these don't make ideal walking conditions, we've managed to get out into the hills each day, if only for a couple of hours.

Today we drove to the forestry on the B8007, and walked north, following the Allt Rath a' Bheulain.  Most of the surface of the burn is covered with ice, much of it beautifully patterned, but a thin trickle of water continues to run underneath, witness to the very dry conditions we've had for the last couple of weeks.

This picture gives some idea of the ground we were walking across.  Wherever puddles had collected after the last rainfall, or where water was seeping from the peaty ground, there are now glassy sheets of ice.  Mounds of once-soft sphagnum moss are solid, and the earth itself is as hard as rock.  The worst walking is downhill, when it's all too easy to slip.

When we reached this icefall on the Allt Rath a' Bheulain we left the stream and bore away to the west, towards a low hill that hides....

....this lochan, Lochan Tom Mhic Iain, with the hill after which it is named standing behind it.  The MacIain clan dominated this peninsula for over three hundred years, but it isn't clear why this particular hill should have been named after them.  Mingary Castle, which was their seat, lies near the point where the valley we had followed reaches the sea and, judging by the number of ditches and dykes that criss-cross the land around this knoll, it was once extensively worked and supported a big population.

From MacIain's lochan we recrossed the valley and climbed Beinn an Leathaid, from where we could look back at the lochan and hill, and beyond to a Sound of Mull obscured by falling snow.  The small cairn in the foreground is about half-way up the hill, and is evidently man-made, another pile of rocks whose purpose has been forgotten.

The cairn at Beinn an Leathaid's summit is a substantial one, perhaps reflecting the fact that it isn't a difficult hill to climb and also that, unlike many summits, it has a convenient pile of stones right beside it. Like so many summits in this area, it also has a small pool at the top, frozen solid.

Perhaps if next summer is really, really hot, we'll climb here again and swim in it.

A map of the area is here.