So we set off to walk all round the lochan, perhaps foolishly on a day when we'd had 14mm of rain overnight. We left the car by the recycling point, crossed the Millburn, and walked directly north, over a low hill, to find ourselves looking down on a waterfall made spectacular by the overnight rain.
As we reached the bottom of the hill and pressed on northwards we realised just how saturated the place was. Not only did it rain heavily the previous night, but it had also rained consistently on every single day of the previous week, a total of some 70mm. The Highland's hills do shed water quickly, but some of it was still queuing in this soggy bogland waiting for the overstretched drainage.
The next part of the walk consisted largely of struggling through bog and trying to find crossing points on the many small burns that interlace this flat area but, finally, we came in sight of the lochan. Better still, we were able to head for the higher and, hopefully, drier land seen to the left of this picture.
This is a view of the lochan - sadly with no swans on it - from the opposite side, looking back towards Meall Chro Bheinn and the way we had come. The Sanna road runs between the hill and the lochan.
Water from the whole basin that includes Lochan na Crannaig, Lochan nan Ealachan and all the flat land around them drains out along the burn on which we saw the waterfall, so we followed this burn downstream, on its east side....
....which gave us another fine view of the waterfall, this time in bright sunlight.
To make matters worse, when we'd almost reached the recycling point, we found that this fence crosses the Abhainn Chro Bheinn, meaning that we either had to cross that burn, which was running strongly, or climb over the barbed wire. We plunged into the burn.
An interactive version of this map is here.
I fished it once a few years ago. Just a couple of hours one evening. I didn't catch anything but i decided that even though it is fairly small it was worth another visit one day. Lochan na Crannaig has some decent trout in it and it's not that much larger than Lochan nan Ealachan.
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