Five Lochans and a Beinn - 1

Continuing with what may be becoming a Diary obsession, we set out on Sunday to visit another remote lochan.  This one is some three kilometres, as the crow flies, to the east of Ockle (see map at bottom of this entry).  Since walking along valleys is usually easier than a bald-headed bash across the hills, we approached it by following the Allt Ockle upstream to the ford across a tributary, Allt Eas a' Ghaidheil, which might be translated as the stream of the Gael's waterfall, and then turned to follow that burn eastwards.

Its lower reaches are wooded and flanked by bracken-covered banks, but the landscape....

....quickly opens up, first the trees falling away, then the bracken, until we were out into the open hills we so love.  To add to our pleasure, the Ling was just coming into flower and, with the warmth of the day, the insects were busy, particularly Scotch Argus butterflies and crane flies.

Cresting a rise in the ground, we put up a red deer mother with her fawn.  The mother, having run some twenty metres to get clear of us, then stopped, her young against her flank, to watch us, as if quite disgusted that her morning siesta should have been disturbed.

The higher we climbed, the more the view back towards the west opened up.  The nearer white buildings are at Swordle, the further ones are the Ardnamurchan Estate's cottages at Fascadale.  By this stage we were walking across open moorland, an increasingly bleak landscape underlain by billion-year old metamorphic rocks, their tops smoothed off during the last glaciation.

The lochan that was our objective sits in a natural bowl in the northern flank of Beinn Bhreac, the spotted hill.  Its deep, dark, silent waters were stained with peat, the only movement the ripples lifted by an increasingly brisk wind.  In the distance are the islands of Eigg and, beyond it, Rum.

Our object reached, we should have turned back, but, as seems to happen so often, something else drew us on: the looming peak of Beinn Bhreac, at 357 metres, was too great a temptation.

Beinn Bhreac is a relentless climb, but well worth it: for the first time since we've been climbing the beinns of West Ardnamurchan we looked over the high ridge formed by the metamorphic rocks onto a panorama of the eastern end of the peninsula.

This view looks due east.  In the foreground, across the top of the triangulation point, are the beaches of the Singing Sands.  To the right, beyond the forestry, is Kentra Bay, with Kentra itself visible on the far shore.  In the distance is the western end of Loch Shiel: the furthest point visible is some 20 kilometres from Beinn Bhreac, so the mountains on the horizon are far more.

Turning a little further to the north, we could see Ardtoe with its neat little bay and, beyond it, the mudflats of Loch Moidart at low tide.  Just visible in the centre distance is Castle Tioram, but....

....by cranking up the telephoto lens, it was possible to get a better view of it.

Part 2 follows.
For anyone keen to explore this wonderfully wild area, there are cottages at Ockle, owned by Ockle Holidays, website here.