Maclean's Nose - 1

After seventeen years here, Maclean's Nose was another place we hadn't walked to.  It's a great name for the promontory where Ben Hiant protrudes into the sea, and a feature we look at almost every day.  However, last Friday, the day we finally did reach it, it couldn't been seen from Kilchoan as we had one of those occasional weather phenomena called a haar, a mist which clings to the surface of the Sound of Mull and flows across it, sometimes lapping over the land.

Haars are as likely in summer as in winter, and can persist for some hours.  They're supposed to form when warm, damp air comes into contact with a cold sea surface, but on Friday the air was pretty cold already.

The easiest way to get to Maclean's Nose is from the opposite side of Ben Hiant, from the road a mile or so before Camas nan Geall.  We only escaped the haar after we'd driven past the cattle sheds at Caim, when we broke out into bright sunshine - picture shows the peak of Ben Hiant.

Having left the car in the area called the Basin, we began climbing along the eastern flank of Ben Hiant (see the map at the bottom of this post).  The haar filled most of Loch Sunart and lapped into Camas nan Geall....

....but as we climbed it quickly burnt away, opening up the view.  In this picture, the mouth of Camas nan Geall leads the eye across Loch Sunart to the island of Oronsay and the mountains of Morvern beyond it.  To the right is the conical hill called Stellachan Dubha.

On one of the slopes we came across half a dozen mole hills.  Moles aren't common here, but we've come across them in one or two quite remote places.  It remains a mystery to us how they got to such far-flung hillsides as moles would need to be even better walkers than us to reach them.  Does anyone know how moles spread?

Even though it was early in the year the toads were already out looking for romance.  This one was so gaunt and thin after a long winter and the efforts of mating and spawning that he/she didn't move even when the camera came very close.

Tucked away between the southeastern slope of Ben Hiant and Stellachan Dubha is an enclosed and very secret bowl of land.  It's the favourite haunt of a herd of red deer hinds, who always look very upset when we disturb them.  There's plenty of evidence that the area was worked agriculturally, and there are stone structures scattered around which might have been shieling huts.

We were now at the highest point of the walk and approaching the steep slope which would take us down onto the top of Maclean's Nose.

An interactive map of the area is here.