Last updated: 06/06/20

When I arrived on Friday I had my own little adventure during a short walk up Glenfinnan, to stretch my legs after the drive over. First, I checked out the hotel next door (closed for the season), and then walked east along the main road to the war memorial and so to the church (Roman Catholic) which surprisingly was open, with a couple of visitors inside. Then across the main road to the Viaduct car park, where, even at 4pm on a rather dank and windy November afternoon, there were at least a couple of dozen Harry Potter tourists (mostly foreign) underneath the railway: what it must be like in summer doesn’t bear thinking about!

On my 1974 map, there is just a footpath up the glen beyond the viaduct, but now there is a fine tarmac road up to a new Glenfinnan House on the western slope above the Corryhully bothy. In the gathering gloom, I walked up the glen between trees (also not on my map), being passed a couple of times by the friendly keeper, who told me that the estate (of 9000 acres) belonged to the Leith family, who own a quarrying firm based at Cove. He had helped to plant the trees in 1976!

In the bothy was a Dutchman (as well as electricity supplied free by the estate), who had got a lift from the keeper after walking up the Cona Glen (recommended by him) after taking the ferry from Fort William. On the Cape Wrath Trail using strip maps, he was headed for Shiel Bridge in a couple of days – quite a long way if the weather over the weekend turned bad (which it didn’t, much), so I suggested Inverie as an escape route: I hope that the ferry to Mallaig was working!

Back out onto the road in the dark, though I could make out the tarmac fairly easily, and back down the glen to the Viaduct, where I’d seen a signpost promising a 1.4km path more directly back to the Railway Carriage than along the main road. I assumed a good footpath, but immediately had to rely on my mobile phone light to see the way, which got steadily more slippery and difficult as I struggled through the brushwood in complete darkness. At last I came out onto a landrover track which I followed to the right, thinking that it would run below and parallel to the railway (as the real path must do). Coming to a broadening of the track, I took out my phone again for a look round, and while putting it away managed to drop it onto the ground, where it fell apart. By scrabbling around on my knees, I managed to retrieve the main part and the back cover but could not see more (i.e. the battery, although I did not realise that at the time). And of course the phone no longer worked!

A little further along the railway track, I came to the main road, but was uncertain of my whereabouts relative to the Railway Carriage: did it lie east or west? Turning left (i.e. east), I soon passed near a large building looking very like the hotel near the Carriage, and carried on, expecting to come across the track up the Carriage after a few hundred yards. But, as the darkness increased and the rain came on, nothing appeared, and oncoming traffic both scared and blinded me. Eventually I decided that Glenfinnan must lie in the opposite direction, and started the reverse trek. Then, suddenly, the Glenfinnan Monument (to Bonnie Prince Charlie, not Harry Potter) appeared, illuminated against the hills: how could I have missed it?! – it can’t have been lit up when I first passed by. And the “hotel” that I’d passed in the dark turned out to be the equivalent (or a gift shop?) at the Monument car park! With sore heels (I was unwisely wearing waterproof socks next to the skin), I at last made it back to the Carriage, very ready, after 3-4 hours out instead of the 1-2 hours intended) for a sit-down and a meal!

Postscript: the next day, I asked the Munro group to keep an eye out for my phone battery on the Viaduct track, and, sure enough, the President herself saw it on the ground as she set off on her bike. And, after a dry-out in a box of rice, the phone worked again!

On the Saturday, once the Rude Mechanicals (W. Shak., Midsummer’s Night’s Dream) had pushed off on their bikes, Derek drove the Corbett Group of Mark, Sue C., Sue M. and self a couple of miles west along the road, and we all got onto the hill at 9am through a convenient railway gate, the same way as Lydia, I and Gordon S. had climbed these hills in December 2013 (see old Forum posts). A rough path up very wet ground (not surprising after the torrential rain overnight) led eventually to the north ridge of Beinn Odhar Mhor, and up past the negligible lochan to the North Top, where the trig point, composed unusually of concrete rings, was now lying in bits, knocked over since 2013.

On our left was the Glenalladale Estate (9600 acres, prop. Thorntons Trustees of Dundee), on our right the Inverailort Estate (8890 acres, prop. Timothy G Leslie of Silchester near Reading). Then south along a very long and bumpy ridge and up to the Corbett summit, with good views over Loch Shiel far below.

Down the west ridge a little for lunch out of the wind, and then down to the col and up a long steep stretch of grass to the summit of our second Corbett, Beinn Mhic Cedidh, with the cloud coming and going but several further-away hills visible, e.g. Ben More on Mull.

Then down the north ridge, with a glimpse of sunlight

all the way to the col before Sguir na Paite (better than the more direct route), where we picked up an ATV track which at least showed us the water beneath our boots.

Over the Allt Choire Bhuidhe on a rough bridge, and further sploshing a mile or more east until we could cross – with some difficulty – the Allt Lon a Mhuidhe and meet up with Derek, who had been driving up and down the A830 like a demented hen, wondering when and where we would emerge from the bogs. Back to the Carriage by 5pm in good time for tea, shower, beer, food, wine and sleep!