Weather/Conditions: Absolutely torrential rain in Garelochhead just prior to going out, which eased to heavy rain on the hill and a battering wind. Cold but with no snow anywhere, so just rain-washed black moors and a heavy sky. Hard!
Distance/Ascent/Time: 3.1km / 120m
Accompanying: Alone

If it weren't for a list of 100m summits, I really doubt I ever would have come this way. Cnoc na h-Airighe is a fairly anonoymous top above Garelochhead, and is almost entirely swamped by military operations. I was looking for a new hill to go up, and this one was near to Glasgow and could be climbed in the teeth of a storm: it is a very modest 219 metres above sea level.



In the morning I stopped by Dumbarton and ended up trying an Eagle Boulder traverse with Brendan. I drove to Helensburgh where the sea walls were being breached by the waves from the south-west. At Garelochhead I sat in the car outside the shop in absolutely torrential rain: I perhaps should have wondered what on earth I was doing here!

Actually, the biggest downer on the day was far from the weather, but the military presence which I can only consider a stain on this far corner of the Highlands, a nuclear facility of a country I do not want any part of anymore.



Cnoc na h-Airighe is situated less than 300 metres from the boundary fence at Coulport, so I approached out of sight from parking to the north. It was a raw day of waterlogged moor and rain-bearing wind screaming through.

To the west, Ardgoil and Clach Bheinn were a beacon and a hint of what lay further north; but this wildness is tempered and diminished by the presence of the military here. I did not enjoy my walk out to Cnoc na h-Airighe, for reasons that have nothing to do with the area itself.

360° Panorama

Cnoc na h-Airighe