Scotland's North Coast: Glasgow - Ben Hope

Friday 7th August 2009

In August 2009, I spent several days in the far north of Scotland doing an ambitious trip to ten Munros. I live in Glasgow however and the journey to the north coast was an expedition in itself. Distance measured, I travelled about 600km's that day to arrive at the foot of Ben Hope on the north coast from my front door. It was a long day and since I took many pictures that didn't quite fit into trip report pages, here they are.

The journey started with a lift from Steve into Glasgow City Centre. I took a train from (probably) Central Station to Edinburgh where I met Michael. We then travelled up the A9 from there, picking up two hitch hikers along the way. They were doing a bothy trip starting in Glen Feshie, Cairngorms, so we took the time to drop them off at the road-end before continuing on our way.



Then we headed north again, beyond Inverness, across the Black Isle then to Lairg and beyond. After many long hours we were finally approaching the north coast. With weather variable, the mountains were stunning and I'd never been to this part of Scotland before so everything was completely new. Ben Loyal is spectacular, as is Loch Tongue and Loch Eriboll. Loch Eriboll has a little bit of Norway about it, but the single track road threads from the coast all the way inland to the head of the loch then back out again. It has the potential to make for torturous driving but such is the nature of north-coast roads. We drove to Durness where we got something to eat before planning to head to Strath More, at the foot of Ben Hope, the following days objective.





Driving alongside Loch Eriboll for the last time, the skies turned pink and blue which also reflected on the water. Michael stopped the van, I jumped out and jumped onto the beach. I caught my foot on rolled up wire mesh, sending me headfirst onto the pebbles below. As luck would have it, my head was fine, my stomach landed square onto a flat boulder and the camera (which I held onto all the time) missed a rock at high speed by a couple of millimetres (!). I'd been winded and my throat hurt since the force of impact forced the air out of my stomach which all crammed into my throat. I was fine though (although I felt some discomfort) and we continued onwards to Strath More. I felt lucky not to have hurt myself but seemingly more important, my camera was fine. I could cope with bruises or bumps, but a broken camera this early on in a trip would devastate me.



It was in Strath More that we met Michael Kerrigan and Martin Forbes who had each driven up individually. We got a fire going and pitched our tents for the night. The midges were really fooking terrible and the black clouds swarmed everywhere. Although the midge-repelling smoke from the fire made eyes sting all around, it was better than living with the blighters. We also concocted the plan of climbing Ben Hope in the early hours of the following morning, a plan which would work to great success. If I remember correctly, we got to sleep somewhere around midnight so with alarms set for 3am, we didn't get much sleep.