Started the journey up to Tongue at 9am, stopping of at McDonalds in Perth before arriving in Tongue at 4:30. The sun shone for the most part of the journey and Allan and myself was in good spirits about achieving what we were planning to do this week. Tongue Youth Hostel is situated on the shoreline just past the main village and before the causeway. The scenery was really nice here as you could see up the bay into the North Sea. This hostel is an old building with big rooms and a decent kitchen, which has pans, plates and utensils for your use. Sharing our dorm were two Germans who were in Scotland cycling, they found it highly amusing when they learned that we were Scottish as it is unusual for Scottish people to holiday in Scotland. We went to the local pub in Tongue where I had a pint of Ember. It is a nice pub with comfy seats and the menu looked good although I heard people saying it was quite expensive. We went back to the Hostel and made ourselves Vesta Paella. This was really easy to make using a frying pan and was quite tasty. After we ate we went through to the Lounge to read our books for a while before going to bed about 9:30. The one this about Youth Hostels which we will find out a lot is the noise from other people. There was a large group of Danish men who were cooking and talking out loud up to 12 o'clock which kept me awake.
Woke up at 7:00 and felt refreshed after the sleep. We made porridge before heading off to climb Ben Hope. We started the climb at about 9:00. The start of the path is marked with a boulder clearly showing the path. The path starts at the base of the Munro and virtually goes straight up the mountain and there are no ridges and so the going up was tiring although the path was well trod on and we had no problems finding the way to the summit. The view from the top was clear enough to see some of the other mountains in the area like Ben Loyal and Ben Klibreck. You can also look to the sea and see the outlines of the Outer Hebrides. We also spotted a herd of deer running along half way up the mountain but were too far a way for a decent photo. It is a pity that other mountains in the area are not Munros as the two mountains we climbed this day were pretty tame. We got back to the car about half twelve and made our way to Ben Klibreck which was about 20 miles away along a single track road. Along this road we stopped to look at a Broch. There was a tourist board beside it stating that these buildings were about 2000 years old and are circular shaped which makes the building hard to gain access to under attack.
Finding the start of the walk to Ben Klibreck was more difficult than Ben Hope. There is a car park beside woodlands where the walk starts. Ben Klibreck is a slog to climb, which involves a long and boggy walk of about a mile to reach the start of the climb. There is a steep slope we climbed up to get to a path that led along the ridge towards the main summit peak. The path here was easy to follow and kept a reasonable slope along without the near to go up and down hill all the time.
The last slope up to the summit is cone shaped and is steep with scree and fallen boulders, which makes the going that wee bit tougher. The summit has a good-sized cairn where you can shelter from the wind and, like Ben Hope, has expansive views of the area
On the way down we passed a family with two children who were on the way up. We followed the path around the ridge again and finally got back to the car about 5 o'clock to start our drive to our second Youth Hostel John O Groats.
Before we went to the Youth Hostel we went for a pint of John Smith's at the most northerly pub in Scotland. The pub was reasonably busy with mostly tourists there and was well worth our while visiting
The Youth Hostel is situated 2 miles from the pier of John O'Groats and again is an old building that used to be a doctor's house. It is roughly the same size as the Tongue Hostel and was busier due to the location. Most of the people staying there were cyclists and were mixed Nationality. One of the men there said that he used to work at the CairnGorm Ski centre that we passed by on our way to CairnGorm summit in May.
We made Vesta Beef Curry for our dinner and then went through to the lounge to read a book and also have a game of Cleudo which was provided by the Youth Hostel. Again the kitchen was well equipped but we found it annoying that there was no toaster and so could not make toast, which would have been most welcome. We went to bed at about 11 o'clock when all of a sudden one of the ten men in the dorm started snoring really loud which disturbed my sleep.
Woke up at 8:00 and after we had made our porridge we drove to John O'Groats to get photos of the area. After this we drove to Thurso, as this is the birthplace of William Alexander Smith, the founder of the Boys' Brigade.
It took a while to find the museum and his house of birth, I went to the Tourist Information Centre to ask for directions but the lady did not give clear instructions. After searching for a while I got out the car to ask an old lady where they were but she completely ignored me and walked on. Apparently most of the locals do not take anything to do with strangers. We then asked an elderly gentleman who was gardening and as soon as he knew what we were looking for he gave us a salute. It turned out that he is a King's Man and was a member of the 2nd Fraserburgh Company years ago. He pointed us to the right direction for the museum and shop. Unfortunately though, the museum did not open until 2pm and so we were not able to go round it but we were able to see the house and take photos.
After we left Thurso we headed across country to Ullapool along the tourist route. The going was slow in places as a lot of it was single-track road and drivers were not pulling in to allow us to overtake them. Also when we were able to overtake some cars on a two-lane road, the other drivers would speed up and this caused some panic, as we had to overtake near blind corners.
Ullapool is a nice wee port town on the West Coast. I have been there a couple of times before but this was mostly for boarding the ferry to go to Stornoway. We could not get parked outside the Youth Hostel as it was restricted access and so had to park in a public car park about 5 minutes walk from the hostel. We checked into the Youth Hostel and went for a pint in the Seaforth which is a modern building with very much a folk theme to it with an outside beer garden.
When we got back to the Youth Hostel we cooked mince and spaghetti rings for our dinner. Allan tried to use the computers provided there to send an e-mail to Gus but could not get his e-mail account to work. After we had ate and washed up we went to a Himalayan exhibition which was on at the village hall. This was full of clothes, masks paper and musical instruments. I bought a mask, making sure though with the girl who was working there that there was no curses on it.
When we got back to the Youth Hostel we went into the lounge and got talking to two German girls called Julia and Anita who spoke perfect English. They were on holiday her for about three weeks and were spending the night in Ullapool before heading up to Tongue so I was able to give them details or the beaches and small isolated piers that I had been to last year in Skerray Bay. They are studying vetinary medicine in Munich. We also advised them on Glasgow and Edinburgh and places to go in the cities. We arranged to meet up with them later on in the pub. We found two pubs in Ullapool; there was an older pub on the shore road that we went to which was like a fishing pub where we had a pint. There was a sticker on the wall saying "I'm not an alcoholic, alcoholics go to meetings" which I thought was quite funny. We headed of to the Seaforth after the pint and met Julia and Anita there and so continued on our conversations. We then headed back to the Youth Hostel and to our beds.
The ridge between Conival and Ben More Assynt
We woke up and headed out of Ullapool at about 8am. We almost forgot to get more petrol for the car as we were running low.
Conical and Ben More Assynt were only about a 30-mile drive from Ullapool and so we managed to get walking at about 9am. The start of the path to the two munros started at a hotel car park in Inchnadamph and led through a glen that was part of the Inchnadamph Nature Reserve. Along the path there are caves that have been cut out but a stream that were well worth a visit, one section of the underground river is apparently 1 mile long and there has been archaeologists studying the area in the past.
I could gain access into one of the caves and walked along a small section of the cave to see where it took me. There was a small opening in the cave where I could squeeze out but I could not see any easy way of getting back onto the path as the sides of the opening were too steep to climb safely. We followed the path up onto a ridge and from there ascended Conival. When we got near to the top a couple were coming back down with a dog. Apparently the wind was so strong up on the summit that the dog that was the size of a Yorkshire Terrier was air borne a couple of times. The wind was so strong at the top that I was almost air borne myself and it was tricky to get to the summit cairn without injuring myself.
At the top we could see the ridge that led along to the Ben More Assynt summit and looked awesome to say the least as it was jagged in places and we knew it would be tough due to the gale force wind that was hitting it. We slowly made our way weaving our way across or over the many turrets along the ridge being careful not to slip, as there were large drops on either side. Eventually we made it onto the summit of Ben More Assynt where we stopped for a rest. As like quite a few summits I have seen there are two cairns and so it was difficult to judge which was the true top so we went to both.
An American, Pete Lightbody joined us here. He stayed in Scotland for two years once and started Munro waking then and now he comes over every year to do more. This was his 121st Munro which was quite an achievement considering the fact he has to come over from Atlanta to climb. When we asked him about the two tops he agreed that we should have visited both as apparently Ordnance Survey changed their mind about the true top of one of his previous mountains and so he could not say that he had been to the top.
We made our way back across the ridge and started our descend until we found shelter on the ridge I mentioned earlier. Allan mentioned here that he saw someone in a yellow anorak waving at him from a ridge higher up than us and then saw the person again a minute later. We rushed up to see if they were okay as they may have been in trouble and calling for help but when we arrived we found out that it was just three Italians who were camping out there and were waving at us to say hello. The guy looked awful embarrassed when he saw us appear running at him asking if everything was okay.
After we rejoined our path we did the easy descend down to the car park. On the way we passed a couple who had only got as far as Conival who did not seem to believe us that we had reached the summit of Ben More Assynt. He also seemed to find it strange that we did not continue along the ridge past Ben More Assynt even though there was no reason for us to do so.
We got back to the car at around 4 o'clock and started our drive to the last Youth Hostel we were going to which was Aviemore stopping off in Inverness for chips.
When we arrived at the Youth Hostel we knew when we saw it that we were not going to like it as much as the previous hostel we had stayed in as it was a modern building and had no atmosphere to it.
The member of the staff who was on duty was called Pete and he was a rather grumpy man. He made it clear to us that we must in no account leave the kitchen messy and it he caught anyone doing so he would happily kick them out. He also explained in detail, trying to put in some sarcastic humour the other rules of the hostel. I got talking to him later on and asked him if the hostel was busy on Christmas day, he said it was and he has had to work Christmas day in the past. He said he did not mind it must as long as he did not need to dress up as Santa. After that he left me to go and check that nobody had left dirty dishes lying about. I laughed when I later saw rice covering a carpet near the dorms and wondered what his reaction would be to that, would he interrogate everyone?
We went for a pint in a local pub along the main road, it took us ages to find a pub worthy of going in as we found that most of the pubs were modern trendy wine bar places which we are not keen on. Eventually we found a half-decent one that was a pub in the day and club at night.
When we arrived back in the hostel we literally just went straight to bed and I fell fast asleep straight away.
This is proof of Nessies excistiance. He was found filling up with petrol near Loch Ness.
We woke up at 7 o'clock and checked out of the hostel early and drove to the start point of the next climb at Auchlean. The path was an old fox hunters path and took us through a small area of woodland before climbing up to Carn Ban Mor which is the ridge running along between the two munros.
I have been told in the past that some of the Cairngorm munros lack aesthetic appeal and this was certainly the case for these two mountains. We headed for the summit of Sgor Gaoith first and this took us along a ridge that can only be described as a meadow, it was like something out of The Sound of Music! We did to the mountains credit come across a cliff edge that looked on to Braeriach which is the next munro to the east which was a stunning view. We could also see a few of the munro's we have climbed earlier on this year like CairnGorm and Bynack More, which gave us a good feeling of accomplishment. We stopped for lunch at the summit and then headed back the way we came to start the walk to the summit of Mullach Clach a' Bhlair.
To arrive at the summit of Mullach Clach a' Bhlair there is a bulldozed track that leads virtually the whole way, weaving around the small marches and bumps in the ridge. It was a shame to see this bulldozed track as it shows just how much mankind has wrecked the beauty of our countryside. The summit of this munro was very plain with just a small cairn at the top. There was a good view to the South East of mountain ranges in the distance.
We made our descend, arriving back at the car at 5pm slightly disappointed that the munros were not all that exciting in places and drove back down the A9 to Ayr. Arriving back at 8:30.
The week had been very worth while, we had great weather through out apart from the wind at the top of Conival and there was enough places of interest to keep us occupied without being stuck an isolated place without anything to do. It is also a relief in the fact that we have got the most northerly munros completed which will cut down our travelling in the future (We travelled 1000 miles in total this week). My highlight of the week must be the ridge walk between Conival and Ben More Assynt. On the down side was the dreary climb of Sgor Gaoith and Mullach Clach a' Bhlair which seemed to last forever.
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