Having experienced the beauty of the western Highlands just a few weeks previously, I decided to head to the Cairngorms for my next adventure. But I once again decided to break the journey up, driving up to Stirling on Friday night and then continuing to Boat of Garten where I booked to stay Saturday and Sunday nights.

On Saturday I tackled two Munros at Glen Lyon – Meall Buidhe and Stuc’d an Lochan. I found them fairly hard going, as the temperature was pretty cold for summer with significant wind chill, with sporadic sleet and hail showers. It was a relief to finally get back to the warmth of the car after finishing the second Munro, programming my satnav to direct me to the hotel in Boat of Garten.

On Sunday I headed up to the Cairngorm ski centre, with the aim of climbing Cairngorm and Ben Macdui. It was raining lightly as I headed up the path from the ski centre, but the air felt lovely and fresh and I was enjoying the hike up, so felt happy to continue. The forecast was for the weather to improve around lunchtime, so I decided I would make a call once I got to the top of Cairngorm, as to whether or not to continue on to Ben Macdui.

Well I made what was probably the wrong call. By the time I got to the top of Cairngorm, my outer waterproof layers were still doing a good job of keeping me comfortable and warm, and I was still thoroughly enjoying being out in the fresh air, despite the distinct lack of views. So I decided to press on across the plateau towards Ben Macdui, following what looked to be a fairly obvious path.

The problem was, after a while the path split, then petered out among vegetation, and it wasn’t long before I found, on checking the GPS on my phone, that I had wandered off course – not by a huge amount, but enough that I needed to try to get back onto the right course before I wasted too much time heading in the wrong direction. It was also, by this stage, absolutely tipping down with rain, which had started to seep into my inner clothing layers and even into my boots. I was wet, miserable and completely unable to see more than a meter in any direction because of the low cloud. My phone battery was rapidly running down due to the cold, wet conditions, so I stuck it inside my rucksack in an effort to preserve the battery – but of course that meant having to continue navigating without it and stopping occasionally to fish it out and check my position.

After much trial and error I eventually found my way back to the right path and doggedly carried on to the summit – I had briefly considered just heading down as I’d reached a point where I could have turned right to head down, or left to continue to the summit, but I was determined by this stage to reach the summit. I was delighted to see another walker coming towards me as I continued, and he confirmed the summit was straight ahead and that I didn’t have too much further to go.

Finally on the summit, if it hadn’t been for the summit cairn which clearly states “Ben Macdui” I could have been anywhere. I took a quick photo (since deleted, unfortunately, so can’t even record it here for posterity) and headed back down the mountain, getting to the cafe just in time to buy a coffee and a slice of cake before it shut. I had been too wet and cold on the hill to even think about stopping and fishing out one of the energy bars I had in my backpack, so was starving by this stage!

Back at the hotel, after showering, changing and having dinner, I started looking into options for booking another night’s accommodation for the following night, breaking up the journey home and allowing me to bag another one or two Munros on the way. My brother had been avidly following my exploits as I’d been sharing photos and brief walk reports via WhatsApp – and he quickly identified a set of 3 Munros, not far from Pitlochry, that I could aim for on the way back towards the Lakes. So I quickly booked a room in Pitlochry for Monday night, and set about reading up on the route.

Collectively these Munros are referred to as “Beinn a Ghlo” – with the 3 summits named “Carn Liath”, “Braigh Coire Chruin-Bhalgain” and “Carn nan Gabhar”. These were the first Munros I’d attempted whose names I was completely unable to remember or pronounce! Though there have been many more since – most of the Munros having retained their original Gaelic names.

My main memories of this day are of the seriously impressive quartz stone staircase to the summit of the first Munro (which I unfortunately didn’t think to take a photo of), the horrible boulders approaching the summit of the final Munro (where I fell and ripped a hole in the leg of my trousers) and the interminably long walk back to the car at the end. With an overall length of 14.5 miles, and over 4000 feet of ascent and descent, this was the longest and toughest route I had ever done, and I was utterly exhausted by the end of it. Views along the way had been fairly hard to come by, as the summits had all been in cloud, but I got lovely glimpses of views as I dropped down below the cloud between Munros. And was able to get a full panoramic view of the whole route from the valley floor as I embarked on the long walk back to the car at the end.