Saturday Night Fever (3 Cluanie Munros)

I took the opportunity for another run last night, the three Munros just north of Loch Cluanie - Ghluasaid, Conbhairean and Sail Chaorainn - actually, I returned back over the middle one so it probably counts as 4? yeah, definitely 4.

Whilst doing them I discovered a new branch of fell running where you don't actually run up anything steeper than about 5 degrees, I just couldn't get going, still, the down and flats are always nice.

Last of the light hitting the South Shiel Ridge

I didn't set off until after baby bath time so ended up doing the last section of descent by head torch which added to the excitement but also meant I got to enjoy the setting sun over A'Chralaig and Mullach Fraoch-choire to the west.

View from Conbhairean

The sun disappeared as I hit the last Munro, Sail Chaorainn

I set off from the van at 7.30pm and was back at our Highland hostel at 11.10pm and covered about 16km, not bad but could have been faster in the daylight (and if I actually ran some of the ups!).

--Matt

The Loch Lochys

My darling wife and our beautiful baby boy were heading up to the bright lights of Inverness for some important retail therapy, I took the opportunity to squeeze in a quick(ish) run.

The Loch Lochy Munros (Sron a Choire Ghairbh and Meall na Teanga) are our local Munros and soar steeply over Loch Lochy, an imposing sight from the A82.... and easily reachable by bike.

Unfortunately, today it didn't look like the picture above...it looked more like

....and this....

It was pretty grim up on the tops but this probably served to speed me up a bit, no reason to hang around and enjoy the views.

As per usual for me, the up was hard going but the down was very enjoyable (apart from my fall), from the usual parking spot at the forest gate it took 2 hours 45 minutes to bag both summits, much better than the 6 it took last time I walked it. I broke up the 6km ride back to the 4 star luxury comfort of Invergarry Lodge (Reviews) by stopping to watch a little of the Scottish Six Day Trials before getting home to a well earned shower and a dozen or so beds that needed changing.

--Matt

Sisters of Kintail - double quick!

The 5 Sisters of Kintail is one of the classic ridge routes in Scotland, it takes in 5 peaks, 3 of them Munros and offers magnificent views (apparently).

The weather was looking promising as Rick and I shuffled our cars around to save a long walk back along the road but the heavens opened just as we were about to set off - it didn't last too long - by the time we'd messed around and put our jackets on it had pretty much stopped.

(excuse the camera strap in that shot)

It was quite tough getting up to the ridge but was over fairly quickly so we could start enjoying the ridge. All 5 summits where shrouded in cloud but we got a few glimpses of views as we headed along - to be honest, we were going so fast we hardly had chance to look around!


A lot of the ridge isn't conducive to fast (or slow) running - quite rocky and windy, few bits of fairly deep snow to sink in but there a couple of nice long sections and the final section down from Beinn Buidhe and along the Allt a Chruinn was great.

I thought we'd done well, 3 Munros and 16 km in 3 hours 15 minutes that is until I checked Stephen Pyke's Blog for an update on his continuous Munro attempt - he'll be doing these three in a couple of weeks....along with another 9 Munros further along the Glen at the same time, still.... everybody's got to start somewhere.

--Matt

Meall Fuar-Mohnaidh - Run for the hills

There was an excellent article in Scotland Outdoors magazine about fell running this month written by fell running aficionado Steven Fallon recommending Meall Fuar-Mhonaidh (over looks Loch Ness near Drumnadrochit) as a decent hill to get started on, well, it's only up the road - so why not.

Rich and I have talked about this hill a few times but just never actually got round to doing it - if it's written in a magazine saying what a good run it would be then it must be true - we had no excuse.

After a couple of what could loosely be called training runs in the last few weeks - twice round the garden trying to catch a chicken and once along the river trying to get the dog back on his lead - I felt I was ready.

As it turned out it is a great little hill, a little boggy but not too bad (only fell over once), nice and soft on your feet on the way down. Saying that, I'm not sure why they call it fell running, we must have (fast) walked 7/8's of the way up, down was good fun though.

Now, the magazine says allow 1 hour 30 minutes, we did it in 1 hour 27, 1 hour 22 if you don't count the five minutes rest at the top - we must be naturals!

--Matt