First married Munro...

Claire and I are in the North of Scotland on a belated honeymoon. We are based at Forest Way B and B until tomorrow morning - and then will probably camp in Ullapool.

Having driven to Edinburgh on Fri afternoon to spend the evening with Dad and Pat, we carried on the drive North on Saturday - on an A9 redolent with holiday traffic and idiots in caravans who refuse to go above 40 mph - until the get to the dual carriageway section and speed up. However, we arrived just south of Ullapool with a lovely forecast and so decided to get out walking the next day - Sunday.

After driving to the parking spot we set up following the stream we followed in ascent of Beinn Liath Mhor Fannich and the in descent on our final day of last year's holiday. This time it was much drier - the benefits of the recent heatwave; and we were able to make sustained progress. A party of FSP (fit Scottish people) whizzed past us and disappeared up Beinn Liath Mhor Fannaich at high speed. Regrettably, the two of us have spent far too much time at work and not enough in the mountains so we opted for a more sedate pace as we ambled towards our chosen hill.

One thing that was new was the construction of half a bulldozed track some of the way to the bridge before one starts the trackless section to reach the foot of the corrie under Meall Gorm and An Coileachan. I say half a track as it came and went for no adequately explained reason - however it did make for easy going when it was there. Having used it for a bit we descended to the bridge and began the grunt across country (and up). Given the dry spell this was better than the last time we did it; however it was not the highlight of the day and required us to have some sustenance before the final ascent.

The weather was good - as can be seen from the Picasa site https://picasaweb.google.com/102361192587557786751/AnCoileachan

and the final ascent to the summit of An Coileachan was ok. This was the last of the Fannich summits for me and the last one on the main ridge for Claire, and we found a nice spot out of the wind to have lunch. Although we both felt tired, we eschewed the 'simple' descent down the way we had come and elected to ascend Meall Gorm and go over it to try and descend the steep corrie beyond it and thus pick up the stalkers path where it terminated. It was at this point that the weather became - changeable. As in, we had sunshine, rain, gales and snow within about 5 mins flat! This pattern continued for most of the rest of the walk.

We had got to with 100 ft of the summit of Meall Gorm when we looked at our proposed descent route and it looked a trifle dodgy. We thus decided to descend the way we had come and amble back to the car. This would still leave a walk of a little over 10miles - which frankly is all we can manage at the moment.

The descent went ok - thanks to finding a path for the last third of the descent to the bridge! and we used the new stalkers path instead of our initial path by the stream to speed our way and allow our legs to stretch out a bit. The walk was lovely, however the levels of our unfitness our now painfully obvious and is something we need to think about when planning future walks.