I’ve just returned from a superb 5-day mountain backpack around the Cairngorms, a favoured area at the moment with two recent blog reports already posted from Robin at BlogpackingLight and Martin at Summit and Valley that I’ll study at greater length when I’ve completed my own report. The conditions were perfect throughout and this mouthwatering circuit included 9 Munros (it would have been 10 but for a mishap on day 2, more of that in a minute…).
It will take a couple of days to sort out and process the shedload of photos and write up my report, but in the meantime the photo right is a quick taster.
Some thanks are in order for this trip:
Firstly thanks to Sheila at Rambling On for local advice and assistance with parking in Glenmore, that was a great help and I’m very pleased to meet you (you are only the second person from the online walking community I’ve ever met).
Secondly thanks to an unknown couple I met on Ben Macdui regarding the above mishap. On a solo backpack I always phone home at a few key checkpoints each day so that Vivien knows my progress in case anything happens (wherever I can get a phone signal actually, which is usually at or near summits). I left the gathering at the summit of Ben Macdui to make the call in peace and opened the OMM Trio chest pouch where I keep the phone beneath the camera:- no phone. I ransacked the Trio and all my pockets and it was gone, it must have fallen when I took the camera out. I hurried back to the summit area, thinking that I might have to beg someone for a quick use of their phone, but everyone had gone and it was deserted, and after a painstaking search I failed to find it. Then a couple arrived and I told them I had lost my phone: I’m terrible at recognising accents but they were European and spoke quite good basic English, and they said that someone had found a phone lower down the mountain and had left it on a rock beside the path. They were returning in that general direction and I tagged along, and at Lochan Buidhe they indicated a position somewhere beyond the small snowfields. They continued on their divergent way and I retraced my steps along the path, quite sure I wouldn’t find it if indeed it hadn’t been picked up already, but sure enough about ½km from the lochan there it was beside the path, just as they had said. It was such a relief that I hardly noticed climbing Ben Macdui for a second time!.
So if you ever read this, whoever you are, I did find the phone and thank you.
12 Comments
I’m so glad to hear that you got your phone back. There’s nothing quite like the unexpected kindess of strangers to make one’s day! The trip sounds fantastic, and I look forwards to reading all about it.
I am really looking forward to your report Geoff - and what an amazing bit of good fortune to find that couple who had actually done the same route as you.
I am looking forward to the report a lot Geoff. I love the place and am glad to hear you are getting up there. The phone story was a bit of luck. The weather….well all I can say is you lucky person.
Looking forward to those photos!!
PW,
Hello stranger, you disappeared from the scene for quite a while!. I see you were on the TGOC this year, another one to catch up on. The phone itself is just a cheap thing, it was not being able to ring home that bothered me (and my own incompetence in losing it!).
Alan
Hello again, another entertaining TGOC report from you as usual. It was also incredible luck that they arrived at the summit at the same time as me.
Martin,Robin
I’m looking forward to comparing routes and notes, I’ll be uploaded tomorrow.
As usual looking forward to your next trip report.
Glorious weather or what! You sure it was Scotland?
The mob - I keep mine in its belt case clipped via a karibiner to a loop inside the sack. Always in the same place and easily spotted if its gone astray
James - All uploaded now.
John - I’ll have to think of a foolproof system something like that. I might be able to shift some bits and pieces around and use a hipbelt pocket.
Hi Geoff, Glad you enjoyed your trip around the Cairngorms, great report and fab’ photos.
Have read and enjoyed many of your trip reports around wales but it was actually nice to see and read about places that are I’m more familiar with.
I think when coming to Scotland you are always more likely to find better weather on the east side rather than the west but I think you excelled in picking the right few days, it does make such a difference.
Thanks Paul - we could do with a lot more weather like that. We already have a joint return trip on the cards, but definitely not next week:- hot, humid and thunderstorms. Not quite the ticket for Scotland, west or east!.
The pictures of the NW of Scotland in particular are mouthwatering, just our kind of area, damn it: it’s so far.
Hi Geoff, it was lovely to meet you at Glenmore before you set off walking in the hot, hot sunshine. Weather reports said it had been 31°C that day in Aviemore - the hottest place in Scotland. Six days later there was 2 inches of fresh show on the Cairngorm!
31°C - crikey, it was very warm in the glen but it didn’t seem that hot. Anyway I found the temperature just right on the tops but some native Scotsmen were complaining about the heat by all accounts.