With painful memories of a DNF on the Devil of the Highlands
ultramarathon still fresh, I needed a break in the hills for some restoration. I decided on shortish drive and a shortish day out; Beinn na
Sroine in any guidebook or website suggests a straight up and down from the car
with a total route of 3.2km. This wouldn’t do. I checked the OS maps and detected a
weakness in the apparently impregnable fir tree moat. It was a relatively cool
day at 14C with drizzle my only company.
I left the car in the layby on the Oban road and it was
straight into the meat and potatoes of a lung-bursting ascent up long grass and
onto the final summit. A mile from the car and approx. 400m of ascent saw my
hit the trig point in 35 minutes with no view except the old posts where a transmitter had
stood many a year ago. I wasn’t ready to end my day out with a simple
out-and-back so instead headed West and across some peat hags following an old
land rover track. I started the eventual descent and sure enough the barrier of
forestry stretched across the hill. To my delight, I found a stag antler and
packed it away as a prize for the day out. I eventually located a new forestry
track, which was on map and followed the zig-zags down and round towards
Strone. Although it was an unsightly deforestation, I was able to run most of
the way back and eventually re-joined the main road about 2 miles from the car.
A good 7-mile walk/run all done in just under 2 hours and I felt great. 70
Grahams racked up. ‘Only’ 149 to go.
