The Strathfarrar 4 ...

Back in the days of “North of Balloch Rules Apply”, big team trips were the norm. It was not uncommon to have 5 or 6 folks away for the weekends. More recently it has tended to be two man day raids …so it was nice to have a wee overnight with the “Gnome” Pascall, “Shamir” Ferguson and my Dad. We drover north and stopped at the excellent Real Food Café for a bit of dinner where we bumped into Andy Mac who was starting a road trip on his GS1100.

Arrived fairly late up at Cannich and went to bed with one eye on the weather. The plan was to go over the four Munros in Glen Stathfarrar so only good weather would do (we did have a couple of contingency plans). The Gnome’s snoring is the stuff of legend but thankfully not only was the next morning sunny but the wee man had kept quiet overnight!

We grabbed a quick breakfast before heading down to the gate at the end of the glen in time for it opening at 9am. Shuttled cars about so we had a vehicle at either end (last time I was down here I was solo and on a Suzi 600 Bandit and as such had a fairly long walk back down the glen after coming off the hill). We opted for an anticlockwise round for no particular reason. Up the glen and onto the first summit of Sgurr na Ruaidhe – Shamir was all happy about being back out on the hill after his 8 month lay off due to back problems. The second summit of Carn nan Gobhar was an easy hop and rather strangely is only 1m different in height.
One huge difference that I have noticed between Corbetts and Munros is that days with multiple Corbetts are hard …since you have at least a 500ft descent / ascent between each summit. Heading over to the third and fourth tops the boys seemed happier and happier with each cairn! Briefly met up with a family who owned a cracking wee dog called Balou. Arriving at the car it was nice not to have to walk back to the start.

The return journey was punctuated with another stop at the Real Food Café for tea and cake.