North to the Cape - Day 6: Shiel Bridge to Glen Ling

Just north of Shiel Bridge is the place where the North to the Cape route, which we were following,  and the Cape Wrath Trail,coming in from Glen Lichd,meet up and continue on to the Falls of Glomach.  After that there are a few variants, which we had mused over but the wet weather and heavy going underfoot inclined us to stick with the Book's route via Killilan and Glen Ling to Strathcarron, from where we would be getting the train back to Sheffield in two days time and return to the day jobs.  For now, the biggest hurdle to overcome was leaving the comfort of the hotel.  The high winds and heavy rain had continued most of the night.  Looking out of the window at 8am, the clouds had lifted a little but it was still raining steadily. I focussed on packing the rucksack and collecting still damp items of clothing from the drying room.  I wanted to get off before either of us articulated the idea of calling it a day and getting a lift to Strathcarron.  At the same time I felt a slight pang of guilt at dragging Christine back out into the wind and rain for another two days.  But this was what we had come to do, so it had to be done.

We finally got away at 10am and headed for Morvich, passing the Jac-O-Bite restaurant which Steve Gough and I had called in at during our first day on the TGO Challenge last year.  Well to be strictly accurate, during our first 500yds from signing out at the hotel!  Despite the rather naff name, the J-O-B does extremely good coffee and cake.  Thankfully it didn't open until 11am, so we had no temptation for further delay.

Glen Shiel and The Jac-o-bite

The road to Morvich and the forestry section above Strath Croe is not terribly exciting but it made a welcome change from the previous day's endless splodging over trackless moorland.  The rain came and went in heavy showers and we gained height up to the Bealach na Sroine, which has a line of cairns spaced every hundred yards or so.  I know this is a tourist route but even in dense fog it, I would have thought it would be almost impossible to get lost along this narrow corridor.  By this time the cloud lifted enough to give some fine views to the north and a sizeable river ending abruptly in some white stuff.  OK, so maybe this was going to be worth turning out for. 

The Allt Coire Lochan disappearing over the Falls of Glomach, viewed from the northern end of Bealach na Sroine











This stretch is such a contrast to Knoydart.  These hills seem much friendlier and the whole place has a far less serious feel to it, which was not unwelcome after the previous four days.  There is an NTS sign at the top of the falls warning you it's a dangerous place (you don't say) and a steep path down the side which leads to a couple of natural viewing platforms where one can gaze in awe at the power of nature and capture it inadequately on an SD card. 

Falls of Glomach

One postive thing about rain in Scotland is the way it brings out the waterfalls.  Glomach is about the same height as Gaping Gill main shaft is deep and I'm happy never to have seen this much water going down GG.  Feeling slightly wobbly, which may have been the exposure or hunger, we climbed back to the top of the falls and had a bite to eat, thereby treating the symptons for both possible causes in one go. 

The track down the left side of Allt a Glomaich is well defined and mostly risk free save for a few awkwards steps lower down.  The Allt na Laoidhre, which crosses the path, required wading. 

Crossing the Allt na Laoidhre

Stopping on the far side to wring water from socks (and boots), we had some more lunch before continuing down to Glen Elchaig, where a good bridge crosses the River Elchaig. 

Looking west down Glen Elchaig

The track and subsequent road to Killilan isn't that exciting but it did allow us to pick the pace up a little.  There is a bunkhouse at Camas-Luinie and if you know that, and the fact that there is nowhere to camp at Killilan, you would take the road on the left about a mile before Faddoch.  We didn't know either of these facts, so we headed straight to Killilan, with its neatly trimmed grass verges and tidy fields.  It felt like being in Switzerland but a Switzerland where nobody lives.  It was 6pm by now and we were getting a bit past our use by date for the day.  We sat on a wall just by the sign pointing to the bunkhouse 2km away and brewed up some soup.  Neither of us felt like doing it.  It was 2km and it was in the wrong direction. When a  car drove past I flagged it down to ask about camping.  The occupants were very helpful and suggested we could probably camp by a shed just over the bridge.  It sounded a bit vague and when we went to look at it, it was in a field of sheep with no easy access to fresh water, despite the R. Ling being close by.  It wasn't raining and we still had at least 3 hours of daylight so I suggested to Christine we continue on for another hour to look for somewhere in Glen Ling.  This wasn't greeted with any real enthusiam but the options were limited, so we headed up the road to Nonach Lodge, ignoring the somewhat off-putting sign saying private road.  We were half way up the road when a car drove up full of fisherman (fly not Captain Birdseye).  They stopped and asked us if knew where we were going.  I tried to sound confident.  I'm a consultant.  I spend my life trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about.  Rather perceptively, they asked if we were looking for somewhere to camp and said that there was a good spot by the river about 35 minutes walk along the track which follows the river.  They said we needed to turn right at the end of the road and go through the gate by the hen house.  This was slightly confusing as the hens had gone to bed, as their owner explained to us when he came out to ask if we knew where we were going and explained the route again.

It had turned into a lovely evening and knowing we had a place to camp, our spirits lifted as we passed through the iron gate.  The track leads to a gate in a deer fence, at the point where the power lines cross the river.  Immeadiately after this the path forks.  The obvious route goes uphill whilst the route following the river is less clear.   So excited was I about getting the tents up, I would have missed it, had Christine not shouted me back.  It was a good job one of us still had an eye on the ball.  The River Ling is a proper Scottish salmon river, wide and pondering for long stretches, punctuated by small cascades and deep pools and whilst not a fisherman, I can see it must be a fabulous place to stand and wave a fly around on a bit of string.  I can't remember the detail now but I do recall that the rock slabs in the riverbed offered some interest to a weary walker with Ben Killilan rising up behind.    There are two camping spots but the first is well above the river, so not so convenient for fresh water.  The better one is about five minutes further on, a little before the Allt Loch Innis nan Seangan, and is a large expanse of flat grass separated from the shingle shore and River Ling by a small flood embankment.  The midgies were out by the time we got there and pitching the tents was a rapid affair and I remember collapsing inside and after a while, forcing myself to get the stove on and warm up some food.  It was 9pm.  Another satisfying day, where we'd overcome the temptaion to give up at Shiel Bridge and ended up two miles further on than planned.  It rained during the night but only lightly.

Our camp in Glen Ling














We'd covered 16 miles and a climbed a tad over 3000ft that day and were 62 miles from Glenfinnan.

Three Counties Cave System

An article in yesterday's Mail on Sunday about the Three Counties System, in the Yorkshire Dales National Park is also on the Daily Mail website at

Into-abyss-Stretching-counties-70-miles-inside-Britains-vast-newly-pioneered-cave-system.htm

Cavers have been exploring the various individual caves in the system for the last 30 years, looking for and making connections.  The system now totals around 70 miles in length.

The new connection links Notts Pot with Lost John's Cave.  During 1985/86 Steve Gough, Ric Halliwell and I spent over 100 hours digging beyond Acrobat Pot in Notts Pot, at a site previously dug and abandoned by Lancaster University in the 70s.  We had occasional help from others, notably Ian Jepson, who is now sadly no longer with us.  We broke through a very unstable boulder and mud choke into a new piece of cave, which Steve and I explored for a couple of hours one Monday, comprising a mud filled hall having an aven with a roof of jammed boulders and some clean washed, narrow stream passage with a few fine formations leading to a flat out bedding plane crawl partially filled with loose cobbles. We named the aven Hangingwater Hall and the passage, Clay Pigeon Inlet (because it had a chute part way along it).  We published our discovery in the CPC journal for that year.  When we returned the week following the break-through, the route into this new stuff had collapsed and despite many weekends of digging, which involved lying in mud in an increasingly smaller space, poking above our heads with a large iron bar, we never got back through.  Our feeling was that this would have been a dry way into Notts II, which had recently been discovered by divers.  This preceded the opening up of a route to Notts II from the surface by about 10 years. This link to Lost John's goes off from at inlet in Notts II.  This is nowhere near our dig but it's very satisfying to see the connections gradually falling into place, even if it has taken more than 20 years to get this far.

North to the Cape - Day 5: Onwards to Shiel Bridge

It rained heavily all night.  Looking out from the door of the potting shed the next morning, everywhere was awash.  Knoydart was in flood.  I half expected an ark to go sailing by with pairs of animals on board: 2 sheep, 2 deer, 2 midges, 2 cleggs (or would that be a Clegg and a Cameron?).  I went out clutching the poo trowel to contemplate the day ahead and inspect the ford.  It looked considerably deeper than the previous evening. 

 We put all our wet gear back on - bringing back unpleasant memories of Sunday caving trips in the Dales - and stepped from the relative comfort of the shed into driving wind and rain.  At the ford we loosened our rucksack straps, linked arms and with one pole apiece waded across slowly.  It was only knee deep but it was fast flowing and underfoot was quite uneven and loose.

After the ford - the track below Sgurr na Sgine











After some sock wringing, we followed the track until it ran out at the point where the burn coming off the south west corner of Sgurr na Sgine meets the Allt Coire Mhalagain.  And now we faced a more serious challenge.  This was in spate and too dangerous to cross at this point.  We  followed it uphill for about 500 feet, passing a dozen or more branches until eventually it was possibly to cross safely. 

Our nemesis - the uncrossable burn














We kept the height, contouring round the western slope of Sgurr na Sgine and rising up towards the bealach.  I was looking for a lochan and I was looking for a summit called Meallan Odhar.  Unfortunately, I was looking for both of them in the wrong place.  There is a lot of contour activity in that particular kilometre square on the 1:50000 and with the rain on my glasses and the wind, I was having trouble making sense of it.  The image of the topography in my head was nothing like what I was glimpsing periodically through the cloud and rain.  We were too high for Meallan Odhar and we had missed the lochan somehow.  I got a position from the GPS and set a compass bearing for the lochan.  The terrain still didn't make sense but our best shot was to believe the map and not my head. 

Christine was also having a bad time, being blown over by the wind.  In my urgency to get off this hill, I lost her twice in the space of a few minutes.  It brought to mind the line about losing both parents from The Importance of Being Ernest.   Following the bearing,  I'd lost some height (reluctantly) and when I looked round I could see her above me, but encased as I was in black goretex, she couldn't see me, even from 50 yards away.  Nor could she hear my shouts and whistles and I had lines from a King Crimson track playing in my head - "I talk to the Wind, My words are all carried away".  Cue flute and melotron.  It made a change from the theme to the A Team, which had been plaguing me since Glenfinnan.  

I walked back up the hill and shouted something like, "follow me", which must have got translated by the wind as "stay there".  Another compass check and I set off again towards this irritatingly illusive lochan.  I found a line of fence posts heading downhill and followed them to the lochan, perched right on the bealach.  Unfortunately this was precisely the direction I had just minutes before told Christine not to go, thinking it would lead into the wrong valley.  I looked behind me.  No-one was there.  I waited a few moments for her to come out of the mist.  Nothing.  I left my pack by the lochan and fuelled by panic induced adrenaline, ran back up the line of fence posts.  I found her sheltering behind a big rock.  I took her pack and shouted to follow the fence posts and stop at my rucksack.  I threw on her pack, pulled the straps tight and set off behind her.  It was a monster.  I was bent double against the wind and every gust threw me off balance. 

We reached the col and swapped rucksacks.  "You've got to burn this thing", I shouted but I don't think she heard me.    I pointed to the valley and threw myself down the slope with only one thought in mind - to get off the hill (this time checking I was being followed).  A couple of hundred feet down and the wind died away, the rain eased and the cloud lifted. Wiping my glasses I took another GPS reading and located us on the map.  We were dropping into the wrong valley.  And then the penny dropped and I understood what we should have been doing.  In fact the Book says, go up to the bealach and keep to the left of the lochan and contour towards a line of large stones.  Of course the Book was back in Sheffield.  The stones are actually a rough wall  with a track behind it.  The track leads to Meallan Odhar, which is at the end of a spur running NE from the bealach.  How obvious and simple it was now!

The Forcan Ridge from the bealach below Meallan Odhar


















We climbed back up to the wall, and followed the track to Meallan Odhar, from where we descended to a col separating the A87 and the Allt a Choire Chaoil.  On the way down we passed some lads who said they were going over the Forcan Ridge.  Had it been a sunny day, we had considered this as an option but in these conditions it seemed madness.  Later on I looked back and could just make out two of them on the ridge.  I wouldn't have been surprised to them clinging by their fingertips as the wind blew them out like flags.

Allt a Choire Chaoil

Our route down Allt a Choire Chaoil was largely trackless punctuated occasionally by some evidence that we were not the first to pass this way.  The rain had set in again and it took an age to cover 2.5 km to the point where we should have been able to cross the Allt Undalain and pick up the land rover track leading to the campsite at Shiel Bridge.  However, the gods weren't letting us off that lightly and no matter how long we stared at the problem, the water level didn't get any less than suicidal.  So we continued down the eastern side of the river, which was trackless, boggy and rough, periodically taunted by the sight of the land rover track.  We were starting to lose any sense of enjoyment today but pressed on with the promise of a warm, dry room booked at the Kintail Lodge Hotel.

We arrived in a very bedraggled state and I was slightly worried that when they saw us they might tell us they had lost the booking!  Instead, they were splendidly welcoming and helpful and showed us to the drying room.  A hot bath, hot meal and a few pints of Red Cuillin made the world a better place.  Outside it was still raining.

9 miles and 2,400 ft for the day. Total distance from Glenfinnan: 46 miles

Neither of us took many photos that day.