Over The Hill

A matter of a few minutes after leaving the hostel in Lochranza we arrived at the North Glen Sannox parking area from where we would start today's walk. However; we still had the task of dropping off the second car, a few miles further along the road at Glen Sannox, which was to be our end point; this done we were now ready for our day in the hills.

A fine surfaced track climbs steadily up through the pinewoods alongside of the North Sannox Burn, with its waters tumbling over a number of rapids and minor waterfalls, and eventually ends as you exit the forest via a gate in the boundary fence. At this point we could clearly see the main Caisteal Abhail ridge directly ahead, with the very prominent V of the "Witches Step" stark against the white clouds.

Crossing the river, which even after a fairly dry summer, was a little challenging, we headed south west over the deep, and often watery, heather slopes towards the short south east ridge of Sail an Im and made our ascent north east towards it's 508m summit. Ahead of us on the ridge just short of the summit we had a wonderful view of a stag, silhouetted against the skyline bellowing his rutting call as his hinds ran ahead around the lower rim of the ridge. This was not to be the only instance of us sharing the hills with a herd of deer this weekend, as they were very prolific where-ever we walked, not surprising of course, this being the rutting season.

Sitting almost directly north of Caisteal Abhail, a great sweeping ridge runs from Sail an Im in a almost perfect semi-circle as it arcs around the steep sides of Garbh Choire and progressively rises to the very impressive rock stacks aligning the 859m summit of Caisteal Abhail. Although the weather was not as bad as forecast, our arrival at the summit coincided with the drifting cloud base deciding to hover over the summit plateau, and so denying us of any views beyond a few metres.

Standing below the summit rock stack, you are faced with a vertical wall of rock, which in the mist was quite intimidating. Fortunately, the route of approach actually by-passes the summit stack to the north before swinging around and making the approach from the east - this does not mean no scrambling, but it does make the scramble more do-able as the large rock formation lies back a little and you can approach the summit in short sections of easy scrambling. We had a few moments deciding which boulder would mark the highest spot, and even found the bolt and signs of the fixing from the Trig Point that once stood on this summit. My GPS marked our position as NR96903 44321 and the given position for Trig Point TP7441 (Abhail) is NR96909 44325, so I guess we hit the spot.

As seems to be our luck, the cloud lifted as we descended from the summit towards the 624m bealach between Caisteal Abhail and Cir Mhor, to be replaced by sunshine, which was quickly replaced by a battering of hail stones as we ascended the very rocky, and hands-on assisted climb up the steep slopes of Cir Mhor. The summit was heralded by more sunshine, which gave us the opportunity for some wonderful views from this central position within the Arran Corbetts, with all 4 Corbett summits being clearly visible from this lofty perch.

The shortest route from the summit of Cir Mhor to The Saddle is to make a descent of the east ridge, however, recent erosion on the steep scree slopes and the very exposed path has lead to this route being described as "dangerous" and "not to be undertaken"; therefore we decided to take the longer, but safer option of making our descent via the 591m bealach between Cir Mhor and A'Chir and dropping down through Fionn Choire before traversing east then north east to approach The Saddle from the the south via the head of Glen Rosa.

Standing at the head of The Saddle, it was easy to think our day was complete, all that remained was to descend into Glen Sannox and make an easy 5km walk back to Sannox. Not so, as we soon found when we came across the Whin Dyke. This has been described as "straightforward to climb when dry, a good bit more dodgy in descent, especially when wet", and of course, we were descending and it had been raining, with water running down the dyke. Without stating the obvious, we descended slowly and with care, and it was not as bad as first envisaged, but, nevertheless, it was probable the most awkward scramble of the day.

However, we could now relax, as with a further short descent, Glen Sannox lay ahead of us with its good path and easy walking through this beautiful glen, back to Sannox, where our pre-positioned transport awaited our return.

A brilliant day with some very exciting sections and two great summits.

Thanks everyone for your company - Arran has come up trumps once again.

Note: The distance for this route is 16kms - the additional 3km shown on the stats graphic is due to the fact that I did not stop my SatMap tracking before driving from the finish point at Glen Sannox back to our start point at North Glen Sannox to retrieve Mike's car, thereby adding a further 3km onto the walk total.