Over The Hill

This hill comes with a health warning! A quote from a Scottish hills website for Beinn Bhreac “You need to be sadly hooked on ticks to bag this 9 hour Corbett” and that says it all and just about describes me!

Les and I and our two Corbettbagging friends attempted this hill three years ago in August, but the roadworks on the A9 held us up for so long we were running short of time. However we cycled to Bruar Lodge thinking we might have a chance. The weather was not kind and it took 3 hours!

Friday 2 July was the last day of the good weather forecast so Les and Trish met Alex at Calvine near House of Bruar at 8.30am and set off just before 9am for our second attempt. Perfect cycling weather, with a gentle breeze from the SW. Crossing the A9 with bikes was ok but we had to push them up the steep stony start. The 13k track along Glen Bruar is good in parts and very rough in others with a steady climb, so it’s a case of on/off/push/back on/pedal. 7k from the start and having dropped 100m disaster struck! My front tyre looked flat oh no. As my tyres have Presta valves it’s a bit of a palaver fitting the pump. We tried it twice but no good. Now what? Abort and try again a third time? Alex, bless her, came up with the solution. We would swap bikes and she would walk mine back to her car and go home and allow me to try and bag this elusive hill. So kind. However Alex’s bike is a man’s bike with handlebars a long stretch away and a painful saddle – but it was wheels! We’d lost half an hour but no matter, we were on a mission.

There are good views up the glen of the munro Beinn Dearg but no sign of our hill. Eventually Bruar Lodge comes into view and there is a bridge to cross the River Bruar. We dumped the bikes a short distance along from the Lodge at 11.30am. Stashed the helmet and jelly pants and got out the poles for the walking part. There is a new hydro dam in the glen but it looked very dry the day we were there. There is a great stalkers’ path on the north side of the Allt Beinn Losgarnaich which aids the climb and affords great views down into the gorge with a few waterfalls. This was really the only interesting part of the walk. Two grouse flew out of the heather close to the path which gave us a fright. The definite path peters out at the top of the climb but we managed to find a feint path/deer track which helped the crossing of the expanse of featureless ground. The dark bell heather and light pink bog heather were just coming into bloom. We saw a few frogs but not much else apart from a small lizard. The ground was mostly dry fortunately but there were plenty of boggy areas too. The path runs close to the lower slopes of Beinn Garbh but is not shown on any map. We had a short break at 12.45 at a lochan, again not shown on the map and thought we were looking at our Corbett. But no, not yet. We heard a loud rumbling noise and couldn’t decide if it was a fighter jet somewhere close or summer thunder. It went on for ages, so it must have been several jets practising low flying.

At last at 1.15 we identified our target, Beinn Bhreac. We crossed the Tarf Water which was very low and after climbing through heather and tussocky grass eventually, at 2.15 saw the cairn and made a beeline for it. While we were eating the second part of lunch a runner appeared from the north, passed us without saying hello and just carried on. I think sometimes we girls are quite mad but that takes the biscuit. He had a heavy backpack on too - was it filled with bricks I wonder and was he in training for something. We enjoyed our half hour break looking round, trying to identify the hills to the north, Braeriach, Cairn Toul, Ben Macdui, and loving looking at the clouds and the blue sky, before summoning up the courage to start the return journey. It had taken 5.5 hours to the cairn including stops, surely we could get back in less time.

The return journey on the bikes went well and included a fair amount of freewheeling, until we reached the hilly bit. The dreaded climb back up 100m where we had to push up for 25 minutes was hard work, but the last bit of track was a speedy ride back to the A9 crossing. Les had to keep stopping to wait for me to catch up as I am more nervous cycling downhill. We got back to the van at 7pm. Goodbye Glen Bruar. Never again.