Over The Hill

Glen Douglas is a beautiful glen to drive along, a steep climb out of Inverbeg and the narrow single track road running west through the glen, lovely views. The only problem is, you make the three mile drive along the glen towards the only parking area available just east of Invergroin constantly hoping that you do not meet any vehicles coming in the opposite direction, as at some points passing places are rather infrequent and the edge of the narrow road is definitely not conducive to wheels off the tarmac. My luck was in, no oncoming vehicles, and the parking area free of any other cars, although within a few moments, it was full, as Ian with Peter on board and Mike arrived for our short but energetic day on Beinn Bhreac.

There is no defined track for an ascent of Beinn Bhreac, although the hillside does have a few ATV tracks heading in the general direction of the lower slopes, and we have usually followed one or another of these tracks until the point at which they would diverge from our planned route and we would then take to the open hillside. And so it was today, onto a very wet, boggy and rutted ATV track taking us through the deep tussocks and up around the west side of the forest to the broken gate and fenceline at the northern most point of the forest. We had been here before, but in slightly better weather. Today the mist was hovering around the hillside on every level above the forest boundary. We could head on a direct bearing up the open hillside to the summit, but again we made the best of our knowledge from our previous visits, and continued on the diminishing ATV track into the mist for a little further until we decided the track had served its purpose and we simple took a bearing for a bee-line approach to the summit.

Leaving the ATV track to make it’s easy contour to wherever it was destined, we, on the other hand had to change up a gear as the slope now steepened considerably as we hauled ourselves up some fairly steep grassy slopes towards the summit plateau, with one more obstacle yet to overcome, a barbed wire fence, which runs along the approach, however, once again, we called on previous visits and headed around the fence line to a known gate, which oddly enough does not actually open, but provided a means of climbing over the fence line at a barbed wire free point, from where it is just a few hundred metres to the summit and it’s fine Trig Point.

A misty summit, no views but a fine spot for a lunch break before we made the short walk along the summit ridge to view the fissure which splits a large rock in a deep cleft. Still in the mist, we made our descent towards yet another known factor, a high level gate which would once again see us over a fence line, and also, as if the gate was the entrance to another weather system, we broke out of the mist and cloud and could clearly see the distant forest boundary and the glen, towards which we would descend to complete this short, in distance, but nevertheless an energetic walk in the hills.

Thanks all for a fine day. John