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May 26th, 2008
 | 10:10 am - The weekend ...
Sunshine ! The Scottish countryside looks so gorgeous in the sunshine, especially in spring.
 rwrylsin and I hatched a plan around Thursday or Friday, when it looked like the weekend weather would be reasonable, to drive up by Loch Lomond, see if the heather was looking spectacular, and see a couple of castles. By the time we set out yesterday, that had somehow turned into "Let's climb Ben Lomond !". Why yes, we are crazy, why do you ask ?
Still, we picked a good day for it, bright and sunny, although a bit breezy - forecast for 900m was about 5-7° with 30kt winds (but still bright and sunny). We got to Rowardennan at around 12:30pm and set out. The first section (up to Sron Aonaich or so) is moderately steep in places, but manageable (with a few rest stops along the way). After that there's a gentle climb along a ridge line, before the final 250m or so up to the summit. The views were, of course, magnificent - excellent visibility, out to Ben Nevis (44 miles away) and beyond. Well worth the walk up. On the way down, we decided to go via Ptarmigan, which starts with a quite steep climb down the NW side of the summit, then follows the ridge line around to Ptarmigan, then a steady descent back down to the shoreline about 1km north of Rowardennan. This was harder work, mainly because my knees (especially the right one) started complaining - they'd been fine on the way up, but they don't like descending very much, apparently. We rested more (along with regular photo stops), and took a bit longer than expected getting down again, but made it in the end, getting back to the car by about 7pm. A bit longer than the estimated 4 to 4.5 hours that the guides and websites all say, but on the other hand we're hardly experienced hill climbers (the last one we climbed was Skiddaw in August '06), and there were quite a few photo stops, so I guess we did ok.
Photo post to follow ...
Current Mood:  tired
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