Flat and boring Caithness and Sutherland? There's more to the north east than people think - Dave Hewitt explores the hills and the joys of the area.
Last week was spent on the road, up north, pottering about in a hire-car. Six nights away, with hills to climb and friends to see. First came the annual Marilynbaggers gathering, this year held in and around Golspie on the east Sutherland coast. Previous events had been in Corpach in 1999, Lochgilphead in 2000 and a very wet Morar in 2001. The idea is simple - to provide a venue and a bit of conviviality for anyone interested in climbing Marilyns -hills with 150m drop on all sides, regardless of height. (See www.staclee.freeserve.co.uk/marhofn/marhofn84/)
When the idea of a gathering first fuzzed into focus, it was primarily for those who had racked up 600 or more of the 1,550-odd hills in the list; but Alan Dawson - the list's compiler - is healthily anti-elitist and quickly broadened it to anyone who fancied coming along. Close on 30 people showed up at this year's event, organised by Jonathan Woods of Airth. A fair percentage booked in at the Sutherland Arms Hotel at the north end of Golspie and everyone gathered here on the Saturday evening for a meal (good homely food, friendly service, recommended).
Not everyone stayed in the hotel however. A few campervanned and I was one of several who camped on the disused site out toward Littleferry, just south of the village. Camping on an abandoned campsite has a lot going for it - the grass remained good and flat, it was free, no one seemed to mind and the lack of facilities was easily offset by forays into the hotel for food, drink and football-watching. Had anyone challenged us I was quite prepared to argue that although, yes, we were winging it here, we were also shoving a fair amount of money into the local economy.
Worries that the site might prove noisy due to the presence of a kart track nearby proved unfounded. All manner of Wacky Racer dragsters rolled up ahead of a weekend meet but they proved a mild-mannered low-decibel group and the only noise through the first night came from a windy downpour that started at 4am and eased off at breakfast time. I had pitched the tent badly and ended up with soggy feet.
Not for the first time I felt I hadn't got a clue about far-north weather. All the usual inklings and hunches about fronts and wind directions don't seem to apply, with everything governed by microclimates and the presence of coasts on three sides. When I zipped the tent it had looked odds-on a quiet night with a nice day to follow, so quite where the early-hours downpour came from I have no idea.
We were there to climb hills, preferably obscure ones and the Saturday gave a typical - and typically haphazard - Marilynbagging day. It's not a game where you tend to set out with an absolutely fixed hill agenda. Various people had gone off to Bonar Bridge or Dunbeath but the majority stayed close to base and drove or cadged lifts up Glen Loth north of Brora.
It's a fine glen, this - buttresses on one side and empty on all sides, the kind of place that deserves to be better known but never will be due to a lack of height in its hills. The original plan for most people was a circuit west of the road - the craggy 628m Graham Beinn Dhorain combined with the round-the-back 545m Marilyn Carn Garbh. There was windy clag around at 11am however, so most people straggled up the 592m moorland bump of Beinn Mhealaich to the east of the pass.
This was essentially a delaying tactic - and it worked - the cloudbase started to shred as we were on top, such that various complicated plans suddenly gelled. Alan Dawson, Mary Cox and Bert Barnett trundled round the original west-Loth circuit clockwise from the bridge at the mouth of Glen Sletdale, while Ursula Stubbings, Colin Kinnear and I did the same round in reverse, starting with a brutally steep slog up Ben Uarie above the pass. The cloud had cleared but it was hellish windy here, the trig is enclosed by a circle of stones, and it was hard to clamber inside without sustaining some World Cup-style leg injury.
Beinn Dhorain beyond was my first new Graham since a very wet Beinn Clachach in Glenelg last August and my first non-Ben Cleuch Graham of the year (although my 31st Graham of the year total, which does rather suggest that I should get out more). Ambling down the long slope west of the summit brought some very unfrequented country - Carn Garbh could well qualify in a Top 20 of least-visited mainland Marilyns, certainly if tree-covered hills are excluded. We met the clockwise party on top, they had seen an adder beside the river while I had almost stepped on a newborn deer that squawked loudly in alarm.
The loop back to the road was clammy once out of the wind and the terrain - deep heather and deer-tracks - made the day feel far harder than a map-glance might suggest. Linking lower hills like this is deceptive. I'd been on the standard (and well-pathed) two-Munro circuit over Stob a'Choire Odhar and Stob Ghabhar a fortnight earlier and this Glen Loth effort was much harder - the equivalent of three, even four Munros.
Sunday gave a slow start after a late night in the pub and several of the Marilyners temporarily forsook the hills for the England-Sweden game on TV in the bar. I suffered this until half time, at which point brightening skies tempted me away. Knowing I would be working back down the coastal strip (which contains a surprising number of hills) later in the week, I took the chance to head north west, meandering across to Tongue, where Meall nan Clach Ruadha above the village was another wait-on-the-weather wander. The top was clagged in but it looked brighter inland, so I drove to Loch Loyal. Here, Beinn Stumanadh was undoubtedly Hill Of The Week - a wonderful, and wonderfully positioned, mid-sized standalone summit, a combination of Ben Stack, Ben Tianavaig on Skye and Eaval on North Uist.
As with so many hills, Beinn Stumanadh is often seen but rarely climbed, being on the "wrong" side of Loch Loyal to Ben Loyal itself. Any of the Loyal satellites are worth a look and Stumanadh is reached by a shingle strand between Loch Loyal and Loch Craggie. From here you need to get round, or over, the steep nose of Sron Ruadh, so I headed south through the loch shore woods for 15 minutes (fine path) before turning straight uphill. The ridge above, once reached, curved to the trig - a great little hill, only 75 minutes up easy grass and gravelly heather. The view was tremendous - Ben Loyal plus lots beyond - and the northern ridge gave an amble-angle route down. The only downside to the entire circuit was the amount of rubbish on the strand. I tend to carry spare supermarket bags and one of these was soon filled with lager cans and two-litre drinks bottles. Some people...
And so to Thurso, for a night with local dentist Chris Andrews and his Dutch wife Heleen. Chris has an interesting hill heritage. Not only has he done a lot of stuff himself (Munros, Corbetts, plenty of climbing), but his late father, also Chris, was an unlisted Munroist. We know this because it's mentioned in two different obituaries in the SMC Journal but we're still working on exactly when he might have completed. Chris junior was aged just ten when his father died in 1953 and the vital copy of Munro's Tables (hopefully annotated) is missing, so we've been trying to piece things together from old photographs and references in the diaries of Chris senior's friend John Dow, whose own completion came on Beinn na Lap on 4 June 1933 (in the company of Percy Donald, compiler of the Donalds list - but that's another story).
The current best guess for Chris senior's completion is sometime between late 1938 and October 1947, although not during the actual war years, given the restrictions on movement and the fact that Chris's car was up on bricks for the duration. Even if the completion came towards the end of this period, say 1947, that still puts him in the first dozen Munroists as listed and the first 15 all told insofar as is currently known. We're working on it - and if anyone is able to help with connections or recollections, please get in touch.
Next morning Chris and I drove east to tackle the Brothers Griam (Ben Griam Beg, Ben Griam Mor) in more confusing weather. We left Thurso with skies clearing but ran into major murk as early as Reay and found ourselves on Ben Griam Beg in some kind of near-total saturation experience - cloud clamped down almost to road level, rain falling and humidity levels cranked up so high that I really don't know why we bothered with waterproofs. I'm sitting here writing this snuffling through the first cold of the year and if I caught it anywhere, I caught it on the Griams.
Conditions improved slightly as we dipped and crossed to Ben Griam Mor - the cloudbase rose, the humidity thinned and it started, intermittently, to pour with rain. This was better, even if we still couldn't see much, and we were happy by the time we reached the Garvault Hotel, to where we were able to traverse by virtue of Heleen and her sister having kindly moved the car round. The Garvault deserves a mention as surely the oddest hotel in Scotland - stuck out on the moor, miles from anywhere, halfway between dilapidated and ramshackle. We arrived to find absolutely no one there apart from a couple of gruff German angling guests who seemed to be trying to make the place as smoky as possible to complement its damp mustiness. Strange place, think horror movies, think League of Gentleman. We quickly moved round to the Forsinard, which we were relieved to find cosy, friendly and near-as-damnit normal.
One final thought about the Griams. They're oddly like Macleod's Tables on Skye - both pairs are landmark hills seen from far off, both pairs are too low to attract mainstream baggers (there will be a lot of Munroists who will never have set foot on them), and both pairs are just that bit too awkward to be casually picked off in the one go. They're fiddly but enjoyable.
Down to Bower that night, between Castletown and Wick, to see old friends. I wasn't fussed about climbing a hill next day but the morning proved the only blue-skied one all week and the temptation to drive to Braemore for Morven was just too much. Morven is often cited as the exception that proves the rule of there being no hills in Caithness, as it's the most obvious thing on the skyline in views from the Buchan coast.
But there are other hills right next to it, good hills too and I'd been on these four years earlier on a day when a dodgy hamstring and rapidly deteriorating weather necessitated giving Morven itself a miss. Today, too tired for the full round of Maiden Pap, Smean, Scaraben and Morven, I just aimed for the last-named and took advantage of it being clear and relatively calm. Its out-on-limb position and its height, 706m, make it a candidate for windiest hill in the country. It's also a slog low down - bogs then steep, deep heather - but above 500m the terrain thins and it's all fun. There's a false top/tower with a nice easy corner to its right and from there the highest point is just a stroll.
The main top lacked any kind of a cairn but did have a fair old view. The problem however - and it's this that made Beinn Stumanadh, for me, the better all-round hill - is the problem with any big conical hill, be it Schiehallion, be it Tinto - to climb it is to remove the most eye-catching object from the view. Still, Morven provides one of the easiest fast descents around, I found myself 450m down, back on the moor, inside 20 minutes without trying to go fast. (The next 20 minutes were then spent searching - successfully - for lost gloves, something that I'm lucky to get through a dozen walks without at least one bout of.)
As and when you do go there, try and take in the full round of all four summits; they're one of the oddest and ill-matched collections, a real thrown-together job. Scaraben is an undulating stony ridge, Smean a stepped plateau with Cairngorms-style tors, and Maiden Pap - well, that's a real curio. It's occasionally described as looking like a mini-Morven but that's simplistic. For me, a better description is this - think of the Mither Tap of Bennachie with the rest of Bennachie removed. It's a great little hill, unlike anything else I've seen. Well worth a visit, as is this whole north eastern corner. Don't believe anyone who tells you that Caithness and east Sutherland are flat and boring.
Dave Hewitt
13/6/2002
Dave can be contacted at Dave.Hewitt@dial.pipex.com
