.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

canoeing, kayaking and other adventures

canoeing and kayaking adventures born in the Southeastern U.S. and now centered in Scotland...

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

First Visitors: Lucy and Andy visit 16/6/2006 - 18/6/2006

Our first visitors from back home were Lucy and Andy. A conference in London and brief jaunt to the Netherlands offered a reasonable enough excuse for a short trip to Edinburgh. Lucy had seen Edinburgh already. Andy had not. If they had not been delayed by train, they may have enjoyed some brief touring in the city, but our big plan was to drag them north to see the countryside. A test hike that Friday night on Arthur's Seat determined our plan for Saturday: Ben A'an. It's a nice hill in the Trossachs, technically a chunk of a bigger but less impressive hill called Meall Gainmheich, which I'd love to learn how to pronounce someday. This trip was my third car hire experience in Edinburgh and my first where they saw my American license and didn't "upgrade" me to an automatic. Very nice. :)

We set out first thing in the morning, picking up picnic lunch supplies first and then heading into the hills. I picked up a map in Callandar and Lucy attempted some early Christmas shopping for Andy's sometimes difficult-to-please family. Then, we headed to the Ben A'an car park, where we were not the only ones to think it was a fine day for a hillwalk.

The first half of the hike was wooded and midgy if you stopped or walked too slow. We reached the treeline and were treated to a first glimpse of our summit. The stark and rocky terrain made it look farther away than it was. We continued upward. Midge issues followed, although not nearly so bad as in the woods. Lucas played drama queen for a moment, protesting the continued upward climb. I gave him a little encouragement.

Occasional breaks gave us lovely views back to Loch Achray. About 2/3 of the way to the summit, a wee castle on a peninsula in the loch came into view.

We stopped for lunch near the summit, on a nice overlook facing Loch Katrine. Our logic, in addition to being hungry, was a trade off between enjoying a view and keeping the wind to a breeze. Sure enough, when we summitted after lunch, the wind was definitely stronger. Not epic, but strong enough that the summit was not warm. We took a bunch more pictures and then began the journey down.

We hiked down fairly quickly, taking one good break at an overlook in the woods only to retreat from the midges. We reached the car park and walked out to the loch for a quick peek. Then we loaded ourselves back into the car. The next part of the plan was to give our friends an epic mini-tour of the Highlands, pointing out some of the nicer places. They slept through much of the tour. We stopped for dinner at a pub in Glen Coe, enjoying fine food and chats with fellow adventurers, before turning to head home. Our fellow adventurees slept much of that drive, too.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home