Carn Gorm – Meall Garbh – Carn Mairg – Meall na Aigean

12 miles, 1400m ascent, 7 hours 15 mins

Technically this was an Autumn day but it didn't feel like it. Our day almost ended before it had begun.  Shortly after 6am on a dark morning, we entered a rather large puddle on the A6 just 3 miles from the house.  Apparently the road was shut but the sign indicating this was near kendal so I just ploughed straight in to the lake that had formed over the road and narrowly avoided stalling the car which spluttered from then on all the way to the Highlands.  It was a rather exciting car journey involving a further enormous puddle on the A6 and a flooded Doune, I had wondered why people were staring at the car, but couldn't see anythign obviously wrong having stopped and peered at the undercarriage for the source of a highly irritating scraping noise.  This finally became unbearable on the road over to Glen Lyon and it wasn't difficult to discover the source of the noise.  The numberplate had clearly been yanked off the car body in one of the puddles and it had trailed on the road ever since. After 220 miles of this there wasn't much of the number plate left, so I yanked the remainder off and continued.

We finally arrived at our starting point, with me feeling a little bit frazzled by the journey.  If we thought that the walk would be easy after the trials of the journey, we were quickly put right.  once out of the shelter of the trees, the wind started to whip us and it wasn't too long before we entered a white world.  I managed to persuade Ben to continue past the first Munro and by dint of taking one top at a time and hanging on to Ben to stop him being blown away, we eventually made it round.  The final descent was made in a full blown blizzard in the gloom and then the dark.  We met one other man who I think was glad of our company to find the way down as conditions were truly horrendous.  By the time we arrived at Weem, the underfloor heating was much appreciated.

Photos