The road to redemption

I'm desperate to ski.... but to be honest skiing is currently looking pants in Scotland. In the last day or so the ski centres have opened limited terrain/runs but with not much snow and no real base it all looks a bit pointless at the moment.

However every cloud has a silver lining... and the lining is pretty big up here at the moment with a dusting of snow on the hills and clear sunny weather in the NW of Scotland.

So my plan was to visit another couple of the local Fannaich hills, An Coileachan and Meall Gorm. To access these from the South it involves a cycle of approx 10 miles (it may well be less, I didn't really check this!) to Fannich Lodge, then you ditch the bike and start a hiking.

Having a rest (don't tell Martin)

?fox tracks

The ride in was beautiful, and I saw 100's of deer, getting very close to quite large groups of stags, I guess helped by the fact that I was down wind of them. I seemed to get to the lodge quite quickly and ditched the bike behind a shed and started out up hill.

Looking East

And on to the next peak

It was a great walk, and I was the only person on these hills today, in fact there weren't any boot/foot prints in the snow at all. The only tracks I saw were from a fox and I followed these for a while ('he' was following ptarmigan tracks!) until he went North and I had to go west.

down I go

It was staggeringly clear and sunny today, but quite chilly with a strong wind. MWIS predicted a wind chill of -18, and it felt it so I didn't linger too much (Martin), but kept moving.

All to soon I was back at the bike, and I thought I have a nice easy ride out.... but with the head wind and hills (seemed hillier on the way out) I was knackered when I got back to the van - och well.

when will this cycle end!!

What a great day and my soul feels recharged ready for work tomorrow...! At least its only 1 day until the weekend, and hopefully more adventures. I love Scotland - such a magical place.