The Fabulous Isle of Arran

Well the title shoud say it all. Arran floats off the east coast of the Kintyre Peninsula (where we are staying til mid August) and its interior is quite mountainous and rocky. Its got a great example of a glacier carved U-shaped valley... 'The Glen Rosa' in its middle.

Jamie spotted the hills flying into Campbeltown the first time and was determined he would traverse the ridges he saw. So we set off on a free weekend to do just this. We took a map but decided we would study the map and then not look at it again, just to add a bit of adventure to the trip.

We caught the 8.50am ferry to Lochranza, found a breakfast place, loaded up on delicious fatty food and then walked up the road to find a good spot to access the ridgeline.






We found a good spot on the road to Brodick to access the ridgeline and bashed our way through bracken and lumpy, peaty ground to the top. This is a pic looking west towards Lochranza and the Kintyre peninsula in the distance:

After a couple of hours walking and skirting bogs we followed a patch of forestry to a col. It had been really dry weather for 2 months before we went to Arran so the ground was actually pretty dry comparatively. Even so it seemed squelchy everywhere so we had to hunt around for a good, dry campspot:


We ditched everything but the essentials and headed up to a gap in the rocky ridge we could see that was due south of us. The gap was amazing.We could see through into a big valley running east-west and then through that to another valley ‘The Glen Rosa’ that runs north-south.
We decided to do a horseshoe of the ridge surrounding our tent and hopefully get back in time for tea! Then halfway round we saw another cool peak 'Cir Mhor' that involved a bit of a side trip so we included that in our plans.

We got to the top of this peak ‘Cir Mhor’ just as the weather packed in. The wind was making the cloud swirl like big ice-cream scoops over the saddle below us.

We found a couple of lost Polish folks halfway down to the saddle and showed them the way round to the road and Lochranza. It was really tough going back up the ridge to Casteal Abhail – the wind was pushing us around so much it must have looked like we were drunk. Tea did end up being a bit late that day but it was much appreciated.

The next morning the rain had eased and the wind completely. We packed up and decided to head towards the town of Brodick via the ridgeline. It was rotten getting back onto the ridge. It was cloudy and humid but no wind so the scourge of Scotland was out in force – Midges, I hates them I do.

Back up on the ridge the blessed wind got up and there were no midges. We sat down on top of Casteal Abhail – big blocks of square rock and ate our lunch.

Back at Cir Mhor we decided to take the western ridge round and down to Brodick. This ended up being quite difficult with packs. It required quite a bit of rope work and even a small rock climb. Luckily we’d brought a basic kit along though no harnesses. So we made a couple of harnesses out of long slings. Jamie did all the hard work while I offered useful and helpful suggestions at the bottom. He really appreciated these and congratulated me in a most flattering way.

It was atrocious weather – raining hard, really windy and the viz was terrible. Most of the time we were up there we didn’t know which ridge we were on (there were 2 running parallel). The only good thing about the weather was it was coming from the south so wasn’t too cold.

At one point we tried out a body abseil technique that a friend had shown Jamie. It went (well our version) like this:
Take rope through legs, behind back and crossover the shoulders. It worked really well, although I do think the packs on our backs helped.

We finally got to the last peak at about 7pm. It being Beinn Nuis. We got down the ridge out of the wind, ate the Snuring from Norway that was our emergency ration (I packed a bit light on the food) and high-tailed it to the Glen Rosa valley for a campsite.

My dinner that night will go down in history as the best you’d ever eaten. Imagine falafel paste half cooked in 2 inches of sunflower oil, a few chunks of capsicum and corguette thrown in at the last minute. Jamie loved it and really admired my ability to whip something up in no time. Even the bacon and maple syrup pancakes at the café the next day couldn’t beat it.

The next morning Jamie went to collect some water from the stream nearby and found this gorgeous, fat adder sunning itself right beside the stream:

Afterwards we packed up tent and headed down the valley to the track out and the town of Brodick. A few hours were spent lounging in Brodick eating pancakes and drinking coffee, before a bus ride back to Lochranza and the ferry.


This is Bog Asphodel, a pretty perennial that grows in swampy areas - plenty of those on Arran