Lairg to Glen Golly
With a morning to spare before the bus took me to West Merkland, I strolled to the Visitor Information Centre and walked the nature-&-history trail. Carvings of wildlife abound, some of them supersize!
At the Centre, smiling, helpful Elizabeth greeted all who came in. The displays were excellent, the layout spacious and relaxing. There was even an internet terminal, which I ignored on the grounds that to date I hadn’t missed mine.
The bus dropped me at West Merkland, and I set off on a broad track between the mountains. The gradient was easy. The world fell silent apart from the sound of trickling water.
Into the hills above Loch Merkland
At the summit of the pass the wind picked up, blowing in my
face as I walked beside the small lochs. Massive stony hillsides
rose across the valley, and a jumble of boulders and glacial
drift clothed the steep slope above me. From high on the
mountain came the call of cuckoos, a sound I’d hear frequently
in the next two days.
Ben Loyal and Ben Hope loomed ahead, but my route bore left
towards Gobernuisgach Lodge where Glen Golly River meets Abhainn
Srath Coir an Easaidh, which is a very long name for a very
short stream. Builders worked on the Lodge while deer grazed
nearby.
Loch an t-Seilg and Ben Loyal
Ben Hope 927m, the most northerly Munro
Gobernuisgach Lodge from Glen Golly
Heading up Glen Golly, I started looking for a pitch. There’s so much heather and peat that every green patch has to be considered as potentially a bed for the night. The green stuff is often sphagnum moss, which retains moisture, so it might not be the ideal material. Grass is a rarity, seen most often where drainage is good, and the best conditions I found were next to the burn. There gravel and sand had been left by countless floods. Vegetation had taken hold, and over the years it had established soil on top of a very effective drainage medium. I rested beside the gurgling burn, above the plunging waterfall, beneath a cloudless sky.
