Christine's walking & birds blog

When we arrived at the gate onto the moorland there was another hitch; a notice on the gate warned that deer stalking has begun and gave a number to call. When Greger tried to phone he found there was no coverage, and we had to drive south again. I pointed to a mast on a hill and suggested we try just below. Whether it was because of that or not, this time he got through; and the man at the other end assured us that we were okay to go up Cul Mor today.

So back we went, and off we went, up into the murk. A stalker's path led across the moors and then disappeared; as we picked our way across more stony ground the cloud lifted from the upper cone of the main hill and the weather became fine for the rest of the day.


After negotiating a boulder field (quartzite?) we reached the summit with its cairn and trig point.


A wheatear just beyond the summit cairn made a nice change from meadow pipits; and down on the col five "brown" birds seen with the sun behind them turned out to be pure gold.


As we continued our walk the plovers took flight and zoomed off round the shoulder of the mountain. This is looking back to the col and Cul Mor above it. The terrain here was completely different from the grey boulder field we had struggled up, with badly eroded areas (including the loss of vegetation) of Torridonian sandstone. This erosion (called a "deflation surface") typically occurs on exposed plateaux and cols, and is a natural process.  (Info from Land of Mountain and Flood by McKirdy, Gordon and Crofts.)


The tiny cairn of Creag nan Calman sits on a precipitous edge looking over Inverpolly and out to the misty sea.



Just below this top Greger pointed out a frog. There were also loads of small tortoiseshell butterflies around, including on both summits. During the descent, a juvenile golden plover flew from us with a call of alarm and stood watching as we dropped away down the hillside.


A runner, who overtook us on the way up, was one of very few other people on the hill. When he greeted us in passing he hardly sounded out of breath. We were still toiling up when he came back down, making us feel very slow and pedestrian.