Christine's walking & birds blog

Ben Wyvis

"A vast, characterless, sprawling massif which may well discourage anything but the briefest visit." (Irvine Butterfield, The High Mountains of Britain and Ireland.)

"Ach, it's nothing but a big, boggy pudd'n!" (Kilted Scotsman eating porridge in the Achnasheen Hotel, August 1993. Incidentally, the Achnasheen Hotel later burnt down.)


We got up when it was still dark and Greger had to scrape ice off the windscreen. After a forty-minute drive, we parked and set off up the path with hats and gloves on.  I heard crossbill calls, and this optimistic shot probably shows three (with a chaffinch top left). Crossbill makes the Scottish mountain list!


The Garbat Forest was beguiling, but it was as ever exhilarating to leave the plantations behind and get out onto open moorland. Greger snapped this with his mobile; ahead is An Cabar, our first top and the southern end of the long ridge of Wyvis. We thought we heard red grouse but failed to see anything.


Great views opened up. This is Lochluichart Wind Farm, with the easternmost of the Fannichs on the extreme right. The hill on the far left is Fionn Bheinn (about 30 kilometres away) and is the Munro we went up when staying in the Achnasheen Hotel all those years ago. (It was admittedly a very wet year.)


Before reaching the first top, we heard and then saw three ptarmigans above us. Two disappeared but one stayed put, close to the path, only standing up reluctantly as we climbed above it.



The path has been fortified with large blocks of rock to prevent further erosion - a staircase of stone snaking its way up the hill. Ben Wyvis is a very popular outing, a sort of  "home hill" for Inverness. The wide ridge is rather Cairngorm-like; it's a national nature reserve, and you are urged to keep to the path in order to safeguard the special habitat. Here, we still have a fair way to go to the top, even though it's in sight.


The summit shelter on Glas Leathad Mor ("Glas Lehat Moar") was full, so we sat on its outer rocks to eat our lunch. It was pretty cold. With people coming and going all the time it was impossible to get a clear shot of the triangulation pillar; so I just snapped the number at the bottom and then took a general shot as we began the walk back.



Having got our circulation back, we stopped to watch four or five ravens tumbling over the huge grassy bowl of the Coire na Feola.


Back down among the conifers we saw a large flock of finches - a couple of hundred, at least. Among them was at least one brambling - another first for my mountain list.


The walk was nearly fifteen kilometres, and as usual, although we were among the first on the hill - we were among the last off it. Everyone overtakes us.