Christine's walking & birds blog

Sgorr na Diollaid

When we left the car a cuckoo and a willow warbler were singing unseen and a redpoll was displaying, with brief rests between its song flights.


This is the beginning of our hill; but beyond the highest point in the picture there is quite a lot more of it - most of it boggy. The photo was taken at the end of the day, as the morning was glum and the tops wreathed in cloud.


Two common gulls were on the fields by the river, and a little way up, a male stonechat was heard and finally located some distance away. Near the knoll on the left, I lost my Lowe Alpine mountain cap; and then we lost the view back down into the valley, and headed north.

The going was soft and soggy; big cushions of sphagnum moss - beautiful to look at but tiring to walk on - and wet, reedy grass. We were quite high (650-700m) when I paused to look down at Loch Craskie, and caught sight of a red grouse.


Two more dips and rises lay between us and the summit; but at last we had it in view. The name is said to mean "peak of the saddle" - and you can see why.


A meadow pipit was the only bird seen near the summit.


It was an easy scramble up onto the eastern pinnacle, and difficult to tell whether this or the second one was the higher.


I thought the rocks on the western pinnacle were too slippery to clamber up - until Greger showed that it could be done; and after he'd got down I went up (not enough room for two). Someone has planted a stick there - a bit like the flags and things they leave on Everest - so perhaps this one is the summit.


Once more, the top of a Corbett repaid all the tedious boggy effort of reaching it! We sat in the shelter of the rocks and had lunch before descending the same way. This is looking east, showing the interesting summit mix of slabby rocks, narrow pools, and peat hags.


To the south lay Glen Cannich with its winding river; in the distance is the dam on Loch Mullardoch, and beyond are some fairly remote Munros.


To the north is Glen Strathfarrar, with yet more hard-to-reach three thousand footers in the background.


The descent was hard work - but I did find my hat. It's old, the wire in the peak is broken, and I recently bought a new one - but I still keep wearing the old one and I was pleased to see it again.

Greger spotted a buzzard as we neared the bottom of the hill, and three swallows were hunting low over the farm fields and the river. Mistle thrush fledgelings were being fed by attentive parents, and redpolls were still performing song flights over the birches.