Thursday, October 15, 2020

Yesterday we did the Ben Wyvis walk that we twice put off in the summer. The weather forecast was quite good. The weather forecast was wrong.

We reached the summit cairn and trig point in cloud, and with no views and a coolish wind, we didn't hang about but turned round after taking a couple of pics and walked the 2 km back along the broad ridge - getting a glimpse of three birds flying along the ground which we thought were mistle thrushes. 

A single crowberry had somehow been missed by ptarmigan - of which there were no signs today; and it was too late to hope for dotterel.


Views opened up as we dropped below the cloud cover.....


.....and Greger, turning back to see where I was, pointed to something above An Cabar. A golden eagle was circling high above.



So high in fact, that it eventually disappeared into the clouds.

Back down at the car park a distant bullfinch provided another tick on what had been a poor day for birds.


The number of walkers present on Ben Wyvis today (it's half-term) ruled out the possibility of seeing ptarmigan. The upside was the sight of so many children making the ascent with their parents, all of them enthusiastic and cheerful. It's nice to see happy families out and about in the hills. The other good thing was a couple of friendly women who turned out to be even slower than us - we last saw them approaching the summit as we turned back. They're probably the only walkers we've encountered on this hill who haven't caught us up and overtaken us on the way down! We were pleased to find that we still have it in us to get up a Munro - but we're paying for it today with very stiff and aching legs.

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