Sunday, August 30, 2026

Beinn Liath Mhor a' Ghiubhais Li

I set off on this rather gloomy morning unsure whether I would make it to the top. Most of the hills around - including mine - had their heads in cloud; and the Met Office had indicated a fairly high risk of rain. I crossed the stream easily and walked up the stony, 2-kilometre track through the plantation. There was no sign of any bird life. As I took to the saturated, muddy hillside, I was suddenly beset by midges - badly enough to take my rucksack off and fish out the netted hat. Oh dear. Either my head has shrunk, or I'd grabbed Greger's hat; either way, it immediately slipped down over my eyes and was completely useless. In the end I took it off and used it to flap at the midges while holding both walking poles awkwardly in one hand.

Eventually I left the midges behind, and even the seemingly interminable steep, wet area of long grass and heather came to an end. Next stage - the peat hags. Well, at least the ground here is almost level. This gives you a breather for the next stage, which is again grass and heather, with patches of squelchy sphagnum moss. Meadow pipits were the only birds to be seen until half a dozen red grouse erupted from the ground ahead and glided off to the left and out of sight.


At last the terrain began to change, and I was walking on harder ground with short vegetation. As I reached the boulder fields I scanned them for signs of life, hoping for ptarmigan - and a slight movement in a lobe of rocks nearby made my heart leap. But it turned out to be a mountain hare - a leveret, perhaps. It looked rather grumpy at being disturbed but didn't run, so I took a couple of photos and then retreated.


Two species of clubmoss were seen; the first is probably fir clubmoss, the second I'm confident is Alpine clubmoss.



The sight of crowberry beginning to fruit reminded me of ptarmigan, and I scanned the hillside with my bins - but there was nothing.


Cowberry was also fruiting.


At last I reached the summit - to find the views blotted out by cloud.


Nice to be here, though - for the 12th time. I ate my sandwiches in solitary splendour, and considered walking on a bit further. But there was a keen wind up here and I was growing cold, so I scanned the plateau and then set off down.

Two meadow pipits were engaged in an aerial battle until one flew off and the other landed just below me.


Arctic bearberry, its leaves turning a deep red, sprawled characteristically across a lichened boulder.


I think this is hard fern (Blechnum spicant) - not quite sure.


When I looked up from the ground, I was startled by the moody aspect towards Beinn Dearg; fortunately, those dark clouds weren't heading my way, but the sight of the peat hags below reminded me I still had a long way to go.


Peat hags negotiated once more, I tackled the lower wet slopes carefully; I didn't want a repeat of my silly fall at Rhue. Just before I reached the start of the plantation track, a bumblebee buzzing round the heather some way off caught my eye, and I snapped a couple of photos just in case.


For obvious reasons, I wondered if it could be a broken-belted bumblebee (which I hadn't heard of before my investigations online this evening); but it doesn't seem quite right for that species, and in any case white-tailed bumblebees can become a bit worn towards the end of the summer. Also, this does have a bright white tail. An adult black darter dragonfly and a colourful frog were also spotted here. As I stepped thankfully onto hard ground at the start of the track, I was besieged by black flies - not midges, larger. I scrambled to get the useless hat out of the rucksack again, but by the time I had succeeded in getting it on and pulling the drawstring tight at the bottom of the netting, it was only to find that some of the flies were in there with me. Eek! Again, I took off the hat and used it to keep flapping the flies away as I made my escape. After a while, they stopped following, and all I had to worry about was the bunion on my left foot becoming a little sore and the fact that it had begun to rain - a light shower that soon passed over. I'd been lucky with the weather - unlucky with ptarmies.

As I drove home, just outside the village, a bird went running (scuttling) across the road. I loaded up the footage from my dash cam but it doesn't throw any light on the ID and the quality's too poor to crop the still that I took of it. A car was coming the other way and we both got quite close, but it didn't attempt to fly - it disappeared into the grassy verge and left me wondering "What the blooming heck was that?"

Greger was pleased that I'd got to the top (he's got a painful hip at the moment so couldn't join me, but he'd followed my progress on the finder app) and had cooked my favourite bacon, onion, and tomato sauce (made even tastier with a little smoked paprika) and spaghetti, with a tray of roasted cauliflower and broccoli and a huge heap of grated cheese. Who could ask for more?

// posted by Christine @ 10:56 AM
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