Cairngorms

Our personal lake front campsite

We had a long weekend in the Cairngorms in late summer.  I was keen for some more wilderness after our successful Irish weekend.  And the whole idea of being able to wild camp was really appealing to me.  This was also going to be the first camping we had done in the UK, a chance to test out whether our gear can handle a Scottish summer (it's quite similar to an Australian winter, just windier).

We started at the base of Cairngorm mountain, and it was certainly windy.  It was a struggle to just open the car door.  We had a plan in mind already for what we wanted to do, but given the wind and the low lying fog we thought we should check with the rangers first.  They gave us some great advice as to a nice walk to do, though it ended up being pretty easy in the end.  I think next time we just go with what we have planned.

The peaks surrounding Loch Avon

I'm guessing it's probably hard to be a ranger and pitch your advice at the right level.  When we were in asking about walks in the area, there was another family in at the same time.  They had this tiny kid with them, maybe 4 or 5 years old.  And they wanted to walk to the top of Cairngorm.  At this point the wind was seriously strong, maybe 50mph, and they wanted to take this tiny kid out onto a summit.  He would have been blown off.  So I suppose as a ranger it's probably better to err on the side of over-cautious when giving advice.  I think I just have to learn to ignore it.

Our little tent and the Shelter Stone behind

The walk we did end up doing was really good, straight up from the car park at the rangers station, to the right of the Cairngorm ski bowl, just a little easy.  The wind was really blowing at this point, it felt like it was just accelerating off the escarpment as it came down to us.  Once we got over the ridge it actually felt a little weaker.

We managed to climb Cairngorm in the absolute mist.  It was pretty hard to know where the summit was, these weren't very pointy mountains.  Sure wasn't much of a view up there.  I think we need to work on our mist navigation though, it's kind of hard to know where you are going when you can't see any features.  I didn't want to get too far from the trail in case we couldn't find it again.

It ended up being quite a short walk on this first day, from the top of Cairngorm we dropped down quite sharply to Loch Avon.  I was really liking the wild camping out here.  No one around for hundreds of metres and we had our own lake front camp spot with beach.  I was imagining how completely packed this would have been if you could have driven here.  Instead it was just us and our little tent and not another person in sight.

The top of Ben Macdui

We tried out the freeze dried food you can buy here.  It wasn't bad, and the ingredient list wasn't as scary as some.  I'm always a little put off when there are 10 unpronounceable chemicals.  There was a lot of wind that night, the tent would periodically be squashed flat.  Good job those people with the tiny kid had decided against Cairngorm.  But I was impressed that the tent held up, and there was only one downpour, which again the tent survived against.  Good little tent, it just needs a better porch I think.

We were up early the next morning and headed off past the Shelter stone and more lochs and then straight into mist.  This stuck with us for the rest of the day.  It made for some atmospheric walking, but was lacking in views.  Luckily the paths were easier to follow today, I think we would have been alright, even if the paths had been non-existent, it just would have made for some slower walking.  We managed to climb Ben Macdui, which at 1309m is the second highest mountain in the UK and the highest in the Cairngorms.  It was almost completely flat on the top, you could imagine this would be what the surface of the moon would be like.  Nothing was growing, not even lichen, and it was completely covered in fog so you couldn't see more than 20m in front of you.  Pretty spooky.  We were the only people up there, which is always nice to have a summit to yourself.

Then it was the long walk back to the start.  All in all a great overnight walk in the Cairngorms, and much easier than I thought it would be.  We are definitely going to be back!