Loch Dochard
Date: 4/10/07
Weather: Dry, mixed sun and cloud, light wind, sharp viewing
Start: Parking at Victoria Bridge, on minor road NW out of Bridge of Orchy
After a serious soaking the day before, and a lie-in until 11am not entirely unrelated to over-intake of Tormore and beer, I was after a simple yet scenic glen walk, and this fitted the bill nicely. Even at the car park the bulk of Stob Ghabhar towers over you, with a whole grab bag of tasty peaks ranged up to the West of it, which reveal themselves as you walk along. The idea was to walk West along the clear track which the OS 1:25000 map shows running all the way along the Abhainn Shira, with one slight gap, and this was certainly the case as far as the Clashgour Hut just under a mile along, which meant that I could take in the views, and take stacks of piccies, without having to look down at my feet all the time. Just by the hut there's a clear path which presumably is the standard route up Stob Ghabhar. Sadly, just after the hut the landrover track goes uphill and right towards Clashgour House, hidden in the sitka spruce plantation, and the walker has to follow the Scottish Rights of Way Society sign pointing to a path alongside the Abhainn. Initially good, this gradually deteriorated to squidgy bog requiring careful attention to the feet (and cursing the crappy Hi-Tec - more like Lo-Spec - boots which had begun to leak).
You reach a first footbridge, at which point the SRoWS sign points off to the right away from the track continuing invitingly to the left. The path goes into the forest a bit, then comes down to a suspension footbridge that wobbles somewhat but seems stable enough. A couple of hundred meters further on you finally hit a proper track leading off to the West, which is then followed the Loch. The views at the loch, and indeed leading up to it, make the boggy approach worth it, with Munros on the North side stretching away to the West towards Glen Etive.
Coming back, I did try to keep with the landrover track from the loch, rather than go across the suspension bridge, to try to avoid the bog. However, the track leads to one easy ford, then a second which couldn't be done on foot without waist-high waders, so the bridges aren't there for show. The view on the way back isn't as mountain-filled, although the joined peaks of Beinn an Dòthaidh and Beinn Dòrain stare you in the face all the way, and the Abhainn is a brilliant blue colour in the sunshine.
What detracted from the walk, other than the seriously irritating boot leakage, was the lack of track which is clearly marked on the OS map. Maybe an archaeologist could dig up traces of an old track in the bog, but for sure none exists nowadays, so what should have been, according to the map, an easy stroll turned out to be a bit of a bog-hop. Which goes to show, yet again, that there's no such thing as an easy walk in the Highlands...
Blog introduction
This weblog is specifically dedicated to notes of my walkies on hill, mountain, moor, and just generally in the great outdoors, both in the UK and abroad. I've been writing notes of my walks for many years now, usually asap after the walk whilst the details are fresh in my mind. The purpose has been to keep a note of where I've been (and track the various Munros I've clomped up), what the walk was like, what problems were encountered, whether it's worth doing again, and so on. Of course, these notes have been on scraps of note paper usually written in the pub, so their quality is variable and they're subject to loss, destruction, and decay. I'll continue with this 'analogue' method - you can't post to a weblog in the pub, and a damn good thing too! - but I'll also try to transcribe notes to this weblog as a permanent and non-perishable record.
I'd also hope that my notes will be of help to other walkers, perhaps by signalling particularly great walks, or warning folk about problems such as poor routes.
