A Wild Vista

read part 1…

Now, this was what I’d call a pretty typical spring day in the Highlands. Scudding clouds were unleashing regular bouts of cold, spiteful rain. The wind was getting up. Looking up the length of the loch, towards the mountains I’d set out to climb, I could see the ragged cloud base was fixed at about 600 metres. No place to be without the right gear, alone.

One might reasonably ask whether I could easily have changed my plans — perhaps caught another train someplace else, or mooched around the gear shops in town. The thing is, trains are pretty infrequent on this line, and, more to the point, Corrour is the only station in the UK that’s not accessible by public road. Sitting on the edge of Rannoch Moor, 450 metres above sea level, and 10 miles from the nearest public road, Corrour is wonderfully remote. No gear shops to mooch around then.

This picture gives a really good feel for the location:

Corrour and Loch Ossian from Leum Uilleim

Corrour station and its associated buildings are too small to pick out on this view from Leum Uilleim (the Corbett that overlooks Corrour). The West Highland Railway Line runs across the picture from left (towards Fort William) to right (towards Glasgow), with the station located in front of the small lochan near the centre of the picture.

This particular picture was taken in February 2006 — there was no snow on the hills when I was here ruing my lack of planning. As I left the shelter of the porch and headed out along the south shore of Loch Ossian, the rain moved in with a vengeance. Fleeces, even the windproof variety, just don’t cope with persistent rain, so, not particularly looking forward to spending the next few hours wandering about soaked to the skin, I started looking for some shelter.

It’s amazing how dry it can be under the thick boughs of a large conifer. There are a few stretches of plantations along this shore of the Loch, and it wasn’t long before I found a dry spot where I could sit and eat a (very) early lunch, and hope the rain would start to ease off at some point.

I’d given up on any idea of climbing the hills I’d originally been eyeing up — Beinn Eibhinn, Aonach Beag, and Geal Charn — or, indeed, any hills at all. The weather obviously wasn’t going to clear any time soon, and the cloud was lowering if anything. To try and crack on up the mountains without a waterproof in these conditions would have been reckless.

Still, a circuit of Loch Ossian proved quite pleasant (especially when the sun came out briefly as I made my way back towards the station), and I had time for another cuppa in the cafe before jumping on the mid-afternoon train towards Tulloch and Fort William. On arrival, I was relieved to find my large rucsac waiting for me in a dorm room at the lodge, my bone-dry waterproof stuffed into the top. Re-reading the route card stowed in the lid gave me a wry smile though…