I’ve had my eye on a different way – this time going only a short way up the Tam a’ chuilig, and then cutting up the mountain side about halfway along the first straight past the zigzag (if that makes no sense I will publish the route once I finish it).  I had a go at this last summer – but the bracken was more than waist high and it was such hard going I gave up (particularly as there are sheep and deer up there – so tick central).

It was a nice day yesterday – so I had another go late yesterday afternoon.  It was still a bit marshy underfoot in places, but not too bad and I quickly got up to around 400m (didn’t have my Landranger phone with me so can’t be too exact).  There are some cracking views back to the loch and it looks very doable to carry straight on to the summit from here as it is past the level where there would be any more forestry to contend with.

So R and I were going to give it a go this morning before N and J arrive – but unfortunately and typically it is pouring down and windy today.

R and I knew we had to get out and do a mountain after both being confined to base over the last week with the colds we imported from Finland. We havered over which one to do; there are so many we would like to have a go at. R being the sensible one commented that we had neither done a major climb in winter, so it would be best to chose one a) that we were familiar with already b) that had a decent path up it and c) that wasn’t too long a day with darkness coming so early.

So we went up Beinn Donich and had a wonderful day. The views were absolutely superb, with the sun shining on the snow and the mountains reflected in the lochs and sea.

One thing that was a useful eyeopener for both R and myself though, is that these mountains really are different beasts in the winter. Donich is an easy enough climb in the summer, but today there was a lot of ice and it was seriously slippy underfoot. This reduced our speed by quite a lot, and if the snow had been very heavy it could have been pretty challenging. So we will need to think about getting some winter kit (crampons specifically) and learning to use it.

Anyway – we weren’t the only people out on Donich today – we’ve done it a few times before and you hardly see a sole, today there were quite a few (by which I mean about 20 – not the hundreds you would see on the Cobbler or Ben Lomond).

We headed out early and went up to the waterfall, where we met a local friend going in the same direction. While we walked he told us about the Rock of the Britons, which was where the boundary lay between the Clyde Britons and the Scots of Cowal – it is marked on the ordnance survey map as Clach A’ Bhreatunnaich. I’d never heard this story (more details on this website https://senchus.wordpress.com/category/warfare/), but I was then determined to see it for myself. It is a very large rock, it is visible from the path and it is on the way up Beinn Donich, but to say it is challenging to reach it is a bit of an understatement because the whole area has been planted for forestry and then cut down – turning it into an ankle defying morass of tangled stumps and branches. The expanse between the main path, the stone and the clear slopes of Beinn Donich must have been 500m and taken us well over half an hour to cross.

The stone was very impressive, with a real sense of history. I’d been going to climb up it, but R managed to induce a sanity check when I was half way up by asking how I proposed to get back down – so I didn’t. It seems a shame that a piece of history is so neglected and impossible for most people to go to see – there should at least be a basic path to it.

Anyway – we then went on up Beinn Donich and it was a pleasant walk indeed. We heard what we thought was a stag roaring but turned out to be two heiland coos. Then a large ram stood watching us from a cliff top, looking like the Monarch of the Glen to the extent that R though he might be going to try to see us off. Just before the summit, a large raptor took off right in front of us. We only got a quick glimpse, but it was too large for a buzzard and had a white tail. I’m wondering if it could possibly have been a sea eagle (though I hadn’t heard they were around Loch Goil).

We got a great view from the top: four lochs and the firth of Clyde, and a variety of famous and not so famous mountains (most of the Arrochar Alps from here, plus a distant Ben Lomond).

We were back home for lunch and it rained all afternoon which made having to do housework just about tolerable.

There is a good description of it on View Ranger here http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/NjkyNDQ%3D.

I would say that it was a good walk, with some fantastic views down over the Rest and be Thankful, but not one of my all time favourites because it was so very marshy in places (though the fact that it has been terrifically wet here recently did not help), and also because I believed the weather forecast, didn’t take a coat and got soaked through on the way back.

But the sun came out when we were on the last stretch and it was fantastically beautiful, with every conceivable shade of green on display and both tiny orange butterflies and huge dragonflies everywhere.

For anyone walking or cycling from the Rest to Lochgoilhead by the way, this route is much better than following the road – particularly on a Sunday in July when there are quite a few cars about.

One of these days I am going to start this walk, get round to where the main Beinn Donich track goes up to the mountain and then go down the back of it from the summit to join back to this route. Not when it has been raining recently though….