Over the hill - and through the forest marsh

Well, my last hill day of the training has been achieved, with a fantastic trip up Ben Venue. The day started late, as my friend (with the essential car!) was late. We made good time on the drive up there though, as the roads were deserted ... I suspect everyone and my sister were heading to Dunblane to see the torch?

We stopped off for a wake-up coffee in Aberfoyle, and then headed over Duke's Pass to Achray hotel, and had a look at the Ben Venue Car Park .. it was £3 for a day's parking. As it hadn't been my planned car park, we went on to the car park at the foot of Loch Katrine (where the Sir Walter Scott steam boat can be boarded), and saw that it was £5 to park there. We headed back down the road to where the path was and found a free parking space to fit one car ... success!


It was a pleasant forest walk through, er, the forest, though as with all forest walks, navigation even with map and compass was a challenge. Lack of visibility of the hills makes taking bearings quite hard!
We made the right choices though, and then were diverted due to major tree felling.

We reached a clearing soon though and I decided that since I could see a great line up the hill from where we were, we would go that way. It made for an enjoyable climb up the slopes, with a sighting of some feral goats near the summit!

We took in the views of pretty much the entire country from what I could tell. Well, I may be exaggerating slightly, but visibility was certainly well in excess of what I normally get on the tops. I suspect if there hadn't been hills in the way, it would be over 40km!

After enjoying some sandwiches and coffee at the top, we headed back down the official path, untill we made it to the other end of the forestry commission diversion.

Things got interesting after this point. While there was a nice set of blue electrical tape marked posts to follow for a while, we made it to an inviting looking fire break area and started along that, completely missing the guide post that would have led us to the left (north). This resulted in a swamp run, where both Marthos and I ended up half way up to our knees in thick mossy mud. Having made it across two of these our only option was to press on and hope we could find the way.

I carefully made sure to keep the hill in sight and used that to make sure we got back to the road (only about 20 meters from where we would have arrived, go me!).

After changing out of our boots at the car, (I had a paddle in the river when we got to a bridge to clear out the worst of the muck), and in to some more comfortable stuff, we went on to Callander where we enjoyed a well earned chippy by the riverside with a nice view of Ben Ledi.

Well ... if I'm not hill fit for the cross by now, I never will be, so I have to consider it done and resist temptation to do another hill next week!