Weekend in Braemar 16th & 17th June 2007 - Beinn Iutharn Mhor Carn an Fhidhleir, An Sgarsoch

It had been a wet week and there was a bad forecast for the weekend; I drove through 200 miles of rain before I got to Scotland to meet the Linlithgow Ramblers and help to load up the bikes before driving to Braemar. It was dry when we got there and Saturday morning was dry at first. We parked at Inverey on the Linn of Dee road; after unloading the cycles, there was a car park full of walkers on two wheels having a wobbling practise ride before setting off up the glen. The track along Glen Ey is a good surface for walking on, but the undulating, stony estate road quickly began to have an effect; most of us had to get off and walk on the uphill sections and the bumpy road caused a good deal of saddle soreness.

It took an hour and forty minutes to get to Altanour Lodge, a ruined building in the middle of a fir tree copse; we left the bikes there, chained together, and it was a relief to start walking. It had been raining since we started cycling but it was ordinary Cairgorm rain, not the deluge that had been forecast. The good walking track came to an end at the Lodge, from now on the path narrowed in the heather and wet grass; then we were navigating across rough ground in the general direction of where we wanted to be. We crossed the first stream of the weekend, about ten feet wide and deep enough to fill your boots if you were not careful.

After crossing the stream there was steep ground ahead, in the absence of any visible path and in the absence of any visibility we were going to climb Beinn Iutharn Mhor by the most direct route. There was heather, swamp, bog oak, and then a steep climb through bilberry and back to good old grass. Finally the steepness subsided and all that was left was an easy slope; we found a faint path that came and went as it led us to a bouldery plateau. We came across a substantial cairn and then we were walking on level ground; we were obviously on a ridge with steep sides and a good view on a good day.

There was a final short climb to the summit; by now the rain had turned to mist with a cold breeze making the cold summit no place to hang around. The intention was to return same way but we found a path that took a much easier route down the steep slope, although it was an equally swampy walk back to the Lodge. It was an easier bike ride back to Inverey, it only took an hour but it was starting to get painful on the saddle by the time we got there.

The weather was better on Sunday morning; we drove to the busy Mar Estate car park at Linn of Dee and unloaded the bikes again. We cycled on another good walking track by the side of River Dee for a couple of miles to White Bridge, then followed another track by the side of Geldie Burn. The track as far as White Bridge was not too hard on the saddle soreness, after that it was less undulating than the previous day but the surface was covered in loose stones and sand and it was a hard 2 hours 40 minutes ride. I had been thinking for a while it would have been better to leave the bikes and start walking before we eventually left the bikes, rather than cross Geldie Burn with them.

Although we thought that the water was too wide to walk the bikes across we still had to cross Geldie Burn. A grassy track took us to Geldie Lodge, another ruin, before we came across the track leading to the path that traverses the base of Scarsoch Bheag. It was a long walk before we had to cross the picturesque Allt a Chaorainn, another wide stream. All evidence of paths disappeared at that point, probably because we were nowhere near any; we headed uphill, heather, bog oak and deer swamp; all in a day's Munro bagging. We then had a steep climb up a grassy rake through heather, then bilberry; the steepness increase at a wet slope then eased on for the final walk on grass to the ridge and on to the summit of Carn an Fhidhleir.

We walked south-east down an easy slope to a shallow col, then traversed an un-named 906 metre peak, and eventually descended steep heathery slopes before crossing another Allt a Chaorainn. We followed a tributary uphill and then walked up a grassy rake through the heather at first and then bilberry; there were lots of tired legs and not much conversation in the sunny and warm conditions. Eventually the gradient eased as we reached then stony summit plateau and walked over to the large summit cairn and stone-built shelter at the summit of An Sgarsoch. We walked downhill over stony ground at first, then steep heather and finally over swampy ground until reaching the head of one of the tributaries of Allt a Chaorainn.

A small muddy path led to the more substantial track around the base of Scarsoch Bheag and the long walk back to where we had left the bikes. The saddle soreness of the past two days was bearable because of it was much easier cycling downhill than walking the 8 miles back to the car park.

© Andy Wallace 16th June 2007