The mountain goats have been pretty quiet this year with leader of the heard Niall Iain lame. Chhay, Marja and I did manage a rather pathetic stroll near Loch Fyne, all to justify an extravagant lunch at the expensive-but as good as we had been told-Loch Fyne Oyster Bar!

Thankfully dDespite low cloud cover the weather stayed dry, as I think I might have been out of my comfort zone if it had rained. As it was there was some fairly hairy scrambles up and down craggy chutes of rock, but the views and sense of accomplishment at the end were properly exhilirating.

Late in June Chhay & I spent a night camping with the mountain goats in the highlands at Kinlochleven near Ben Nevis. We managed three munroes in a fairly arduous 18 k walk up in the Mamores – some spectacular views towards Glencoe and Ben Nevis although the steepness of some of the decents (above) were a bit much for Chhay’s sense of vertigo. For a more details report see Niall Iain’s thoughts at the goat pen.

Added a couple more to my measly total of Munros last weekend , with a walk with my new office’s climbing club. After a grey start it turned into a glorious day – making hillwalking seem almost fun.

We climbed Ben Starav via the spectacular ridge path (above), with a bit of a scramble up to great views at the summit over Loch Etive and the surrounding glen. After a brief rest we follwed the ridges across to the more gentle (but still over 3,000 ft) but much more difficult to pronounce Glas Bheinn Mor.

The decent was fairly jarring with the occasional stop to refill water bottles from mountain springs (below)

We were rewarded at the end by dipping our toes & washing our faces in a delightful crystal clear rock pool, with a cloudless roof of sky.(below) In case you think Scotland is always like this it returned to grey & miserable today just in case anyone got too cocky and planned a bbq or something!