cairngorms high camping

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

At long last our mutual diaries were clear and I met up with my oldest and bestest friend Allan, aka The Penguin, at the wee car park on the ski road and headed off into the wilds for a high camp on Braeriach. So it was down to the river, swollen with the interminable summer rain this year and up past Lapland, the reindeer station and along the excellent path to the Chalamain Gap. It’s an interesting name is Chalamain. Calman is the Gaelic for dove but it’s pronounced with the svarahbakti vowel, which means it sounds like calaman and I suspect it’s just been named after the peak directly above it, Creag a’Chalamain or rock of the dove, as Chalamain isn’t a real word on its own, meaning “of the dove”. So there must have been a colony of rock doves here at some point and rocky it certainly is.

another drawing rediscovered

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from the discovery of one of my drawings hijacked by the MBA, I found another one while trawling old backups on CD from years ago. This one is of the Garbh Coire refuge below Braeriach in the Cairngorms, 1997. I took a picture the morning we walked out, over Ben Macdui and Carn a’Mhaim and drew it from that. I remember it was hard going through deep heather across the coire towards the Lairig Ghru path. The night we spent in the refuge was superbly wild. I remember gusts of wind developing high up in the coire behind us and roaring downhill to crash into the back of the doss. It didn’t budge an inch though, as it’s a metal A frame covered in hessian matting and large boulders. I seem to remember there was only enough space for 2 or 3 people to lie down, with their feet to the door. It’s a true emergency shelter. We reached it after a wild walk along the plateau, descending the big slabs below Angel’s Peak, which was really exciting! The abiding memory of that wild, remote night, was Penguin running around in the dark, trying to catch his loo roll, with his breeks round his ankles!

Braeriach on eBothy Blog

cairngorms high camping

another drawing rediscovered