THE STORY

To be honest, I ran this before breakfast at the hotel whilst the rest of the family was asleep. But if you’ve only got a couple of days on an island, you have to make the most of the time and the dry weather! it took around 35 minutes running, but it would certainly make a comfortable half-day walk from the hotel (including the extension covered in the Path Network booklet), and you could accomplish it even more quickly if you cycled up to the start of the track.

It wasn’t a bad morning, bright and breezy with a thin layer of cloud. A couple of women staying at the hotel had also gone out for a walk before breakfast and exclaimed in astonishment at the strange sight of my bare legs.

I put those legs to work and headed out, past the post office and the golf course, along the gently undulating road. It was like a private running track through the countryside, as I didn’t see a vehicle on the way out or back apart from a tractor busy at the farm where the track begins.

The white farm building of Druimyeonmore stands out on the right, all the way along the road from the post office – a distance of about a mile.  On the other hand the objective of the expedition, the summit of Creag Bhan, disappears from view behind the nearer hill at the back of the golf course. It is actually seen to best advantage coming back from the north end of the island, when it appears as a shapely triangular peak rising up behind Tarbert Farm. From the ferry, it can be clearly seen as a broad rocky hill. From Cnoc na Croise, it appears in the distance as the highest point on the line of hills.

On reaching Druimyeonmore Farm, the track to the left is signposted for Creag Bhan and Mill Loch. It’s a farm road, with plenty of mud to try and avoid, but easy enough to follow up and to the right of the first hillside. Of course, I hadn’t read the instructions in the Path Network booklet carefully enough, and wondered whether to go through the first gate on the right which seemed to offer a route up the hill, but decided against. The track  went to the left, rose a little then began to descend. There was another gate on the right, and I decided this looked more promising, with a grassy meadow then a fence and the hillside behind it. However, once I’d climbed over the fence I was in a stretch of rough land with lots of brambles to contend with. What I SHOULD have done was continue along the farm track towards the Mill Loch, then around to the right as far as the brow of the hill. From there, a path is signposted diagonally up the grassy slope to the right.  It leads steadily up the slope until it reaches a concrete water tank on the left, which is where I joined it. Then it heads to the right and up over rocks to the summit. Gorse bushes had been cut back to keep the hiking path clear, and there were route indicators to show the way through the shapely whale-backed rocks to the trig point. On the next rock a viewpoint indicator has been erected, pointing out the mountains of Arran, the Paps of Jura, and other prominent hilltops.

It’s certainly a great vantage point for so little effort. The hill fell away steeply to the grassy meadows on the west side, and the compact nature of the island as a whole could be taken in.

Unfortunately the layer of cloud meant that the view wasn’t quite as sparkling as it would have been later that morning – by which time we had all moved on to Achamore Gardens.

I took a series of photos nevertheless, as I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance to go back there on a sunny day, then headed back down the hill by the correct route. It was an easy descent towards the Mill Loch, then following the farm track back to the left, down to the farm, and back along the road to the hotel. By then I’d worked up a good appetite for breakfast, and had my first taste of Tarbert smoked haddock omelette – delicious!

Extension to the walk

Contributed by: Andrew Llanwarne

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