Beinn Na Lap, 31st March 2017

7am.....the alarm went off as it normally does on a Friday morning, but this time I'd been awake for the last 30 minutes, because instead of heading for work, I get to head out on the hills! Not only that, but also on a train!

I wandered round to Garscadden station with my rucksack on and a massive drybag for the tent and overnight kit to meet up with Toezi, who had left Paisley a fair bit earlier.

We jumped the train to Dalmuir, then changed onto the West Highland line to head for Corrour, where we both had three unclimbed Munros to complete.

It was certainly an interesting journey - the guard was....officious to say the least, but fortunately we lost him at Crianlarich, since I'm sure he would have tutted at us as we opened a cheeky morning beer at 10:30am, just outside Bridge of Orchy. Normally we wouldn't, you understand, but we weren't at work and we forgot our magnetic chess, so what else were we to do?

The weather on the way up was pretty grim. We both knew we'd be in for a wet night in the tent, even if the rain had stopped because of all the damp gear.

Rain from the train

That's par for the course in the Scottish hills, so that didn't perturb us too much. Well perhaps it perturbed Toezi a bit:

Perturbed

 We made it to Corrour at 11:30am, jumped off the train and found a wee spot to pitch the tent. It was pretty rocky, but we were sure it would have been fine.

Next step was to get the packs on and head up Beinn Na Lap. It's not too hard, but we had zero visibility after 600m or so and so we carried on, checking our direction every so often. We hit a couple of false summits on the way up, but there was no issue finding the wee lochan on the map that indicates that we were close to the cairn. We found it about 1:50pm, stopped for a bite to eat, and then made our way back down to the path and off the hill. It only took us an hour and a half to climb, so we were feeling quite smug.

Summit of Beinn Na Lap

We came back down, ready to dump some stuff in the tent and head off to the Station House restaurant for a beer, when disaster struck. Our tent that had been pitched on the rocky ground had blown over! It wasn't away by any means, but we decided that wasn't the spot, so we went looking and found somewhere even closer to the pub! We repitched, dug the pegs in deep and left the inner doors open to allow some airflow.

Finally, we made it to the pub! We had a great meal and met some interesting folk, and people-watched as the trains came and went. A Hen Party even turned up, which provided much amusement, but they were a noisy bunch, so we were glad when they went off.

Pub shut about 9, so we headed back to the tent for a nutty whisky and hit the hay fairly early, ready for round two the next day.

Corrour

Hen Party bike...

Beinn Na Lap

Corrour Station, sun setting

Distance: 9.35km
Duration: 3h 5mins
Munro Count: 128