Both of my long-term readers will recognise my Midsummer Munro adventure that I aim to share yearly with Toezi. This year the solstice fell on a Saturday which was lucky for us both as we were off.
It had been a hot day and I'd been working in the garden all day, but I was ready to get up a hill with my bivvy bag to cool off.
I picked Paul up in the van at 1730 and we headed up the road toward Comrie, where we stopped for chips. We made it to the wee car park and got our kit ready and were walking at 1930. It was still very warm at that level, but was starting to cloud over a bit.
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| Late evening sun on the climb |
We made good time on the climb up and were on the top of Ben Chonzie at 2130, where it turned out there were at least 2 other groups of people camping. They were in tents though, we were going bivvy-only.
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| Toezi on the summit |
The wind had started to turn a little colder and was quite strong, so we tried to find somewhere to duck out of it and lay out our bivvy bags. After a bit of faffing, we reached the goldilocks zone of flat and mostly out of the wind.
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| Bivvy setup |
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| Dram |
I got the stove on for a dehydrated meal and a cup of tea, then it was pretty much straight into bed. I didn't sleep very well initially but I did fall asleep with my face into the wind. I woke up a few times and it wasn't dark. After I faced away from the wind, I opened my eyes to see the thin sliver of a crescent moon rising where I expected the sun to come up. That's pretty cool, because once the sun is up, that moon would just disappear in the light. Not something you see every day.
I was pretty much awake at 0340, so I sat and waited for the sun to come up.
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| Bivvy-eye view |
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| My swollen eye |
We never really got a sunrise because it clouded over.
We were up and around at 0400, with water on the stoves for porridge and coffee and then we just packed up and left. Shortly after, we were hit with a refreshing shower. That was fine because we were moving by this point.
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| Early morning mists |
We headed off the hill and were back at the van for 0600 to get changed and head home. I had dropped Paul in Paisley and was back home for 0800 to get ready for Connell's birthday party later that day.
Hike Distance: 14km
Hike Time: 3h 30m
Ascent: 756m
Munros Completed: 220 (no new ones here)
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