Morning Glory

I took this picture this morning from Beinn na Feusaige after spending the night camped up by Lochan Meallan Mhic Iamhair. Moments like this make all those days in the clag worthwhile.

Off to work now in cloudy Inverness, but somehow after being privileged enough to see a sky like that I don't mind at all.

Are you alright? - Ramsay's Round July 2008

"Are you alright" asked Neil. I answered him the only way I could and began to projectile vomit. We were half way up Sgurr Eilde Mor and about 12hs into the attempt. Apart for a slight feeling of nausea, I had been feeling alright, but now it was looking grim.

60 miles and over 8000m of ascent over 23 Munros in under 24 hours was never going to be easy. A major coup was to find someone who was interested in doing it too. Talking to another Highland Hillrunner, Neil Speight, after a race in 2007 we both mentioned a faint desire to try Ramsay's Round. Somehow this all snowballed into a proper attempt this summer. Training schedules were worked out and warm up races planned. The only slight issue was a lack of people able to support as I had found the support crucial during my successful Bob Graham Round.

After much faffing we finally got some runs done in the Glen Nevis area and a date was set. Expecting no support we dropped off kit and food at strategic locations (Fersit, Loch Eilde Mor and Lairig Leacach) to be ready for the Saturday.

The forecast was not great; cloud at first followed by clearing skies and a fantastic Sunday was promised by Heather 'the weather' and MWIS. Predictably we set off up the Ben tourist track towards the clouds together with Dave who had come along for support and to bag Carn Mor Dearg. The pony track was heaving with '3 Peak Challengers'. Some of whom decided to inform us that we shouldn't be taking the short-cut to Red Burn.

Up in the clag we made good time, which we promptly lost by missing the line off to Carn Mor Dearg. Eventually we found the path much further to the right. Once on the ridge, the rocks were lethal and I went flat on my back. Not too much damage done, just a very sore backside and a sense of relief about avoiding a potentially disastrous slip.

The cloud level hovered around 800m but down in the bealachs we could look across to the Mamores which were clear of cloud. On Sgurr Choinnich Beag Dave dropped behind and myself and Neil carried on, enjoying the running. The springs were full and I was eating every half-hour. All we needed was better visibility as the constant greyness was monotonous.

After 6 hours we dropped down to our first food cache and had a quick clothes swap before the second major climb of the Round, Stob Coire nan Easian. The slope seemed to go on forever and I needed my MP3 player to distract me before we finally crested the cairn.


Dropping off the tops,the cloud had dropped lower and we ate our food at Fersit in drizzly rain. The presence of a potential lift back home from here was a strong distraction to continuing. However, Neil said nothing so I just resigned myself to the second leg although it did feel as though we were getting somewhere with this attempt. Brighter skies appeared everywhere we weren't and we headed into the cloud again, up into the hills. Chno Dearg was tricky to find and was the first hill where we were slower than schedule. A very demoralizing moment and I was worried as Neil seemed to have slowed dramatically.

Slightly lost, a fantastic scree run down lead us on a different line to Beinn na Lap. Although much further left we were able to gain the east ridge of the Beinn earlier and despite a slow pace we were up gain on time. The top was a huge milestone. Every step, every minute was going in the right direction.

Running down the rough ground from the summit to the railway with the buds of cotton grass glowing astonishingly brightly in the dark will be one of enduring memories. For once running on the track and path for the next couple of hours were fun in the dark stillness of the night. The skies began at last to clear.

The Mamores were silhouetted in the distance and acted as a clear beacon showing us our direction. We didn't push the pace, but it made no difference to the splits which we were beating again. Unbeknown to me Neil was seriously thinking about quitting, in fact doing anything that meant he didn't have to run any further.

Another quick food stop at Loch Eilde Mor and we were off again. I was wary of the last leg as I had heard plenty of stories about attempts going awry late in the day.

After being sick I did actually feel better, briefly. Strangely being violently ill had no effect on my moral and I was still optimistic. One look at Binnein Beag, however was enough to swing my mood back round to abject depression. The urge just to stop and sleep was intense. I was struggling to eat properly and all of the climbs hurt. It was now time to take the hills one at a time. We knew we were significantly up on schedule and we fought to keep the loses at each peak to a minimum. I was desperately trying to keep ahead of the game, whilst Neil encouraged me along, buoying me up with unbounded enthusiasm. Finally we were on the main Mamores ridge. No more huge climbs and the skies really had cleared. Faith was restored in Heather.

We followed every short-cut we had read about from Yiannis' article and other reports to minimise height gain. I was keeping on just counting down the Munros left to go. Every hour we were still moving meant one less hour of suffering. The pain in my left knee which had started as a niggle on Binnein Mor was now becoming more evident. It got worse with every climb. At least, despite the cloud reappearing in whisps, the route finding was straight-forward following well-defined, but rocky tracks. The twists and turns of the sinuous ridge and the annoying outliers frustrated me. I just couldn't see the point any more. To cap it all a chill wind picked up, whisking in wet blanket of cloud that quickly drapped itself over the peaks and corries.

Sgurr a Mhaim was my nemesis. I wanted to beg Neil to allow me to skip it out. I had been running for 20 hours so what difference would one peak make? Who would know? Anything to avoid the pain in my knees. Silently cursing I tagged the cairn, surprised to hear that we had only lost 3 min on the 23h schedule, and went straight back the way we had come. Only 2 more hills to go. Even in my addled state I was coming round to the idea of finishing this self-inflicted hell.

By Stob Ban (the second to last Munro) the pain in both knees was intense. Even walking on the flat was agony. No dull ache this, just sharp stabbing pains at every step. The only thought driving me on was the fear of having to go through all this pain again if we failed to finish within 24 hours.

I could see that we were shipping time by about 5 mins a peak so with a final effort we topped out on Mullach with about 1.5h to spare. Now we just had to get down! The final descent was awful. A desperate waddle down steep grass before meeting a path leading through the forest. At least this path was soft and muddy, meandering alongside a river bank and through plantation woodland. After a few ups and downs we finally dropped to a well graded forest track. The verge was grassy and soft, and with a time cushion of 45 mins we wandered down. Both of us in an extremely exhausted spaced-out state of mind.

There was no-one there to see us at the finish. Finally it hit home. We had finished with 45 min to spare. Together we had made it. For a moment it was all too much emotionally. After all that pain, effort, training, preparation and stress I could finally relax. My whole body ached, and I was tired, so tired. No elation, just relief.

Whether it was worth it or not is still something I haven't answered for myself yet. Mentally I am still drained and empty. Physically I am in pretty good state so I must be getting used to these kind of distances. A scary thought!

Successful Ramsay 12th/13th July

Just back from Glen Nevis after several pints of coke and some REAL food. Myself and Neil Speight, supported solely by Dave Raffe from the hostel to Sgurr Choinnich Beag, got round in 23:15. Exploding knees over the last 5 Munros lost us a heap of time, but after all that pain and effort there was no way I was going to miss the 24 hours.

The weather was mostly cloudy and although the food drops went well it would have been nice to have had some more tea at the breaks.

Highlights include running at dusk through swathes of cotton grass and the scree run off Chno Dearg. Also, exchanging abuse with a '3 Peaks Challenger' on the Ben.

Low lights include projectile vomiting on Sgurr Eilde Mor, extremely sore plus swollen knees on the Mamores and the descent off Mullach nan Coirean.

I will probably do a longer write up later after another nap.

Would I do it again? An emphatic NO! I will help pace though ; )

The Highland bl@@dy midge!

We don't have heat haze up here in the Highlands when it is still and warm. Instead we have the midge. Cycling down the track from Loch Eilde Mor, after my food drop for the Ramsay, clouds of midges swirled over the track at head height. I hit swarms of them and they pattered off my coat mimicking rain, turning my legs black as the wee beasties struggled to escape the jellyfish-like tentacles of my leg hairs. Some poor folk had decided to camp at the end of the loch and I can only imagine the torment they went through that evening.

If the midge wasn't such an irritating bugger, the shimmering clouds could have been one of the wonders of nature. Perhaps allowing comparison with the other great marvels such as salmon migrating up mighty rivers or the huge flamingo flocks on the lakes in Africa. Instead all I was left wondering was where on Earth all the predators were which surely must feed on the midge. Dark thoughts only turned lighter by conjuring up ideas of staking naked to a post, either here or on Skye, those ecologists who insist the midge does have a role to play in nature.

At least everything is now in place for the attempt at the weekend. Looks like we wont be having too much company. Then again I am not a big fan of the huge groups of pacers/supporters/hangers-on which some runners deem necessary to have around on attempts of these kind of hill-running 'challenges'.

Ramsay - The Final Preparation

Another successful reccy last Thursday evening (26th June) on the eastern-most Mamores has pretty much confirmed that myself and Neil are as ready as we are going to be this year. So next Saturday 12th July will be the day/night for the attempt starting at about 10:30am in a clockwise direction. I am off up the hills tomorrow to organise the food drops and hopefully we will also have some minimal support for the day itself. My mood sways between confident optimisim and spectacular pessimisim as to the actual outcome, but I am prepared to give it a decent shot. Having almost no running support will make it harder, but all the more pleasing should we get round.

I have been down to the Lake District for the past week running and climbing and I felt pretty strong on the hills. The ache on the side of my foot is still there from after the Highlander, but hopefully nothing a bit of pig-headedness won't get me through. I have added some photos from the week so enjoy.

Running High Stile.
Blencathra smoking.
Sunlight above Buttermere.
Mine beneath Grisedale.

Ramsay Reccy - Eastern Section

Last week myself and Neil decided to reschedule our attempt on the Ramsay to allow us more time to recover from races we had done and also get some more reccies in. Now it looks like we will attempt in mid July starting at 11:am in a clockwise direction. We had thought about a night time start as the first section will be slow anyway. What goes against that theory is that you start already tired so we have decided on a more conventional time. It has also been decided to use the 'Alec Keith' variation. This basically has you starting from higher up Glen Nevis and so you get a warm up on the road before the Ben, which is, unsurprisingly, the highest climb of the round. As this means doing the Loch Treig to Mamore section in the dark we headed out yesterday to check this section out.

Typically I didn't have my camera as the weather was perfect and the views even better. It was a pretty tough run, but checking the splits later that evening I was pleased to see that we were knocking a huge amount of time off the schedule on the climbs. Next time we can afford to take it much easier! I have been struggling with a cold too so I am even more excited that the day out didn't make it any worse. A couple of route choices got sorted as well as we found a couple of decent traverse lines that allow some of the more rocky sections to be avoided. We also got the descent off the Easians sorted for the first time which is excellent news. All in all the hills looked and felt a lot more manageable than I had built them up to be. Still it looks a long way, however I am pretty confident in getting round even if not in under 24h.

I think I will do another short run over part of the Mamores to check out the eastern most three. It is all looking up and hopefully the attempt itself will go as smoothly as the run did yesterday.

Dist 20 miles Time 5h 38min

Pabbay and Mingulay - Easy climbing routes exist too!

Mingulay and Pabbay, which lie off the southern end of the chain of islands making up the Outer Hebridies, are well known for the quality of the rock climbing and it was for that reason I have always wanted to visit. However, when the chance finally came I was aprehensive in the extreme as I hadn't been climbing well for years and sea cliffs have always been a particular nemisis of mine. I flicked through the guidebook and could find very littel under E1 and this was reinforced whilst trawling for tinformation on the internet. With this in mind I packed the kayaks together with the absolute minimum of climbing gear and thought that my climbing would be limited to some bouldering. Still the lure of a bagging a couple of Marilyns would mean that even if I got no climbing done it wouldn't have been a 'wasted' trip.

Even with the efforts to keep kit to the smallest amount possible we had a mountain of kit which was a real effort to get on and off the ferry from Oban and subsequently on to the small boat charted to get us out from Barra to the islands. Donald and his boat Boy James did a sterling job of delievering everything and everyone on to Pabbay. The beach and campsite were idylic. The island was much greener than expected and the beach would make the pages of any tourist brochure to the Carribean. The only slight downer was the relative lack of water, but the weather has been exceptionally dry for the past month.

Whilst the others set off to the Allanish Pensiular on the west coast I decided to check out a couple of crags opposite the campsite. To my surprise and delight I found a couple of very decent walls and spent a good few hours bouldering and soloing on rock that was never more than VDiff in grade. It is no exagaration that I didn't hold or step on a single loose hold. Testiment to the ferocity of the winter gales that help to keep the crags clean. In fact the holds were so good that even steep looking lines succumbed realtively easily. The topo below gives some idea of the routes which were about 10m long. Okay, not the most spectacular crag but only 10min walk from the beach.

The next day was spent checking out the boulders that were situated high up near the highest point of the island which has a trig point. Basically drop south east from the summit and in 5 min there are loads of 4-5m high walls of perfect rock with scores of problems at about the V0 (easy) level with superb grassy landings.

The 'Sugarloaf' boulder located in the col just before the final rise to the trig point i.e. north of the summit, probably had the best bit of bouldering on the island with a couple of harder problems which I had to get a rope on to do in comfort.

Not everyone is as happy to boulder as I am, but the other members of the group were well contented with the routes that they climbed and not all in the top-end grades either. Quality routes at VDiff and Severe were in enough abundance to keep most happy. Of course there are much longer and harder routes, but they are all documented so I don't need to mention them here.

After a further day on my 'Crag X' and fishing for Pollack we decamped to Mingulay. Mingulay seemed a lot more lush than Pabbay and the water supply was much better and the campsite even better. Evenings were spent soaking up the evening rays and watching seals play in the surf or sun themselves on the beach.



Here again with a bit of a sense of adventure you could quite happily climb at the lower grades without running out of things to do. On MacPhee's hill there is even a short inland crag covered in routes not much harder than VDiff. I am sure that the dedicated rock jocks will say that by not climbing in the high E grades on the massive cliffs you are missing the point. In a certain respect they are right, but climbing on perfect rock is relatively rare in Scotland so the chance to do amidst the puffins and seals isn't a bad substitute.


One day myself and Emly took a walk down the coast and chanced upon a rocky prominatory, primarily to watch the puffins from. I scared myself on a steep boulder problem and then put on the rope and discovered a perfect Diff. A great mix of steep steps and delicate slabs and would be worth a least one star on any other crag in the country. Whilst belaying Emily up the climb a seal came to watch and played for a while in the swell.

The next day was still so we headed out in the kayaks to photograph the climbing crags. On the way we looked over to Bernary and it looked so close and as the conditions for paddling couldn't have been any better we decided to chance it. After all the anticipation when we thought that the crossing would be too hard it was an easy 10min paddle. We walked up to the lighthouse to check out the cliffs. The cliffs on the south side were awe inspiring, 200m of steep rock with a multitude of seabirds of all different species constantly whirring about the ledges.

A last day was spent seconding slightly harder routes near the campsite which did involve abseiling and hanging belays. Again the rock was magnificant and plenty of new, or at least unrecorded, lines to climb. All the islands were idyllic and I definetly will be back and even find some new crags or routes that have escaped notice so far! There is no need for climbers of a moderate standard to be put off from going by stories of mamoth abseils and everything going at E5 or above. Saying that I really shouldn't be encouraging people to go just for the selfish freason of wanting the place to myself!