Admin

We woke later than usual, around 7.30am. I was surprised by how much later the sun rose and how much earlier it set compared to home – about 8-8.30am and 3.30-4pm. Morning admin was a repeat of yesterday; porridge, coffee, tidying and jam sandwich making.

Ice climbing

After a 10-minute drive from our overnight spot, we arrived at Ice Factor in Kinlochleven – the largest indoor ice climbing centre in the world. It’s an impressive building which houses an indoor rock climbing wall, shop, cosy café and ice climbing area, which is pretty much a giant freezer. We’d booked in for the earliest taster session of the day, keen to have as much exploring time left over as possible. I started to write about ice climbing in this post but I got carried away, so for the fine detail read my separate post – Ice Climbing for Idiots. Basically, it was really fun and I want more.

Hiking

We left the centre with big smiles, grabbed our hiking kit from the van and set off on a route we’d planned the previous evening. We had hoped to climb some munros (Scottish mountains over 3,000ft high) in the Mamores range, which lies between Kinlochleven and Ben Nevis. We actually ended up doing a different route which took us up and west, rather than north, due to a disappearing footpath and some dodgy-looking weather over the mountain tops, so unfortunately we didn’t reach any summits.

Nevertheless, we didn’t mind deviating from the plan because we’d set off late, got some breathtakingly-awesomely-stunningly beautiful views down the length of Loch Leven and had a lovely couple of hours anyway, despite some questionable “footpath” terrain and glute-burningly steep bits. The hike also took us past Grey Mare’s Tail waterfall, which is well worth the short walk from Kinlochleven.

Fort William

Our alternative route meant that we got back to Björn with enough time spare to get to Fort William for a wander round. It’s an attractive town with plenty of shops and pubs, and seems to be a kind of outdoorsey “hub” with a nice buzz. We managed to do a bit of Christmas shopping before treating ourselves to a meal in a café – I don’t think a jacket potato has ever tasted so good. Fed, warmed and out of daylight, we got in the van and headed east.

The Cairngorms

We’d arranged to meet a friend to climb a munro in the Cairngorms the following day. I chose Lochnagar after reading about it in a “Britain’s greatest mountains” feature of The Great Outdoors magazine (don’t tell my cool friends), so we drove the three hours there from Fort William. It was a shame to drive across so much of the National Park in the dark, but we’d seen it before and were keen to make the most of the daylight hours outside. We arrived at the Spittal of Glenmuick quite late and quite tired, so we parked along the dead-end road, admired the blackness of the sky and the utter, pindrop silence, packed bags ready for an early start and slept.