I heard it on the jade vine

Arrochar has a special significance for me, it was my first taste of the Scottish hills waaay back in 1996 when on a weekend away with the Durham University Hillwalking Society (DUYHA as it was then). If memory serves, my first hill on that trip was Ben Vane and from that moment on I have been a confirmed munro bagger! That was also my first taste of winter mountaineering, I recall a massive amount of snow and being equipped with an ancient ice axe with a wooden shaft! I believe that over the years I have climbed all the larger hills in this area at some point, I've certainly been up both The Cobbler and Ben Narnain a fair few times and twice suffered on the steep ascent to Ben Vorlich. All of these trips targetted the hills in ones or twos so what I had never done was to link up all the munros in a single walk. Yet again my inspiration for this walk came from Dan Bailey's excellent book " Great Mountain Days in Scotland " (published by Cicerone). Rather than taki

Ever since I first read Dan Bailey's inspirational book " Great Mountain Days in Scotland " (published by Cicerone) a few years ago one challenge I've really wanted to have a go at is that of walking the 4 munros of Ben Cruachan, Stob Daimh, Beinn a'Chocuill and Beinn Eunaich in a single day. The route offers a bit of everything - big mountains, high level ridge walking, easy scrambling on good rock and spectacular views. (This continues on from A night out on Ben Cruachan ). On paper this might not look like a really big route, it's only 20km with about 2100m of ascent but that really doesn't account for the scale of what is involved. The ups are big, the downs are big and there's plenty of scrambling in between. Applying the traditional Naismith rule gives a walking time of 7hr 30mins but I took 9 hours (although with a 10kg pack), Bailey recommends allowing 11hour for the full loop. I'm an early riser, especially when camping, but e

Ever since I first read Dan Bailey's inspirational book " Great Mountain Days in Scotland " (published by Cicerone) a few years ago one challenge I've really wanted to have a go at is that of walking the 4 munros of Ben Cruachan, Stob Daimh, Beinn a'Chocuill and Beinn Eunaich in a single day. The route offers a bit of everything - big mountains, high level ridge walking, easy scrambling on good rock and spectacular views. The main reason I've not got around to doing this sooner is that it is quite a long way to travel from Edinburgh, certainly it's too far for me to drive there and back in a day. Also family life means I can't be out for entire weekends for camping trips that frequently. On a recent trip to the Ben Alder area I took the train to Corrour station as it's not easily accessible any other way. As I was sat on the train in Crianlarich station waiting for it to split in two, with the first part going on to Oban, it dawned on me that Be