Cape Wrath Trail in Winter

With my Cape Wrath Trail plans temporarily on hold until another window of opportunity presents itself, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit one of the original intentions of this blog.

When I started out 6 months ago I struggled to find all the information I needed and wanted to draw it all together in one place to help others tackling this amazing trail. In the process this blog has become rather long and rambling and I suspect, rather hard to navigate. So I thought it might be helpful to create a post that summarised the main questions I had when first approaching the walk…

What route should I take?
One of the beauties of the Cape Wrath Trail is that there is no official route. At its simplest, it is a journey from Fort William to Cape Wrath. Several people have suggested routes that avoid roads as far as possible and provide a good mix of terrain. some of these can be found here.

Is there a guide book that covers the route?
North to the Cape by Denis Brooke and Phil Hinchcliffe, describes “a route” in detail and is essential reading for anyone attempting the Cape Wrath Trail. The only drawbacks to the book are that it’s ten years old and in all but one instance doesn’t list bothies.

What time of year is best to do the route?
April and September are generally held to be the best months, being almost summer and avoiding the worst of the midge season. I attempted it in mid winter and encountered 120mph winds and arctic conditions. Light is also limited to 7 hours max. Is it possible in winter? Yes, but limiting days to 20km and being as flexible as possible should unspeakable weather come in are advisable.

What equipment will I need?
Equipment is intensely personal, but suffice to say that given the remoteness and challenges of the trail, you’ll need gear that’s up to the job. The following is a list of stuff I took in winter:
http://northtothecape.tumblr.com/post/50400540/equipment-for-the-cape-wrath-trail

What maps will I need?
http://northtothecape.tumblr.com/post/46048801/os-maps-needed-for-the-cape-wrath-trail

What accommodation is available en route?
This is very much dependent on the time of year. In summer you’ll probably be able to park your head on a feather pillow most nights if you wish, in winter options are very limited:
http://northtothecape.tumblr.com/post/46807306/accommodation-on-the-cape-wrath-trail

How do I get back from Cape Wrath?
http://northtothecape.tumblr.com/post/46809939/getting-away-from-cape-wrath

Can I get supplies along the route?
Yes, there are shops in Shiel bridge, Kinlochewe, Inshegra (The London Stores), Ullapool (Tesco) and Kinlochbervie (Spar). Most hotels and bunkhouses will also allow you to post supply parcels to pick up en route if you ask nicely. Some useful point of interest can be found here:
http://northtothecape.tumblr.com/post/46420402/another-cape-wrath-trail-route

As training for the trip continues, I was back on Black Mountain at the weekend with friends Dan and Seema who have foolishly agreed to accompany me from Strathcarron to just North of Ullapool.

The plan was to have a pleasant few days walking and testing out new gear. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas. The appropriately named Black Mountain has a Mordor-like quality at the best of times, but as we parked the car and headed off into its bleak beauty, clouds were gathering ominously.

Perhaps it wasn’t a good omen that the only sign of human life we saw on Saturday was a Mountain Rescue van parked at the pass. As we continued along the Picws Du ridge towards an overnight camp at Llyn Y Fan Fawr, visibility dropped to nil and the wind was reaching storm force.

Pitching the tents was like trying to fly a kite in a wind tunnel. As the night went on, the winds were gusting up to 100mph with driving snow thrown into the bargain. My ageing North Face Stratos took the brunt of this and barely survived the night, emerging with one side caved in and the aluminium poles bent into a Dali-esque nightmare.

Dan and Seema fared better in their newly acquired Marmot Grid, which shrugged off the conditions and is now top of my shopping list as a 4 season replacement for the mutilated North Face.

Dawn eventually broke and an eerie milky yellow light illuminated the snow dusted sides of Black Mountain (see photo). We were allowed just a few moments to enjoy the primordial majesty of the setting before the wind and hail came back with a vengeance, driving us down toward Glyntawe and a warm but weird pub.

The mountain well and truly whipped us and reminded us all of our utter insignificance in the general scheme of things. There’s probably no better place to train for the Cape Wrath Trail.

The final leg of the Cape Wrath Trail looks to be one of the hardest. 20 odd miles of slog across trackless terrain, plenty of river crossings and the North Atlantic undoubtedly throwing its worst at you over the cliffs to your West.

With the end in sight and the delights of Sandwood Bay along the way, it is a day you’ll long remember, especially when the cape lighthouse finally hoves into view across the bleak peat.

There is nothing at Cape Wrath other than an unmanned lighthouse. In summer, a minibus and ferry crossing bring visitors to the cape and provide walkers with a handy means of escape to Durness without the need to return to Kinlochbervie.

Durness has a range of accommodation and also bus services back to Lairg direct or via Kinlochbervie. Lairg is on the train line to Inverness.

Outside peak season there is no alternative but to retreat to Kinlochbervie, after an overnight camp at the cape. The postbus from Durness calls in at Kinlochbervie at 09:00 and goes onwards to meet the Inverness train at Lairg.

There is still much shuffling of maps going on, and plenty of scribbling in notebooks and use of string to measure distances. However, my route is taking shape, so I thought I’d post it, even though it is still a work in progress.

The main challenge of doing the Cape Wrath Trail in winter has been finding accommodation. In April to October you could pretty much have a feather pillow every night, no such luck for me.

My plan is to send re-supply parcels ahead of myself so I only have to carry 4-5 days food at any given time, keeping the weight to a (hopefully) bearable level.

I’ve been lucky with the lovely people at Strathcarron Hotel (open on Christmas Eve!) and the larger Ullapool offers various options and a much needed rest day later in the trip. The biggest surprise has been the Kinlochbervie Hotel, the most North Westerly point before Cape Wrath, but still gamely open for business in early January.

The rest of the overnight stops will be divided between wild camps (kept to a minimum in case of horrendous conditions) and bothies. This has meant deviating slightly from the “accepted” route in some places, but then again the beauty of the Cape Wrath Trail is there is no official route really.

Where I am using bothies I have named them, although some would probably prefer they were kept secret. As mentioned in a previous post, if you use bothies I urge you to join the Mountain Bothies Association. It seems only fair to support the hard work of the people that keep these places open for us all.

So it looks like the Cape Wrath Trail is do-able in winter after all. There were moments when logistically I thought it simply wouldn’t be possible. I’m under no illusions that this is going to be one hell of a tough trip even though I’ve managed to keep most days below 25k (still an alarmingly big distance given the terrain and under 7 hours of daylight). Training now starts in earnest. 5 months and counting…

One of the main failings of North to the Cape, reviewed in the last post, is its omission on all but one occasion to include details of the many bothies found along the Cape Wrath Trail.

The authors stated rationale is as follows “As members and supporters of the Outdoor Writer’s Guild (OWG) and in accordance with the agreement between the Mountain Bothies Association (MBA) and the OWG we have refrained from identifying bothies on the route”.

However, they appear conflicted as they later add “whilst we undersatnd the dilemma the MBA is in, we feel that knowledge of the precise whereabouts of bothies would be a decided advantage”. Classic English understament methinks.

I came to bothies late. In fact, despite many years on the Scottish hills it was only during a trip to Knoydart in April that I discovered the incomparable Sourlies bothy. During the trip I stayed at another bothy at A’Chuil and on my return contacted the MBA and paid to become a member.

The dilemma the authors refer to concerns the location of bothies. Bothies work on trust. They are shelters in wild places, maintained by volunteers, for the use of everyone. There have been some instances, particularly in recent years, of bothies being vandalised. For this reason the MBA tries to keep bothy locations out of general circulation. A list is only provided when you join.

I’m not sure if the situation with the Outdoor Writer Guild has changed in recent years (for instance I regularly see bothies mentioned in magazines like Trail), but the omission of bothies from North to the Cape seriously detracts from an otherwise excellent book. In several instances the authors suggest camping when their are bothies within a few kilometres. To not mention these is ridiculous.

Balancing the need to protect bothies with the needs of those who would use (and potentially abuse) them is difficult. But you’d have to hope that the sort of person who buys a guide to the Cape Wrath Trail is not going to fall into the abusive category.

In the same way, I’d like to think that anyone reading this blog will treat bothies with the respect they deserve. I personally feel that if you use bothies it is only right to support those who work so hard to maintain them and join the MBA.

All of which is a rather long winded plea for bothies to be included in future editions of North to the Cape and my personal justification for revealing some locations in this blog.

As I’ve discovered, there are very few alternatives.