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Despite a somewhat curtailed trip (this time), I thought I’d at least post an up to date description for the first couple of days and then add to it when I get back to the trail later this year. My route was based around the one outlined in North to the Cape by Denis Brooke and Phil Hinchcliffe which proceeds up Glenfinnan. As the Camusnagaul ferry is seasonal, I opted to start my journey in Glenfinnan rather than Fort William, but a good first day would otherwise take you from Camusnagaul around Loch Eil (either “up and over” or using the not too busy A861 road that hugs the lochside). The first night could be spent either at the very pleasant Prince’s House Hotel in Glenfinnan or at the Corryhully bothy a few km up the glen. Like me, you’ll probably be carrying a fair bit of food at this stage, so whilst the next day to A’Chuil bothy may look shortish, it’s a good way to ease yourself into the trail. Going is good as you make your way up Glenfinnan, before a steepish drag up to the pass between Streap and Sgurr Thuilm. Although the spot height here is only 471m, in winter you’re likely to find snow and the first few hundred metres of descent into Gleann Cuirnean is distinctly tricky. On the OS map the path is marked to the West of the stream, but you’ll probably have to cross after a couple of km due to bank erosion. I found it better to stick to the East as the bridge at 969907 is on this side of the river. Once you’ve crossed the bridge, walk to the fence line and about 100m to the East you will pick up a path through the woods up to the metalled track that leads in a long loop through the woods to A’Chuil bothy (944924). The bothy is spacious, with two rooms and fireplaces, although surrounded by deep bog. The route in North to the Cape suggests the next night as a wild camp up the Carnach river. However, in Winter the going is sufficiently rough to make a stop at Sourlies sensible. In summer I’d be tempted to push on to the bothy Barisdale, although this would make for a long, tough second day. Leaving A’Chuil is straightforward enough to do in the dark with a headtorch (in winter) and the metalled track continues for several km before crossing the river Dessary via a bridge at 930935. At this stage the main path continues to follow the river and up through the forest. However, argocat machinery and logging have made this path extremely boggy and almost impassable. A better option is, having crossed the river, to head due North until you clear the woods, joining the path that comes from Upper Glendessary. From here on the going is very rough. The path comes and goes and conditions underfoot are very sloshy. Things become a bit clearer once you reach Lochan a Mhaim, with a decent river crossing at 890945. The path winding down to Sourlies bothy is steep in places and you’ll definitely be glad to see the bothy, even if it’s only for a late lunch. Progress from Sourlies is dependent on the state of the tide. At low tide you’ll be able to skirt along the edge of Loch Nevis before heading across the flats to a rickety bridge before Carnoch. At high tide it’s a rough scramble over the headland instead. The going before and immediately after Carnoch is very rough with deep bogs (I went in up to my waist at one stage), making progress slow, tiring and difficult. Things get better as you head up the glen on a reasonably well defined path. Well, that’s a start anyway, more to follow.

Despite a somewhat curtailed trip (this time), I thought I’d at least post an up to date description for the first couple of days and then add to it when I get back to the trail later this year.

My route was based around the one outlined in North to the Cape by Denis Brooke and Phil Hinchcliffe which proceeds up Glenfinnan. As the Camusnagaul ferry is seasonal, I opted to start my journey in Glenfinnan rather than Fort William, but a good first day would otherwise take you from Camusnagaul around Loch Eil (either “up and over” or using the not too busy A861 road that hugs the lochside). The first night could be spent either at the very pleasant Prince’s House Hotel in Glenfinnan or at the Corryhully bothy a few km up the glen.

Like me, you’ll probably be carrying a fair bit of food at this stage, so whilst the next day to A’Chuil bothy may look shortish, it’s a good way to ease yourself into the trail. Going is good as you make your way up Glenfinnan, before a steepish drag up to the pass between Streap and Sgurr Thuilm.

Although the spot height here is only 471m, in winter you’re likely to find snow and the first few hundred metres of descent into Gleann Cuirnean is distinctly tricky. On the OS map the path is marked to the West of the stream, but you’ll probably have to cross after a couple of km due to bank erosion. I found it better to stick to the East as the bridge at 969907 is on this side of the river.

Once you’ve crossed the bridge, walk to the fence line and about 100m to the East you will pick up a path through the woods up to the metalled track that leads in a long loop through the woods to A’Chuil bothy (944924). The bothy is spacious, with two rooms and fireplaces, although surrounded by deep bog.

The route in North to the Cape suggests the next night as a wild camp up the Carnach river. However, in Winter the going is sufficiently rough to make a stop at Sourlies sensible. In summer I’d be tempted to push on to the bothy Barisdale, although this would make for a long, tough second day.

Leaving A’Chuil is straightforward enough to do in the dark with a headtorch (in winter) and the metalled track continues for several km before crossing the river Dessary via a bridge at 930935. At this stage the main path continues to follow the river and up through the forest. However, argocat machinery and logging have made this path extremely boggy and almost impassable. A better option is, having crossed the river, to head due North until you clear the woods, joining the path that comes from Upper Glendessary.

From here on the going is very rough. The path comes and goes and conditions underfoot are very sloshy. Things become a bit clearer once you reach Lochan a Mhaim, with a decent river crossing at 890945. The path winding down to Sourlies bothy is steep in places and you’ll definitely be glad to see the bothy, even if it’s only for a late lunch.

Progress from Sourlies is dependent on the state of the tide. At low tide you’ll be able to skirt along the edge of Loch Nevis before heading across the flats to a rickety bridge before Carnoch. At high tide it’s a rough scramble over the headland instead. The going before and immediately after Carnoch is very rough with deep bogs (I went in up to my waist at one stage), making progress slow, tiring and difficult. Things get better as you head up the glen on a reasonably well defined path.

Well, that’s a start anyway, more to follow.

My Cape Wrath Trail route…as it stands today. View on larger map

I should also add that my feelings are now that a few of these stages would be very dificult in winter. In January I found that seven hours of light and weather conditions made stages of over 20km pretty much unrealistic. You could do the odd day as I did starting and finishing with headtorch, but it’s not much fun.

In summer I think this would be a good route for a reasonably fit walker.

Route updates - hot off the trail

As mentioned previously, one of the great things about the Cape Wrath Trail is that the route is very much down to personal choice. Access laws and the wild open places the trail traverses allow a lot of flexibility.

However, there will always be obstacles and difficulties encountered and these will often change from year to year or even month to month, making it impossible for any guide book to stay current.

With this in mind, I’ve created this thread so others can post reports from the trail of any route difficulties. If you’ve got something to report, simply add it to this post as a comment so we can keep everything together. A date would also be useful.

Other route news is occasionally posted here, although nothing has been added recently.

I’m indebted to David Albon for kicking us off with the first report:

“A friend and I very recently completed the Cape Wrath Trail (20th September ‘08). A superb, challenging walk through wonderful wild country.

But, there are a couple of sections to be aware of, mostly through forestry, that are very tricky to negotiate because of developments in recent years.

1. From Achnashellach to Kinlochewe, the forest beyond Torran cuillinn: We couldn’t find some paths and used forest rides and map & compass to find our way.

The second forest beyond it has been felled, path disappears and it is very slow going over what is left of the forestry.

2.Inverlael forest has what looks like a large hydro electric development taking place at the moment and some old paths have dissapeared. Our advice would be to get up high on forest tracks as soon as possible after crossing the first bridge so you can gain height & exit the forest (threre is now a rough, boggy path all the way from the end of forestry to the Allt na Lairige that joins the River Douchary).

3. Between Sandwood Bay and Cape Wrath someone has erected a fence (looks fairly recent) that runs as far as the eye can see and has topped it with barbed wire!”

16/11/2008 - thanks to BVE for the following

If you intend to follow the route described in “North to the Cape” (the Cicerone guide), there’s a mention of a ferry to cross the estuary just before Ullapool: this ferry no longer exists. [this was the  Altnaharrie ferry unfortunately withdrawn due to the cost of running the service].

It all ends in teas (this time)

It was going so well. I was the fittest I’ve been in my life, completely prepared and incredibly excited about the trip. After a overnight stop in Glenfinnan, I was so pleased to finally be on the road. Even with a very heavy pack, my steps felt light as I made my way up into Glenfinnan.

As I passed Corryhully bothy, a huge stag ambled nonchalantly onto the path and stood eyeballing me in that way they have, about 10 metres down the path. The weather was almost balmy (see picture above) with clear blue skies. I had a real sweat on as I made my way up to the pass between Sgurr Thuilm and Streap. There were still patches of snow making the descent into Gleann Cuirnean on he North side of the pass interesting (although I think a lot had melted since Rich Simpson’s group passed here - see earlier comments).

The melting snow made for a deep wade to reach the bridge over the river Pean, just before Strathan, and overall the going was very sloshy, but the forest track to A’Chuil bothy was well metalled and a pleasure.

A’Chuil is a fantastic two-roomed bothy and I was joined by two air traffic controllers from Prestwick who had been out climbing the Corbett behind the bothy, Meall nan Sparden, having driven in to the loch head at Strathan. They had carried in some coal and wood so a roaring fire lifted all our spirits as the weather closed in. Going out to “answer the call” in the late evening, I was squatting in the woods as the wind whipped horizontal sleet into the side of my face. I actually had a slight sense of foreboding then about the following day.

In the morning, my companions took one look at the weather and decide to beat a retreat to their car. The wind was gusting very strongly and the rain was absolutely torrential. I set off at about 8am into the darkness, the rain so strong my head torch was useless as it just picked out raindrops. Nevertheless, the path was good for a few kilometres and by the time I had hauled myself out of the boggy woodlands onto the track up Glendessary, it was getting lighter.

In the nearly 20 years I have been walking in Scotland, I’ve never known conditions worse than that day. Torrential rain doesn’t really do it justice. It felt like standing directly under several fire hoses and the wind was dropping to nothing and then whipping up to gusts of more than 100 mph. I didn’t really want to be out there.

Progress was therefore slower than I would have hoped, and perhaps the knowledge I was falling behind schedule was a factor in what happened next. I was negotiating one of those tricky “I wouldn’t want to fall off this” paths that you encounter many times a day in the highlands. This was skirting around a rocky outcrop, just before Lochan A Mhaim. I must have been slightly off balance when one of those super gusts came rushing up the valley and flipped me right off the path.

I tumbled thirty foot or so, bashing most parts of my body and hitting my head on something hard. The next thing I remember (I must have briefly blacked out) was lying spreadeagled in a ravine with icy water gushing over the top of me. My first instinct was to get out of the water rather than check anything was broken, so it was only when I had clambered back up to the path that I realised all my bones were intact.

I knew that I needed to get somewhere where I could try and warm up very quickly, and fortuitously, Sourlies bothy was only about 4km away. As I struck off, I could feel that my left knee was not in a good way, but I think adrenaline got me to Sourlies. I quickly stripped off my wet clothes and managed to pull some clothes out of my rucsack that were still relatively dry, despite total immersion in water (my sleeping bag was almost totally dry - thank you Exped drybags).

I was shivering uncontollably now, I knew I had to try and warm up, so started doing star jumps. I’ll leave you to imagine the bizarre scene of someone trying to do star jumps with a battered knee, but any flies on the wall must have died laughing. Anyway, it had the desired effect of warming me up a bit and after an hour in my sleeping bag my spirits lifted and I realised what a close shave I’d had.

Overall it was a pretty cold, miserable night at Sourlies. After fitful sleep, I woke up and tested various bits of my body. Everything hurt and I felt like I’d gone ten rounds with Tyson after saying something derogatory about his mother. The awful reality dawned that I wasn’t going to be able to continue the trail.

It’s hard to overstate how gutted I felt at this stage, but I thought “I’m lucky, let’s not wallow in it, just get yourself out of here”. The knee was throbbing like someone was hitting it at regular intervals with a lump hammer, but I had a pack of Nurofen in my bag so I necked them which helped a bit.

I knew the closest civilisation was Inverie, about 15km away, so I decided to try and make it there if I could. The steep climb up to the pass at Mam Meadall was pretty agonising. I kept myself going into the heavy rain and wind by cursing a mental image of Julia Bradbury and the fact that you only ever see her walking on sun kissed lakeland fells on TV. Strangely, this kept me going, so thanks Julia..and sorry.

I eventually struggled into Inverie and have never been more pleased to see a warm tea room with a roaring fire and friendly company where I awaited the ferry to Mallaig. As I was boarding the ferry, the guy running the boat asked if I was Iain Harper, which took me aback slightly. Turns out Donald from Adventure Trading Post had been monitoring my SPOT satellite signals and had grown concerned for my welfare and asked them to look out for me (Thanks again Donald- you’re an absolute star).

At Mallaig a very friendly policeman picked me up from the ferry and made me a cup of tea. He checked I was ok and I was relieved to hear no one had been out looking for me. I told him I felt embarrassed by the whole thing and the most bruised thing was my ego. He made me feel slightly better by telling me about a person they’ve had to airlift off the mountains three times now. He suspected that the guy liked the attention and said next time they’d be airlifting him to the local prison! The policeman very kindly gave me a lift to Fort William where I caught the train home, tail very much between legs.

So what has this taught me and where does this leave my plans? Being honest, I feel in hindsight I was slightly overconfident and some of the route planning may have been overambitious. That said, the conditions were off the scale bad. The lesson is that in winter every day has to be planned with the absolute worst case scenario in mind. That may sound obvious, but in winter I’d now say that terrain, light and weather make any day over 20km marginal.

Also, I didn’t (couldn’t) build in enough time flexibility to be able to say “the weather is just too bad to be out in today”. I think the Cape Wrath Trail is still doable in winter, but you need to have the time to be able to let the conditions dictate your pace rather than try and press on and force the issue, as I found out.

It’s been a chastening experience all round, and a timely reminder of the innate dangers we all face when we go into the wild places, no matter how experienced or prepared.

But I see this very much as the beginning, rather than the end of my Cape Wrath Trail ambitions. Whether I’ll be able to find the time to have a crack at it all in one go again, I’m not sure, but this experience has only strengthened my desire to finish this wild, dangerous, peerless journey. Watch this space.

So long for now...

So this is it then, 6 months of preparation are almost over and the trek begins on the 20th December. I’ll be posting brief updates from the trail direct to this blog whenever I can get a mobile phone signal.

Don’t forget you can also follow my progress live thanks to the miraculous SPoT satellite tracker. Just click on the title link above or click here and you can monitor my daily movements on a Google Map (thanks again to Donald at Adventure Trading Post for setting this up).

So farewell for now and thanks for the many best wishes I have received. I’ll catch you back here in early January with some tales to tell I’m sure.

Have a great Christmas and New Year.

One of the unexpected pleasures of this blog has been the way it has grown from being a way for me to collect all of my preparations and information in one place. I’ve been truly amazed and often humbled by the many people who have got in touch to share their experiences, wish me luck (which I most definitely needed as it happened!) and generally pass the time of day. A little while back John Dunbavin dropped me a line to suggest a way around that perennial backpacker’s problem of food that is light but tastes half decent (his solution of investing in a de-hydrator to use on your favourite dishes is one I’m currently testing out enthusiastically). He also sent me a link to his own blog, but weighed down with New Years work it’s taken me until now to read it. When I eventually did, I was truly astounded. To cut a long story short, John has spent five months this year walking all the Munros with his German Shepherd, Skye, to raise money for The Anthony Nolan Trust and Second Chances, a rescue charity for German Shepherd dogs. If I was ever in danger of feeling sorry for myself about my aborted Christmas trip (which I was a bit), John’s truly awe inspiring and humbling achievement has truly snapped me out of it and made me hungrier than ever to get back on the trail (which I will be doing in May). John I salute you (and Skye of course).

One of the unexpected pleasures of this blog has been the way it has grown from being a way for me to collect all of my preparations and information in one place. I’ve been truly amazed and often humbled by the many people who have got in touch to share their experiences, wish me luck (which I most definitely needed as it happened!) and generally pass the time of day.

A little while back John Dunbavin dropped me a line to suggest a way around that perennial backpacker’s problem of food that is light but tastes half decent (his solution of investing in a de-hydrator to use on your favourite dishes is one I’m currently testing out enthusiastically).

He also sent me a link to his own blog, but weighed down with New Years work it’s taken me until now to read it. When I eventually did, I was truly astounded. To cut a long story short, John has spent five months this year walking all the Munros with his German Shepherd, Skye, to raise money for The Anthony Nolan Trust and Second Chances, a rescue charity for German Shepherd dogs.

If I was ever in danger of feeling sorry for myself about my aborted Christmas trip (which I was a bit), John’s truly awe inspiring and humbling achievement has truly snapped me out of it and made me hungrier than ever to get back on the trail (which I will be doing in May).

John I salute you (and Skye of course).