Physics teacher’s sabbatical

Geal Chàrn is one of those unusual Munros which you can actually see the summit from the car park. The Walkhighlands website estimates 5-6 hours, but standing on the today bridge, looking at the hill, gave me the impression it would be a short walk. Spoiler…it was.

The Monadhliath is the range of hills west of the A9 travelling north, very near Newtonmore, that includes 4 Munros in total. It is very remote and wild. I climbed the other three back in June 2003, almost 21 years ago to the day. I remember it well – it was one of the only hill walking outings with my uni flatmates that I would call a success – the only other time was in Skye, and it was a very, very wet trip – we spent most of the week playing cards in the tent at Glenbrittle.

I had two reasons to climb Geal Chàrn today.

1. It wasn’t far off the A9 on my way up to Beauly.
2. It neighbours Creag Meagaidh, the NNR I read about a few weeks ago in Gairloch.

From the top of Geal Charn, there were good views across to Creag Meagaidh and the wind turbines to the north.

The views are scarred somewhat by all the tracks used for accessing the turbines; many of these turbines sites have been built supplying energy to the high capacity Beauly-Denny power transmission line. My mother-in-law tells me that the site in Beauly has caused lots of local angst and consternation, and the latest plan to put a battery powered energy storage facility just near the end of their road has not gone down well either.

What I noticed most was the barrenness of the landscape; the result of deforestation and overgrazing of sheep and deer, the latter of which I saw in large numbers today. It will be very interesting to visit Creag Meagaidh soon to see how the nature regeneration that is taking place there has impacted the landscape and increased biodiversity. Supposedly you can see golden eagles in Monadhliath, but I just saw the one ptarmigan – I’m starting to see these birds frequently, particularly around rocky summits.

Some might argue that this hill is a peat store and should not have trees on it. It was indeed very boggy. I’ll hopefully get the opportunity to ask tomorrow at Aigas about the balance of native forest regeneration and maintaining peatlands. Or perhaps this is a question for the Dundreggan Rewilding Centre, which I hope to also visit tomorrow afternoon.

Driving around Scotland

Last week I had my car serviced and put through it’s MOT. I noticed that this year the annual mileage was quite a bit more than previous years. I guess this is the result of all the trips I am doing this term. One advantage of driving lots around Scotland is the opportunity to listen to music and podcasts. Today I listened to a new (to me) podcast by Christian writer and church of England minister Glen Scrivener. It was off the back of a conversation we had last week in my local church house group about the growing numbers of famous public figures (from many different backgrounds and professions) professing some kind of interest or faith in Christianity, such as Louise Perry, Russell Brand and Ayaan Hirsi Ali to name a few. In the podcast, Glen comments on this shift in the West’s societal feeling toward faith and spirituality. The analysis was really fascinating in my opinion. So much so that I listened to another episode which was seriously brilliant. If you have any interest in such things, I’d highly recommend a listen to both these episodes.

You can find them here, episodes 514 and 515.