Goat Fell

Tuesday 10th April 2007

My first walk on Arran proved to be difficult, tricky and made most demanding by the weather which was windy, cloudy and wet. This was not the best weather for hard scrambling, but I gave it a go and I lived to describe it in this blog. Taking the bus to Sannox I initially set off along Glen Sannox, but soon climbed up the hillside besides the Allt a'Chapuill climbing towards the imposing face of Cioch na h Oighe. This was a very tiring and frustrating stage of the walk as the ground was boggy and heather-filled with any semblance to a path soon disappearing as I forced my way up the hillside against many obstacles. Eventually I reached a path that runs across the face of the hill leading to the northern ridge where I was faced with a very steep, rocky ascent that involved a lot of scrambling in rather wet conditions. The wet rocks were making things rather tricky, and I was constantly having to look around for a better route up the rocks.

Eventually the gradient levelled off but the challenges remained as I negotiated the rocky ridge in strong wind, low cloud and also at this point, rain. I was climbing above what my Harvey Map called Coire na Ciche, a name that meant nothing to me but the OS gives it a much more ominously sounding English name: The Devil's Punchbowl, but I didn't learn that till later. I think I may have been more reluctant to do the walk in these conditions had I known. Eventually I left the tricky, rocky ridge behind and went up to the eastern end of Mullach Buidhe and after stopping for lunch I passed over the 830m top, which the OS calls Mullach Buidhe, while Harvey gives the impression that Mullach Buidhe is at the end of the ridge. The ridge continued up to the top of North Goat Fell where the wind really hit me. Up until this point I had been pretty well sheltered from the westerly wind, but now I was totally hit by the full force of it as I approached the top of the ridge, so staying at the top was just not an option and I was forced to stay low on the eastern side to keep away from the strong wind. If the weather had been good I would have tried climbing over all the stacks between North Goat Fell and Goat Fell, but not on this walk, maybe later, so once all the stacks were behind me I climbed up to the top of Goat Fell. Because of the bad weather I had the summit all to myself and it wasn't even very windy at the top; presumably all the wind was going around the summit rather than over it. After a while I headed down the stupendously easy tourist path, which after all the challenges of the ascent was a piece of cake; it was almost too easy to find my way down as the manufactured path could easily be seen. As a relaxing descent this was brilliant, especially after the challenging ascent and I soon arrived at the road and passed on into Brodick, where I was able to buy some groceries. This was really quite a short walk as I wanted to have some time to visit Brodick, but the next day wouldn't be so easy, as I had a much longer walk planned.