Ben Avon

Friday 31st May 2013

This was an amazing day that started with me waking up in a tent. I had never taken a tent with me while walking before and had actually not slept in a tent since my teens. I had excellent weather for my venture into the unknown with clear skies all night and awoke to the same excellent weather that I had gone to sleep in, except that sleep was not something that came easily. Still, it was an amazing experience to be able to just stop in the middle of nowhere, pitch up my tent and go to sleep, and it is quite appealing. My original onward route for the great trail from where I’d pitched, near the Linn of Avon overlooked by Inchrory Lodge, was to walk through Glen Builg and over Bealach Dearg to Invercauld House, but since the weather was stunning I thought I’d climb the nearby Ben Avon and bag my first Munro of the holiday. I’m sure my original route would have been a fantastic walk through valleys typical of the Cairngorms National Park, but since I had slept at the starting point of the best route up Ben Avon it was a shame to waste the opportunity.

After eating my breakfast and packing up my tent I set off on a track up the heather-covered hillside. All the hills in this part of the Cairngorms seem to be heather-covered moors with little redeeming qualities, but Ben Avon is an exception. It is a vast sprawling mountain that covers a large area and I was a long way away from the summit, but between me and the top was a huge collection of rock tors that wouldn’t have been out of place on Dartmoor with some rearing up to thirty metres in height. Unfortunately I wasn’t in the right mood to appreciate them and perhaps it would have been better for me to have taken this route as a descent. I prefer to climb a mountain as quickly as possible and then linger up high as long as possible slowly descending. This climb just seemed to go on forever and after my poor night’s sleep in the tent I didn’t have the energy to run up to the top of any of the tors. I made excuses to myself that there were so many tors it wasn’t worth climbing every single one, but my rucksack was also weighing heavily on my decision to pass them all.

Nevertheless, I still had great sunshine as I passed the first rock tor, Clach Bhan, the largest of all the tors, on my right with Meall Gaineimh on my left. After passing the bristling East Meur Gorm Craig the convenient path that I’d been following faded away and I was left to make my own way across the vast grass-covered hillside. Long distances separated the tors now and I wasn't passing close enough to them to enliven the walk. I was also frustrated while trying to take pictures of them because they were sprawled so sparsely across the vast hill I found it difficult to get a good picture without getting mostly a shot of a dull grassy hillside. I guess Ben Avon isn’t a very photogenic mountain. After bypassing West Meur Gorm Craig I climbed the steep slopes of Mullach Lochan nan Gabhar to the vast summit plateau where the actual tor that is the Munro summit still lay at least a mile away across the wide hilltop past several more tors. Eventually I reached the second largest tor on Ben Avon and the summit of the mountain where I could finally rest and get some shelter from the sun.

Despite starting the climb first thing, it had taken me all morning to reach the summit of this vast mountain, so I took the opportunity to have my lunch behind the shelter of the summit tor while gradually regaining my strength. Once revived I scrambled up to the top of the summit tor and beheld the tremendous views that were all around me, particularly west towards the snow-speckled Cairngorm Mountains and the much nearer, flat-topped Beinn a’ Bhuird. This mountain is not far from Ben Avon, but lacks the rock tors that adds interest to the ascent of Ben Avon, however Beinn a’ Bhuird is the higher of the two mountains and is not only the eleventh highest mountain in Britain, but is the highest mountain in Britain that I have never visited. Despite this, when I reached the Sneck, the low point between the two mountains, I turned left and made my way south down into the valley. It wasn’t long before I met two women coming up from the valley and they couldn’t understand why I hadn’t gone up Beinn a’ Bhuird as well.

I am not interested in bagging Munros, just in having a good walk and Beinn a’ Bhuird is such a dull mountain I saw no point in climbing it. The best part of Beinn a’ Bhuird is probably the towering crags of Slochd Mòr, the great corrie north of the Sneck, and the best vantage point for that is Ben Avon. Super men, or those without a heavy rucksack, might have gone up Beinn a’ Bhuird, but I didn’t.  The two women were not even sure what mountain I’d just climbed when I told them I’d been to Ben Avon, partly because I’d pronounced it Ben A-von with the A of apple (it didn’t feel right to me to give it the same pronunciation as the Avon of Bristol), but they said it completely differently: Ben A’an. This is apparently the correct Scottish pronunciation, but why or how anyone else is supposed to know that is a mystery to me. While continuing down the hill, I had to carefully negotiate some pretty substantial snow-drifts that completely blocked my way before eventually I reached a gloriously well-made path that took me joyfully all the way down.

The sun that had continued to shine all morning didn’t last beyond lunchtime and it wasn’t long before the cloud that had quickly built up brought rain, but that didn’t bother me as I was already safely on the excellent path that took me through Gleann an t-Slugain to Invercauld House. I wasn’t impressed with Ben Avon, but it is at least better than Beinn a’ Bhuird, and I did enjoy the walk in the sun as well as the long walk out along a well-made path to Invercauld House. By the time I reached the main road I was exhausted due to the long climb, carrying an ill-fitting, heavy rucksack and due to my lack of sleep in the tent. The last thing I wanted was to have to walk more than two miles along the busy road, but that was what I had to do, and so I was very relieved when I finally reached Braemar without being hit by a car.