Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, April 13 2009.

A couple of weekends ago I travelled north to do some walking in Glen Strathfarrar with Simon, a fellow hillwalker from near Nairn. Glen Strathfarrar is only 30 minutes drive from Inverness, but is quite unknown, even amongst hillwalkers. This is probably because it’s not very accessible, as the only road that runs through it is private, and only open to motor vehicles at certain times of the year, and then only during the day (at other times the road is blocked by a locked gate).

To give ourselves a chance of doing the intended route we each had a vehicle which we left at the start and finish points of the walk along the private road. We only had 9 hours of access to get the walk in and we just managed it! After the walk I got a flat tyre on my car whilst driving on some gravel on the private road and I had to stop and put on the spare wheel – we only made it to the gate with 15 minutes to spare.

The route took us over four Munro summits (which equals my record for Munro summits attained in a single day, the last time I did this was in 1999) and the weather was much better than expected, so it was a great day out. The scenery in Glen Strathfarrar is fantastic, and we had the mountains totally to ourselves.

On the road that runs through the glen I saw some wild goats (including a couple of baby goats head-butting each other). I’ve only seen wild goats in three other places in Scotland – Hart Fell in the Southern Uplands, and on the slopes of Slioch and An Teallach in the Highlands.

You can see the photos I took on the walk on my website here.

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