Day 271 – Blairmore to Cape Wrath 12.9 miles 2033′ ascent

Saturday 22nd April 2023

We just had an hour’s drive to Blairmore because we left the other car at Keoldale yesterday. 

We are starting on a two day trek across one of the most remote parts of Scotland. I have mentally been planning and looking forward to this section above all others ever since we set off in November 2019. This is also the final part of the Cape Wrath Trail. I had imagined we would have to camp on this stage or possibly make use of the bothy at Kervaig. However, at some point, I discovered that the lighthouse offers bunkhouse accommodation and this seems an ideal way of splitting the walk of about twenty-eight miles to the road near Durness. The other confounding factor is that the area around Cape Wrath is an MOD live firing range. The MOD only publish details of when the range will be open a few days before the following month. We had planned our walk to coincide with the weekend because they never fire on Sundays and infrequently on a Saturday and usually reopen the range by 5pm. That meant that in the worst eventuality we could have walked to the edge of the range on Saturday and wait at the edge of the range until 5pm and then walk the last few miles to the lighthouse in the evening. In fact when the MOD did publish firing times for April they were actually reopening the range to the public at midnight on Friday night which was why there was a group of CWT walkers also heading for Cape Wrath today. We have a walk of about twelve miles which is pathless beyond Sandwood Bay.

This morning we had lost the clear skies and, in the absence of any direct sun, it felt distinctly chilly. The weather forecast was not that good either. There may be showers today but a low is moving in off the North Atlantic bring storm force winds and heavy rain and, although that will probably not arrive until the evening, tomorrow may turn out to be a tough day. I swapped my coat for a warmer one before we left the car.

We had managed to leave Inchnadamph quite early and set off from the car at Blairmore at about 8.30. The first 4.5 miles are on a good track across the moor. The wind was quite cold and there was full cloud cover. 

We arrived at Sandwood bay and any campers on the Cape Wrath Trail had already long departed. The tide was right in and so we could only walk the south part of the beach as far as the river crossing.

After having stepping-stoned the river, with the tide in too far to walk any further along the sand, we had no choice but to climb up the cliffs and over the headland. There were several rudimentary bits of path here created by walkers like us, thwarted by the high tide. This brought us to Strathan Chailleach where the second river discharging into Sandwood Bay flows. This is roughly where we had planned to come up from the beach.

We crossed the second river; Amhain Strath Chailleach.

The route we were taking was roughly what we had learned by reading other people’s accounts and is apparently the route suggested to walkers heading south by the people at the lighthouse. We headed uphill between Cnoc a’ Gheodha Rhuaid and a Loch of the same name.

It was mainly grass and heather and in places there was evidence of a path of sorts. I suspect we could have walked on the seaward side of this hill because the ground is all fairly even and the grass and heather was quite manageable especially at this time of year.

From there we contoured around the hill and descended to the cliff tops above Rubh’ an t-Socaich Ghlais and followed the cliffs round to the Bay of Keisgaig.

Just before Keisaig river there is a wire fence delineating the start of the MOD range. Even though we knew the range had reopened eleven hours ago, it was still a relief to find there was no red flag. Our concern was that they might have forgotten to take the red flag down and we would have to assume we couldn’t enter the range – until someone turned up to remove it.

After crossing the stile we looked to find a suitable crossing point of the R. Keisgaig. There had been some obvious footfall down the bank to where there were some stones that could be used as stepping stones and I decided to go across here. Jill was not happy with having to step across to a narrow, wet angled rock and went upstream a little to where she could safely wade across on the river bed by putting on her Feetz wellies over her walking boots. It meant she crossed to a fairly steep bank but managed to pick her way back down to join me where I was able to help pull her wellies off again.

The next stage was a fairly steep climb to a pass to the east of Sithean Na h-lolaireich between the aforementioned and Cnoc a’ Ghiubhais.  Once again this grass, heather and sandy earth was fairly easy to climb.

At the top of the pass we headed due north to Clais Leobairnich, a deep gully that runs inland from the sea. The descent is very gentle.

We were keen to find somewhere offering a little bit of shelter for our lunch and eventually dropped into a depression at the side of the gully where we hunkered down to eat our sandwiches and have some coffee. The wind had picked up considerably from the morning and it was quite chilly.

At the lip of the gully we turned east and followed it until it petered out and another 400 yards further brought us to the the old road to the lighthouse.

Now we were only 1 ½ miles from the lighthouse; spurred on by the realisation that we were indeed nearly there, we reached the lighthouse at about 3pm.

We paused at the entrance to the lighthouse to take our photos then walked in to meet our hosts and catch up with Rachel and the other walkers we expected to be there.

As we approached the building, a man in overalls greeted us and asked our names. We said we were booked to stay at the lighthouse and he told us that all the other walkers were going to be moving on today, not staying and catching the minibus to the ferry tomorrow as planned; there was a considerable storm moving in with extreme winds so the ferry was cancelled. We would not be getting a ferry ride across the Kyle after all. However, the minibus driver had come across this afternoon in his dinghy (not licensed as a ferry) and will drive the minibus up to the lighthouse to take the others to the jetty. He suggested we might like to go too but we explained we intended to walk from the lighthouse so would have to stay overnight as planned.

We went on inside and the others were there waiting for the minibus. We chatted to Rachel who very kindly used her satellite beacon to send a message to Emily, our daughter, to let her know we were safely at the lighthouse since at first neither of us seemed to have a phone signal. Shortly afterwards, Jill’s older, “hand-me-down” iPhone found a good signal so direct communication with family became possible – but Cliff’s newer phone didn’t wake up until we were nearly at the jetty the next day!

The wind was already picking up quite considerably so, while it was still dry, we walked up to the very tip of Cape Wrath to see the cliffs.

The minibus didn’t leave the lighthouse until gone 5pm and it will take an hour or more for it to drive along the track to get to the jetty. From there the walkers will have a tough cross-country walk to get around the Kyle of Durness to the road and then another few miles up to the village if they wanted to use the campsite and facilities. A couple of lads had already walked the last two days of the CWT today to avoid camping at Sandwood Bay and walking to the lighthouse in the storm; they were going to be exhausted by the time they got to the road this evening. Tomorrow we do the same route as far as the car at Keoldale – but without the minibus.

I suggested I took a better photo of Cliff at the lighthouse and then we asked Angela, who runs the lighthouse café and bunkhouse, if she could take a photo of us together. I managed to send this to the family to reassure them we were OK.

Angela showed us the bunkroom which was through the door at the back of the café. The bunk room was a room within a room.   It was a partitioned-off area of the old lighthouse workshops. This has been done to provide a cosier room for sleeping in but it was not warm and we would need to use the Calor gas stove later. The bunkhouse has been brightly decorated and sleeps six in beds, four of which were bunks. There are a few additional mattresses for times when larger groups arrive.

The rest of the public rooms comprises only the Ozone Café with its metal chairs and that is chilly.

We chose the two single beds, glad that at least we would have the room to ourselves and unpacked what we needed for the night.

To get to the only loo, we had to retrace our steps back through the “store” and the café, go outside and in through another door further down which seemed to be where Angela and her father actually lived. That lead into this hallway – the green door of the loo had a notice asking that it only be flushed “if necessary” as there was a water shortage. A grubby towel hung on the back of the door and there was a basin with cold water. We had not brought a towel so would not be having a wash tonight.

Angela told us that, due to the weather, she would have to lock the door to the part of the building with the toilet from the inside, to keep the cats in. However, she could provide us with a bucket. (Oh, joy!). Then she announced that there were two electricians who had come in with the minibus to start installing solar panels and they would be sleeping on the floor of the café which was the only way out from the bunk room. This seemed to mean we were effectively going to be locked in with nothing more than a bucket. This was becoming the stuff of nightmares.

All of a sudden we were alone in the Ozone Café. It was cold; there is no electricity at the lighthouse other than provided by a generator which they use in the winter and Angela offered to charge Cliff’s phone for him from a car battery. We had brought a camping lantern with us that doubled as a phone-charger and Cliff had a battery pack which I used to charge my phone.

We had a bowl of soup to warm us up and then ordered a macaroni cheese and chips each for supper for about 7pm. Fortunately I had my Kindle with me and so I sat reading and Jill had some word puzzles from yesterday’s Times. The weather was deteriorating now with the wind whipping around the lighthouse buildings.

By the time supper arrived we were ravenous and tucked in heartily, sitting as close to the Calor gas stove as we could get and eating by candlelight. During supper there was an urgent rattling and knocking on the café door. The door is a very sticky affair and I went to give it a good welt and welcomed in another walker out of the raging storm.

This was the same woman that Jill had encountered at the loo at Rhiconich but we had not guessed she was heading to Cape Wrath; she had a very small rucksack, smaller than our daypacks and was wearing a rather flimsy-looking, waterproof and mesh-topped trainer like shoes. She was obviously chilled through and I suggested she should warm herself in front of the gas fire. She ordered a supper and, as I tried to start some conversation, it transpired that she too had been on the Cape Wrath Trail and within her pack she had a tiny tent which was supported by her walking poles. Despite this, she seemed to us to be lamentably poorly prepared for adverse conditions. However she did have a satellite beacon which she shortly used to check-in with her husband. It would seem it had taken her some ten hours to do the walk we had done in six.

Soon after 9pm we were chilling off and and so I said it was time to go to bed. Back in the bunk room, our German walker warned us that she was a snorer.

So we were not alone in the bunk room tonight after all. Was this the start of some grim gothic novel? What has become of the rest of the Famous Five? Will Timmy the dog come to their rescue? Is the late arrival from the storm really a German spy and will there still be lashings of lemonade and cake for tea? Read tomorrow’s exciting instalment of “Lighthouse of Horrors”.