Co-ordinator: Mary Cox

Co-ordinated: Anne and Rodger Dean, Enid and John McPartlin, Elisabeth and John Culshaw, Liz Maitland, Ian McNab, Carol Proudfoot, Tim Mason

The Tomdoun Hotel is located right by the single-track road a little above Loch Quoich, south facing and close to lots of excellent, high hills made accessible by excellent stalkers paths. It was a good choice as the first of a series of ‘small hostel’ meets which the club committee have decided to run in parallel to the monthly Sunday outings. This will give club members the opportunity to use smaller venues that are normally ruled out by the need to accommodate 30 or more people.

The bunkhouse is across the yard from the main hotel and certainly qualifies as ‘small’, with a maximum of 12 bunk spaces. The hostel also claimed that it was ‘completely renovated’ – perhaps they were referring to the fact that it had been recently painted (?) The renovation certainly hadn’t extended to the single, non-power shower with its accompanying toilet and wash hand basin.

If you are tempted to use this facility it will be because you fancy saving a few quid on accommodation, but be aware that you will promptly spend it on grub. There are no cooking facilities in the bunkhouse. One kettle and two mugs is all that are supplied. The food at the hotel was good and fresh but expensive and not that varied – six types of fish, two of venison, no beef (well not after John McP. took the last slab). The breakfast was OK but uninspired and they ran out of porridge!!

The other clientele were here for the huntin’ and fishin’ but they seemed well disposed to the contingent of hill-walkers that infiltrated their expensive hideout. We managed to outlast them at the dinner table but they put in a stronger performance at the bar.

Any reservations about the residential arrangements were relegated to the back-ground by the superb weather which Mary had laid on for us. This was just as well because John McP had been talking up the forecast all week in his electronic communications. So much so that he might have been hung up with the waders outside the bunk-house if it had come to naught (See the accompanying picture gallery). After the floods of mid-week a high pressure zone had moved in to provide light-to-medium, south-easterly breezes, dry conditions and a wonderful variety of light and cloud conditions.

The bright week-end encouraged a certain amount of sauntering along the high but accessible hill-tops, accompanied by the stags anguished roaring as they rounded up the hinds. This more lingering approach ensured that we took in the burnished autumn hillsides, the ravens and the eagle that flew above them and the variety of sky-scapes and hill-vistas on all sides. The Gleouraich – Spidean Mialach party of Saturday were even met by a troupe of superb brocken-spectres as they reached their ridge.

These conditions were being shared by the whole North-West and we could see over to Skye and other Islands, up to Torridon, down to the Ben and immediately into the ‘Rough Bounds’.

So the priorities for the week-end were well achieved:

All thanks to Mary!

For those of you who also want the ‘Fine Detail’ the following were trolled up by two or more persons and on one or more occasion during the course of the weekend:

Munros – Gleouraich with Spidean Mialach, Sgurr Mhaoraich

Corbetts – Buidhe Bheinn, Sgurr nan Eugallt