Worst. Hill. Ever. 0/10 would not recommend.
Admittedly, I wasn’t really in the mood. Headache and quite tired after hosting in the van for a couple of weeks, and always a bit gutted when a friend has just left. But I thought maybe getting high up would raise my mood.
Ben Chonzie is “an easier ascent by munro standards” said the WalkHighlands website. Also “keep a look out for mountain hares – this hill has a large population of these fast-running creatures”. Sounds like a good one for a day when I Don’t Feel Like It, maybe the hares hopping around would cheer me up.
The route up started out as extremely slippy slimy mud which gets all over your boots and has you sliding around like someone has oiled the path. And as soon as you graduate past the mud, the path becomes… solid ice. The kind that pulls your back foot out from under you with every step, so you walk up the hill like you’re doing the Running Man in slowmo. Not as fun as it sounds, trust me.
Eventually I got off-path and onto heathery slope intermixed with sections of bog. This would have been a small improvement if it hadn’t taken me into high winds blasting me with wet clouds – one of Scotland’s favourites in its playbook of mountain weathers. The thing about this weather is it effectively blinds me. The wind constantly blows wet cloud across my glasses, which unfortunately aren’t fitted with windscreen wipers. So I end up stumbling around like a drunk donkey.
This was also one of those hills where you think you’re at the top, but the top is actually ages away over rolling moorland. There’s often a cairn which makes you think you’re approaching the summit, but it’s actually there to guide you back off the hill. Gets me every time. So by the time I eventually made it to the real cairn I was Not A Happy Bunny. Speaking of bunnies: how many mountain hares did I see? Nada. Not a One. It’s all Lies.
This was no place to sit and have a sandwich, so I about-turned and hot footed it back the way I came. I was battling head first into the wind now, and the wind won. I stayed upright.. but ended up significantly off-path and had to ditch the glasses which were now fully opaque and completely useless. I decided to heck with the path and took a shortcut off the mountain by wandering down the steep grassy slope in the general direction of my van.
When I re-joined the path I ran into a pair of walkers I had briefly met somewhere near the summit. “I didn’t recognise you without the steamed up glasses” one of them said. Funny. Nevertheless, I walked the rest of the way back chatting with this lovely pair of humans, which was probably the only redeeming thing about this walk.
I was glad to get back to the van and eat my very late lunch. I decided to head back to town in search of a shower, but unfortunately got caught in rush hour traffic.
Only Young Twice 