KYQ4: Ben Challum

Beinn Challum summit

Wednesday, 30 October, 2024

Ascent: 1035 metres

Distance: 14 kilometres

Time: 4 hours 18 minutes

South top 998m 2hrs 13mins

Ben Challum. 1025m 2hrs 29mins

Ben Challum is one of those hills that is easily forgotten, I had usually climbed it with Creag Mhor and sometimes included Beinn Sheasgarnach or the nearby Corbetts. It must be one of the only Munros not on the blog, I last climbed it at the start of my fifth round before I retired and started the blog. Mark had suggested it as the first Munro on my fifth round and after we climbed Creag Mhor as well, he cautioned me against climbing Beinn Sheasgarnach as well on the basis that it might lead to me attempting a quicker round than the 80 days taken for the fourth round.

Today, it was just Ben Challum from Kirkton Farm. I started early and intended to be down the hill in time to listen to the budget. The weather oscillated between fog and blue skies as I travelled up and parked at an empty layby on the A82 to walk over the River Fillan to Kirkton Farm. This is part of the West Highland Way and it was highly unusual to see no walkers on the WHW. The path to Ben Challum circles the farm and heads up an old track past a cemetery to cross the Fort William railway line.

It steepens and runs alongside a plantation of pines the fence keeps out the deer and provides the route of the path. The path was extremely wet, some sections were 10 centimetres deep in water with odd fence posts scattered on the bog to prevent that sinking feeling. It was a slow plod and the fine views visible lower down gave way to a hill fog that persisted to the summit. Above 700 metres, a cold wind was blowing from the northwest so I put on a jacket and dug out some gloves for the final steep ramp to the 995m top and then the ridge to the summit. There was little to stir the imagination other than another tick on the list and the possibility that the hill fog may disappear by the summit.

There was no such luck. I had little recall of the final narrow ridge between the top and a final climb to the summit. It is quite a barren summit and the cairn was looking partly wrecked and needed a bit of rebuilding before I began the descent. I passed a couple on their ascent, they thanked me for my footprints that had guided them over the boggy sections. There was little to see on the descent because of the fog and lower down the landscape had no intrinsic attraction nor was there any wildlife before reaching the railway line where a flock of small birds were feeding on the rowan trees.

I was down just after 1pm and listened to the Chancellor's speech on the way home. After Rachel Reeves ranted about the mess and unfunded projects left by the previous government and a slew of taxes to plug the funding gap, she segued into an impressive list of investments she would be making funded by a change in the borrowing rules. There was no contriteness about the impact on the impact of her decision to take away the winter fuel payments for the lower-income elderly and disabled, or the impact of increasing employers' National Insurance contributions on jobs. It was no surprise that like most recent chancellors she focussed on centralised taxation and sought the kudos of local spending priorities. It is one of the key reasons why governments fail to garner momentum for growth or reverse the decline of public services.

Rishi Sunak was making his final speech as Tory leader and gave a full-throttle response that must have made the Tory benches ask why they were having a leadership election. He was selective in his evidence and too anxious to have Hansard publish an upbeat abstract of his legacy. It was fair as Rachel Reeves had played the same game. The budget and the arguments from the opposition were like climbing Ben Challum: boring, foggy and bogged down in a mess.