Ben Vane (Loch Lomond)

Ben Vane from track to the Sloy Dam

Friday, 29 April 2022

Ascent:      950 metres
Distance:   14 kilometres
Time:         4 hours 16 minutes

m    Ben Vane     916m   2hrs 18mins

It was time to climb a Munro, I had been waiting to climb my last Corbett but finding a weather window when others who had asked to come along was proving difficult. In the meantime, I needed to test out my hill fitness. Spending 45 minutes walking up the track to a 300-metre hill and then running down does not prepare you for long days on steep slopes and rough rocky ground. My memories of Ben Vane were of an easy Munro that I had run up a few times on summer evenings after work. Walkhighland said it was a 4.5 to 6.5-hour walk. I left home at 7:45am saying I would be back at lunchtime, I thought 3.5 hours would suffice with an hour's journey in each direction. Oh, what an optimist was I?

It had been a dry week with cool easterly winds and this was the last dry day with less wind and good visibility, I only decided to go on waking up. Normally I would just climb the local hill but it was becoming too much of a routine. The journey took longer than anticipated in the morning traffic, stopping for diesel and spending 15 minutes getting a parking place at the Inveruglas car park that only took coins, something that I have not used for the last two years. I eventually dumped the car in the short term car park kidding myself that I would be back in 3 hours. It is a kilometre walk to the start of the track to the Sloy Dam, you used to be able to park at the entrance to this road but that is strictly prohibited nowadays. I kept a reasonable pace up the track. past the new transmission station and onto the track that heads along Allt Coiregrogain. I had caught a couple of women and a lone man in his fifties and exchanged pleasantries by the time I left the track. I followed the old path that cuts under a rock face and brought me onto a broad plateau from where the path had been improved by the path builders.

The climb steepens from here with well-positioned steps to ensure quick progress but at about 400 metres the path became an overused trench with loose stones that meandered through the rock faces. I began to flag, removing my jacket and having a drink, pausing to look back, stopping to talk to a couple of walkers who were on the descent and just taking a few breaks. I went off route at one place climbing the wrong chimney and ended up on a ledge below another rock face. I had to retreat and find the main route. The day was almost perfect with blue skies, good views and a slight breeze to avoid overheating. The final couple of hundred metres of the climb told me that I wasn't hill fit,

Ben Vane is still a fine hill and the views of the other Arrochar Alps - Beinn Narnain, Beinn Ime and the Cobbler made me wish that I had considered a longer walk. I spent 10 minutes at the summit enjoying the vistas and some refreshments before beginning the descent. I found the easy routes down the rock face near the summit and had the views over Loch Lomond to entice me down. At about 500 metres I met the two women, who had had to give up, the steep path had proved too daunting. They had driven up from the Scottish Borders and must have left at 6am but they were quite at peace with the outing. One of them was a sheep farmer and she explained the problems that had arisen post-Brexit and during Covid, a litany of mistakes that had made sheep farming even harder. She was so pleased to be having a day off after the spring lambing.

The heat of the day made the descent slower than it should have been so it took almost 2 hours before I was back at the car park. I had managed to get away with the short term parking but it was 1:30pm before I was down with an hour's drive to get home, a very late lunchtime. I was surprised how long it had taken and dug out my logbooks of earlier visits to Ben Vane. I had run it up and down in 1 hour 51 minutes in 1993 and 2 hours 44 minutes in 2003, albeit that these runs had been 2 kilometres shorter because you could park at the start of the track.

Path to Ben Vane

Sloy Dam and Ben Vorlich

Beinn Narnain and Beinn Ime

The final section to Ben Vane

Beinn Narnain and The Cobbler

Summit and Ben Lomond

Loch Arkaig and Loch & Ben Lomond

Upgrading of the hydro transmission cables

Maundy Thursday in the time of Johnson

Oh what a tangled web they weave, when first they practise to deceive

Maundy Thursday is the day that the poor elderly receive specially minted coins from the monarch. It is a quaint British custom when the Head of State shows humility by treating all people as equals. Yesterday, the frail Queen was no longer able to carry out the task so the Prince of Wales took on the Royal duty of dispensing the handouts at St Gerges Chapel in Windsor. Whether it was a coincidence that Harry and Meghan dropped by on Maundy Thursday for a secret visit is anyone's guess. 

Meanwhile and elsewhere the whole concept of humility and treating people equally was turned on its head by the Johnson Government.

Asylum seekers who have battled their way across the channel are to be offshored to Rwanda, where they will be 'processed'. Priti Patel announced the new initiative from Kigali in Rwanda where she indulged in one of her fantasies, exporting asylum seekers, or economic migrants as she calls them, as far as possible from the UK at whatever it costs with not an ounce of humility or humanity as she mangled her vocabulary under African skies. 

As mainland Europe absorbed 4.7 million Ukrainian refugees, Priti Patel and the Home Office, through the deterrent of their visa scheme, had kept the number of refugees down to just 1200 in the UK by April 8. What a world-beating miserablist country we live in.

An inflation rate of 7%, soon to rise by 10% as the cost of gas increases by 28% kicks in. This together with the increase in national insurance contributions, food inflation resulting from Brexit, transport costs and the Ukrainian war means that we have prices rising faster than at any time since 1992.  What has Chancellor Rishi Sunak done? Very little other than promising a tax reduction in two years before the next election and writing off £11.8bn of fraud resulting from his ill-thought-out pandemic measures.   

The government has also let P&O Ferries get away with sacking 800 ferry crew to be replaced by Indian workers paid less than the minimum wage. The fact that the ships are all registered in Cyprus, Bermuda and the Bahamas seems to have convinced the government that the lack of notice given by P&O Ferries to the UK authorities and a failure to consult with the workforce doesn't allow prosecution. What is the point of Grant Shapps? Surely, the government should be making laws to prevent this sort of levelling down. 

There is little surprise that two more Tory MPs have been banished as sexual predators. David Warburton, MP for Somerset and Frome, has been suspended for sexual harassment and drug-taking whilst Imran Ahmad Khan, MP for Wakefield, has resigned after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. With the local election approaching, Tory candidates have churned out leaflets that make no reference that they are in the same party or attended the parties with the PM. They know that his cabinet of charlatans that are scuttling the country faster than the Graf Spee. 

Despite the Prime Minister and the Chancellor being fined for attending parties during the lockdown, the latest opinion polls show that 57% of the public think Johnson and Rishi Sunak should resign. In the House of Entitlement, Tory MPs are clamouring to keep Johnson as PM because there are no electable candidates to replace him and "he has shown leadership in Ukraine". This is a reference to his jolly with President Zelensky to obtain a photoshoot at the weekend. What a Wally, the PM has chutzpah that exudes his every ignoble intent.