In Glen Ure. 12.30am, 20/04/97 ~ A pleasant place to stop between Sgulaird and Fhionnlaidh, at the head of the glen. I woke around midnight and looking out to see what was what - I found the glorious Comet Hale-Bopp blazing away in the western sky. Nothing for it but to go out into the freezing night air and set the tripod up - there's dedication for you. How bereft the night sky seemed after Hale-Bopp had gone. Blessings on the comet - come again. (It will, around 4377.)
On Creach Bheinn of Kingairloch. 4pm, 01/07/95 ~ This intriguing group of stone structures lies in a shallow depression between the two tops of Creach Bheinn at about 2720'. The site is sheltered by two substantial windbreak walls, that on the east rather tumbled but the west wall virtually complete, and in an elegant piece of design it curls round at the south end to form a hut circle with a doorway where it stops a little short of meeting itself. There is a stone pavement, now partly overgrown, which leads from this hut through the middle of the encampment, past the south end of the east wall, and on towards the massive cairn which tops the main (south) summit. At least four other hut circles flank the pavement. This was clearly no Scout camp, so what was its purpose? I have seen three tentative explanations, one of which -'a shieling' - is absurd. A second has it as accommodation for soldiers engaged on the original Ordnance Survey, but it would be quite untypical of this - the sappers' ruins on Macdui, Lawers, and Mam Sodhail are very different, of smaller capacity and more sophisticated construction. I am not by any means an authority, but for what it's worth I favour the third - there is a local tradition that Creach Bheinn, with its commanding view down Loch Linnhe and the Firth of Lorne, was used as a lookout post during the Napoleonic Wars (Bonaparte made extensive preparations to invade Britain and fully intended to do so), and this may have been a camp for the troops manning it.
Sgurr nan Conbhairean from Coire Dho. 11am, 05/05/02
