Walking on Jura: Corryvrecken

View out over the Northern tip of the island

Final post on the walks I did during my recent trip to Jura.  You can see all my Jura posts here.  There is a bit of dearth of info on the web on walks on Jura so aiming to make this a bit of a reference point for others - hoping it will be useful!

The best written guide I found is this one;

And of course you'll want the right OS map.  All set with this and assuming that you're based in Craighouse (the main settlement) you've got a great couple of days ahead of you.  

This walk is all about getting to see the famous Corryvrecken whirlpool.  Be warned, this is a real yomp of a day - 30km+ over nearly eight hours.  Not technical or difficult (you're just on the one road), just a long old day.  

The end of a long day!

For this walk you really do need to use the bus (NB, the bus service has been re-tendered - it's now run by Garelochhead Coaches not Alex Dunnachie as per the Argyll and Bute website - the link I give here is the right one!).  I caught the 0803 from Craighouse and got off at Ardlussa which is as far North as the bus goes (not not the end of the line - it then loops a bit back South to Inverlussa before turning around for the return trip).  The bus drivers are very friendly so will drop you off at the right place if you ask.  So you'll suddenly be in the middle of no-where at about 8.45am - brilliant!

The route is incredibly simple, just keep following the road in front of you through some farm buildings, it slowly works its way up through the island, progressively becoming a track then a rough path.  You'll pass a kind of pull-in car park on the right with a sign urging car drivers not to progress further.  If you're driving rather than getting there on foot please do heed this warning - you won't be able to see it, but about a mile up the road there's a chain across the road.  And this ain't the place to be doing a three-point turn or reversing back...

Eventually you'll come across a little white and grey house in the distance;

Barnhill

This is Barnhill - where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four - there's a great booklet available to buy in the Hotel foyer that tells the story of his time on the island.  The house is a private holiday let so you can't really get close but the views from up above are fantastic as you can see.  

Press on and you'll eventually come to the most northerly settlement on the island - Kinuachdrachd which apparently offers bunkhouse accommodation.  Your main purpose of being here is to make sure that you take the right route to the whirlpool however.  

¡No pasarán!

Press on up past this sign and you'll soon see another smaller one partly hidden by the grass promising that the whirlpool is just (I think I'm remembering this right) a mile up the hill.  I think it's further than that in any case.  

You can't really go wrong at this point, just keep heading forward, the ground gets a bit boggy but nothing too much to worry about.  You'll eventually be rewarded by this view;

"Whirlpool"

As you can see, there's not much sign of the whirlpool - it's very tidal and I was there at the wrong time - I knew this but the bus times restricted me a bit.  Ask at the hotel for the best times to visit.  There are some videos on YouTube of the swirly goodness - here and here.  

I took my own little videos which (I think) have a sense of where the water would start spinning in a couple of hours - there are little darts and eddies that are slowly swirling around.  In the photo above you can see a real stillness in the water which is where the action happens.  

And once you've had your lunch and rested up a bit, it's time to start to think about the trip back.  Very straightforward, just retrace your steps - it's pretty much a wash in terms of ascends vs descends so you'll not be much faster or slower in either direction.  The bus back will pick you up where you were dropped off just after 4.45pm.  But if you miss it or are very early and don't want to wait, then you can easily hitch a lift - I was offered three in the ten minutes I was waiting there.  

What other walks can you say that you've seen a whirlpool and the house where a world-class piece of literature was written and still be back in time for dinner? 

Walking on Jura: Paps

Following on from this post and intended as a resource for future visitors to the Isle of Jura, I'm sharing some details of the walks that I did on Jura this summer.  There is a bit of dearth of info on the web on walks on Jura so aiming to make this a bit of a reference point for others - hoping it will be useful!

This post is for a trip up the legendary Paps of Jura.  

Again, the best written guide for walking on the island I found is this one;

And of course you'll want the right OS map.  All set with this and assuming that you're based in Craighouse (the main settlement) you've got so many great options.  

You can see in my photo above two and a half of the Paps - I climbed the one in the middle - Beinn Shiantaidh (Holy / Sacred Mountain) which is the second highest (not that I'm counting!) on the island at 757m.  The hill to the right is Corra Bheinn which is a useful reference point for you throughout the walk.  

Much as this walk, head on up out of the village on the main road - going North.  You can either walk (it's about a 5km initial trudge), use the intermittent (albeit very reliable) bus service (NB, the bus service has been re-tendered - it's now run by Garelochhead Coaches not Alex Dunnachie as per the Argyll and Bute website - the link I give here is the right one!) or try to hitch a lift.  I just walked.  

You'll reach 'Three Arch Bridge', the road bend up to the left for about 1/2 a mile.  You then see a signpost to the left of the road indicating 'Evans Walk'.  Here you have to busk it a little bit - the path isn't anywhere as near as clear on the ground as it is on the map.  Basically, head NW as well as you can using the local landmarks especially the old crofters fence (it crosses the path at NR545741¹.  Keep going until about NR539747 when the path start to head pretty much due North.  At this point you leave the main path (not that you'll notice much difference!) and strike out alone!  

You need to kind of loop South-ish around the base of Corra Bheinn and then go West-ish and North-ish up to the series of little lakes - called Lochanan Tana on the map.  I'm being deliberately vague here as there's no right or wrong way, just keep heading towards the huge mountain in front of you and keep thinking, "Am I really going to climb that?!".  I had my lunch about this point and rested up - had been going since about 8 so felt like a reasonable time to stop.  

This view from the top of the climb shows the little lochs to give you a sense of what I'm talking about

Go left/South of the little Lochs and you'll see a kind of path / river-bed start to snake up the mountain.  Use this if it's dry enough until it starts to go off too far West.  This is where you start to really busk it.  

You basically start scrambling hand over hand up the scree - jumping onto the little patches of heather for stability where you can.  This is hard work.  Really hard work.  You have to cover something like 400m of ascent like this so take you time.  You're looking at at least an hour of climbing.  I found my walking poles very useful at this point to lever myself up the side of the mountain.  There's no obvious route, just keep going up and on and you'll eventually reach the top.  There's something of a false summit but just keep going and you'll see the man-made cairn of rocks at the top clearly enough.  

Then you get to enjoy this frankly incredible view and an amazing sense of achievement - it might not be the highest mountain in Scotland (not by a long way) but it's got to be one of the most demanding to complete.  

Catch your breath, take a drink of water and start to think about how you're going to get down.  

I originally intended to pretty much retrace my steps, but I met up on the top a guy from Northern Ireland who I buddied up with for the rest of the day and we together descended pretty much directly South aiming for the Corran River below.  If anything, the descent is harder than the climb - the pressure on your knees (and bum if you end up falling...!) on the slippery scree is tough and you certainly won't be much quicker coming down than you were going up.  Keep pressing on and you'll eventually reach the river.  

This very midge-y so take some repellent but also revel in the fact that you're now pretty much on the flat - head more or less East keeping the river on your left (you can cross at many locations) and you'll get to the road at Three Arch Bridge which you'll have seen this morning.  Have a little dip in the river, certainly if it was as hot as the day I did this take a long drink of  water (it's perfectly safe) and start to think about how you'll cover the 5km or so back to Craighouse.  You'll deserve a whisky that night...

I hope this helps some walkers if they're considering a trip up the Paps.  It's not easy but definitely worth it.  Leave me a comment or email at alex [at] alexball dot co dot uk if you've got any questions.  

^{1. This is a Grid Reference for the OS map - see an explanation here ↩}

Walking on Jura: West Coast

I thought I'd do a post on one of the walks I did during my recent trip to Jura.  There is a bit of dearth of info on the web on walks on Jura so aiming to make this a bit of a reference point for others - hoping it will be useful!

The best written guide I found is this one;

And of course you'll want the right OS map.  All set with this and assuming that you're based in Craighouse (the main settlement) you've got a great couple of days ahead of you.  

Head on up out of the village on the main road - going North.  You can either walk (it's about a 5km initial trudge), use the intermittent (albeit very reliable) bus service (NB, the bus service has been re-tendered - it's now run by Garelochhead Coaches not Alex Dunnachie as per the Argyll and Bute website - the link I give here is the right one!) or try to hitch a lift.  I just walked.  

You'll reach 'Three Arch Bridge', the road bend up to the left for about 1/2 a mile.  You then see a signpost to the left of the road indicating 'Evans Walk'

This is where it gets a bit funky.  

The path is very clearly marked on the map.  On the ground it's not quite so clear...

As long as you keep going broadly NW you'll be ok but be warned, the ground can be very boggy - I went in up to my knees at one point.  Use the rivers that you cross (perfectly fine to drink by the way) and the old crofters' fence (marked on the map and a rusty red colour on the ground) to guide out your way.  You pass to the right of the two mountains in the photo above (the one on the left is one of the Paps: Beinn Shiantaidh) and then pick up a river: Abhainn Loch na Fudarlaich, at which point it gets much easier.  The path is pretty clear at this stage and you can navigate by a number of waterfalls and movements of the river.  As long as you keep the river to your right you can't really go wrong.  You'll undoubtedly come off the path at some point, especially near the end, but other than meaning that you have to fight your way through a load of shoulder high ferns there's no real problem.  

Eventually you start to be able to see the sea the other side which is the photo at the top of this post.  Keep pressing on and you'll start to come down into the bay of Glenbatrick.  

This is where the reward comes.  

The (holiday) house here is owned by the Astor family and a more perfect hideaway I can't imagine.  Local legend has it that Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies were spirited away and hidden here at the peak of the Profumo Affair.  

As you can see, I wild camped here - I recommend this even though it means humping all your stuff along.  It's a good three and a half hours one way from the Evans Walk sign (ignore the informational panel by it that suggests a three hour round trip) so you'd be looking a long old yomp to do it there and back in one day - especially if you walk from Craighouse like I did.  Settle down, have a bite to eat, pitch your tent and revel in the freedom and beauty of the surroundings.  Listen to the sound of the sea on the beach and the wind over the mountains.  Bliss. 

Top Tips; Leave early so you're not rushing.  Wear sunscreen (the sun is on the back of your neck all day).  Drink in the scenery and the isolation - not many places left in the UK are this wild.  Bring a nip of Jura Whisky to toast your success on arrival.  

Jura Food

As you'll know from previous posts, I'm planning a trip to the Isle of Jura later on this summer. Obviously the wanderlust from my America trip hasn't worn off yet!

The real attraction is the island is the sense of self-reliance and independence and for me some of this is reflected in the decisions I'll make on what I want to eat and drink.  I'm going to be (wild) camping for a good chunk of the trip so I'll need to be smart about how I intend to re-fuel.  

Of course, this is all a pretext for me to obsess over which Trangia stove to take with me: my Trangia 27-6 UL or my mini-stove.  For the uninitiated, the Trangia is a Matryoshka-doll-esque cooking system with the pans, heating unit and other elements all packing down into one neat unit.  You can see a series of pictures here.  I love the simplicity and pretty-much unbreakable nature of the system and the smell of burning methylated spirits immediately makes me think of the outdoors.  On balance, depending on the rest of my packing, I'm probably going to take the larger system but we'll see!

There is only one shop on the island - Jura Stores - which since my last visit nearly ten years looks like it's changed from a fairly pedestrian outpost of Spar into a community owned facilitity: some background on this here.  This kind of community ownership model is becoming increasingly popular of course as groups of local residents fight to preserve local pubs, shops and post offices.  The range of food is very good given the remote location but it won't have everything thing I need so am intending to take some staple ingredients with me.  

I've been consulting a couple of good books: The Trailside Cookbook and Moveable Feasts both of which despite an over-reliance on powdered egg (bleugh) have given me enough ideas and possibilities that I need to explore of the next few weeks.  I've also got a couple of pre-made meals as emergency supplies - as you can see from the photo above, they're not exactly appetising in either appearance or taste...

Burning a Million Quid

(or, "Why I Love Jura For Many More Reasons Than The KLF").  

This post is partly a way of me getting my thoughts straight about a trip that I've been meaning to take for about ten years.  It's partly inspired by the reminiscences in this post and also by the amazing trip that an acquaintance is making that you can see here.  

I've been a bit obsessed by the Isle of Jura off the West Coast of Scotland for about fifteen years since I read about how George Orwell (still my favourite writer) lived there whilst writing Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Never one to do things by half I travelled there as part of a trip to Islay and Colonsay in-between leaving University and starting work.  Anyone who is foolish enough to give me the chance or who was unfortunate to meet me on the training course I was on last week will know that I will drone on about how beautiful and amazing the Western Isles are for hours.  

Sadly when I went back in 2004 I was strictly analogue in my photography so only have paper copies of my photos - so will link to a few images from other people to show how beautiful this place is;

You can also read a bit more about the island a various trips there at Peter Edward's excellent blog, 'Writes of Way'.  

I love the fact that the island used to accommodate 3000 people and is now where less than 200 people call home.  

I love the fact that Orwell called it "extremely un-get-at-able".  

I love the fact that the island's bus service is also the Royal Mail delivery service.  

I love the fact that the three main mountains on the island, the Paps of Jura, are named for their supposed resemblance to a woman's breasts

I love the fact that the Gulf of Corryvreckan nearly took Orwell's life and is also supposed to be the inspiration for the whirlpool in Homer's Odyssey.  

I love the fact that the Gulf Stream strikes the southern base of the island making it temperate enough to support a tropical garden with orchids and palm trees

I love the whole place and when I left the island after an amazing four days back in 2004 I promised myself, "I'll be back".  Since then, well, life has got in the way but I've vowed that this year is the year that I will go.  It's a bit of trek to get there so needs some planning.  

My current plan is something like the following;

Thursday Night: Travel down to London (all will become clear shortly) and take the Caledonian Sleeper to Glasgow.  (I've obviously been influenced by my sleeper train action in America but there is a certain efficiency about travelling down to London to then go North, as odd as that sounds).  

Friday Morning: Either - bus to Kennacraig OR hire a car and drive.  I'm still in two minds about this - I like the idea of not having to worry about a car and driving in Glasgow always terrifies me (not surprisingly really given there is a motorway right through the city centre) but the coach is a right faff.  Then - ferry from Kennacraig to Port Askaig.  Then - mini-ferry from Port Askaig to Feolin.  Then - either walk/hitch or drive to Craighouse.  

I'm then planning to spend just under a week on the island, wild camping, walking and generally enjoying the fact that you can often turn a complete circle and see no sign of civilisation at all.  

A lot of the walks in this book look really enticing, including a trip down the totally uninhabited West coast.  A great account of a trip like this here.  

I'm a bit frustrated as it looks like the only official campsite on Jura is closed for refurbishment.  The message is a bit ambiguous so I need to check it out properly.  The alternatives are booking a couple of nights of accommodation in the hotel to get me settled or just wild camping throughout.  Need to do some more thinking about that.  

I'm also intending to scale at least one of the Paps of Jura - just need to hope for some good weather.