Day Off in the Lost Valley
The Lost Valley (Coire Gabhail), in Glen Coe is one of my favourite places.
Not to be superfluous, the scenery is stunningly otherworldly
Earlier in August I took a day off. A real life, honest-to-goodness day off. The first I’ve had since before we re-opened our holiday lodges.
When you’re self-employed there’s always work to be done. Work that nobody else is going to do. So it’s often difficult to down tools and take a day off. But that’s what we did. We had no departures or arrivals so it was a bit of carpe diem thrown in with a large dose of cabin fever.
The weather for the last few days over here towards the East had been a bit sluggish and grey, with no sign of the sun. The West has been best lately so we decided to head that way.
The drive over to Glencoe always has the effect of lowering my shoulders and unclenching my jaw …
And there we were … at the start of the walk, which is a huge layby that serves as a carpark. It’s half way along Glencoe, just in front of the famous Three Sisters. It’s often quite busy with tourists and coaches who mainly stop to take pictures rather than actually go for a climb. But yesterday … phew!
The cars were all shoehorned into that space, parked all higgledy-piggledy – like a scene from my younger brothers toy car set from many moons ago. So, we joined the frenzied parking club and left the car in a spectacularly bad spot in the spirit of things.
Ironic that the Lost valley (aka hidden glen) was anything but. It was jam packed with tourists – I’ve never seen this walk so busy in all the times I’ve been in this neck of the woods (a lot)
We are still reeling from lockdown and the staycation is the thing to do. Consequently all our beauty spots are swamped after such a drought.
It’s nice to see people out enjoying our beautiful country, on the one hand, countered by outrage that anyone else should take a trip to ‘our’ fave place.
The first glimpse of the lost valley always gives a frisson of delight. This hidden space is completely cut off from Glencoe, with house-size boulders in the gorge.
Way back in the ice age, a huge ice cap gouged out Glen Coe and then charged down to the sea. A big wodge of it got stuck and couldn’t charge with the main ice cap out to the sea.
Coire Gabhail is the hidden valley where the MacDonalds of Glen Coe hid their rustled cattle. Many of the Macdonalds who escaped from the massacre of Glen Coe fled here, but some perished in the winter snows.
It’s a very rough but intensely dramatic and scenic walk.
It’s only 4km but a short sharp steep climb, which is rocky, and involves a bit of scrambling.
We then went to Glen Etive for some wild swimming and finished off with a beer at the Kingshouse
Perfect day!
