Another overnight drive from Maidstone then straight on to the hill. No problem in finding the area to start the climb. The Ski Centre is big and as well as buildings there are chair lifts and ski slope scars everywhere. Most of the awfulness, however, was caused by the fences marking the pistes, rather than the ground upturned. You can see immediately that there is precious little climbing as the road had climbed to 500 metres before we even started and the summit of Carn Aosda looked only like a small bump, a bit like Sgurr Eilde Mor was, though in that case there had been a prior, long climb. There is no warm up here, you are straight into the climb. We had only gone about 100 metres when we realised gaiters were needed as the grass was very wet [a waste of time in the end as further on and for the rest of the day it was all dry]. The climb was tiring but easy, up steep , grassy slopes and you knew the summit was never that far away. While on the hill a coachload of tourists arrived below and shortly after the chair
lift was buzzing with people taking the easy way up to the top. As we approached the top we could see the tourists all milling around and it turned out they were Germans - not particularly friendly either. They couldn't have been at the top for more than 15 minutes before they were all going down to the chair lift station and back down. Can't say I blamed them though as the wind was howling, the top being very exposed. Also the top is not very pretty, having a small hut on top of the cairn and there being buildings plus a large transmission/receiver (?) aerial as well. We ourselves didn't stay much longer than to take photos and look at the view which was quite pleasant. I would have liked to get photos of some of the mountain hares which abound on these hills but they are too fast. One little aside was that my sense of direction disappeared on this summit. I was trying to work out where Carn a'Gheoidh was. Carn Aosda was obvious but I placed Carn a'Gheoidh to my back. Yet the guide notes said go NW which appeared to be the opposite direction. A quick look at the map showed that what I thought was Carn a'Gheoidh was in fact Glas Maol. Just shows you that even on a bright clear day you should never just make assumptions - especially on plateau like hills like the Cairnwell Hills.
From the Cairnwell we dropped down to the top of the ski lift to see the last of the Germans disappearing. Going past this we followed the path towards Carn Aosda for a few hundred yards then veered off to the left at the col. The way towards the summit was quite clear and with the path it probably would have been easy even in mist. Actually this was just a stroll like walking on the South Downs along grassy slopes up and along. As you looked back The Cairnwell seemed to shrink and look like a little hill in the middle of a number of other hills, eg Glas Maol. Although easy the path seemed to go on for ever. We met no people on the way and reached the summit without any problems. The views were actually better than on The Cairnwell. Lunch and Guinness was had next to the cairn in a rock built shelter which smelled pretty awful and made us wonder what the previous occupants had done. The lable on the Guinness said open, listen
and count for 2/3 seconds for the widget to activate. I opened it and it exploded in froth all over me while in the background I could hear Graeme going 1 - 2....
The way off Carn a'Gheoidh towards Carn Aosda follows the incoming route right back almost to the col between The Cairnwell and Carn Aosda. At this point a bulldozed track winds round the hill and right up to the summit. To try to bypass this we walked down a dip through the fences to a hut. No idea what the hut was meant to do, it looked as if it was falling to pieces inside but still used, but for what? The way up from here, dodging in and out of piste fences was like walking through a builders yard and not very pleasant. The track was again reached as was the summit. This was again very windy and the top itself very stony. It was all very drab and it was as fast as we could get off it. The way down was almost literally straight down on a track, a scar the whole way down to the start of the ski tows. The day, absolutely boring in terms of climbing, was a pleasant starter - three hills being no more than one usually.
