Having travelled up to the Scottish Highlands from Shropshire yesterday with 11 students from Ellesmere College, today was our first day out on the hill. Consequently, we opted for a relatively gentle day, and headed into the Drumrunie Forest, north of Ullapoll. Two groups, including mine, ear marked Cul Beag, while the third group went for Cul Mor.

The route was always going to be relatively short, leaving plenty of time for extra interest. My group spend quite a bit of time looking at basic map work and basic navigational choices, as well as talking about emergency procedures and the various types of flora that we came across.

The climb up to Meall Dearg, a lower top on the mountain, proved to be quite steep and resulted in numerous stops to catch a breather, but also gave us time to enjoy some great views as we looked east. The top of Meall Dearg was home to an interesting cleft in the rock, which provided much needed shelter from the wind as we refuelled and looked on the Cul Beag itself.

A short sharp descent from Meall Dearg was closely followed by another steep climb to the summit of Cul Beag, where we passed the other group on the mountain, who had opted to follow the reverse of our own route. We stopped for lunch on the summit, looking north towards the top of Cul Mor trying to spot the third group but without success.

During lunch, the cloud base dropped and, by the time we were ready to head off again, visibility was down to about 20m. A compass bearing took us south to the top of a ravine, before loosely following the main stream off the mountain side back to the minibus.

Today was a good introduction to the Scottish mountains. Perhaps not that big or challenging a day, but a good warm up and gave a real sense of scale and remoteness of the landscape. I have something a bit more demanding in mind for tomorrow!