Petestack Blog

Into the lonely country between Loch Arkaig and Loch Quoich today for Munro Sgurr Mor and its Corbett partner Sgurr an Fhuarain, with waterproofs worn all day and the camera never leaving its drybag. So perhaps I misjudged the weather (‘cloudy’ forecast but sunny when I left home) and certainly regretted wearing specs instead of contacts, but just had to get on with it (quite enjoyed it really) when there’s no way I was returning empty-handed from driving the queasy Loch Arkaig single-track rollercoaster! Saw neither peaks (which never cleared despite the brightening afternoon) nor other walkers, though I did pass a bike stashed just above the road on my return. So overall a good (wet) day even if the van reeked of (dogless) ‘wet dog’ on the way home!

So they keep telling us on the radio what lovely weather it is, but who’d say that while not just caught somewhere between frying and boiling on the hills but fighting off wave after wave of cleg attack? (more…)

Quite a tough weekend in Torridon, supporting Robin Deroeck on the closing run of the very tough Celtman! Extreme Scottish Triathlon on Saturday and making a complete traverse of Beinn Eighe yesterday… (more…)

Having discovered a couple of weeks ago that there was an apparently unmapped local track I’d never run linking Black Corries Lodge to the Blackwater Reservoir, I’d been itching to give it a whirl and finally took myself round to Kings House to do so today. (more…)

Today’s run was supposed to be a straightforward circuit of Loch Oich, following the Great Glen Cycle Route (new ground to me despite driving both A82 and A87 countless times) up the north-west side of Loch Oich before returning by the Great Glen Way on its south-east side (which I’ve run once before as an out-and-back from Bridge of Oich). Which might have been fine if I’d known where the (now defunct?) Cycle Route goes, but wasn’t quite so good as a spontaneous (= mapless!), follow-your-nose expedition on the way home from another trip to Lochalsh Pipes. (more…)

Not much to say about yesterday’s Ben Nevis Race except that my time on a cold, wet and windy day was 3 mins 19 secs slower than my best and 3 mins 36 quicker than my worst. (more…)

While the 2012 Coll Half-Marathon always promised to be special in ‘moving’ from the old village hall to the new centre at An Cridhe, it was doubly so for us with the whole ‘Glover’ family (Duffs, Duggans and McBrydes) having contributed to the fundraising and an inscription in memory of my grandparents within this wonderful building. So it was with extra excitement that Eileen, Donald and I travelled to Coll last weekend, and here’s what we wanted to see most: (more…)

So the 2012 Devil has come and gone with a personal performance more in line with realistic expectation (7½ to 8 hours given current shape and weight) than aspiration (sub-7 surely being possible on the right day). But how it hurt to find myself struggling desperately over my home patch (the hills either side of Kinlochleven, which I’ve run literally hundreds of times)… (more…)

While I’d quite fancied a trip to the western Cairngorms for the Glen Feshie Munros yesterday, I was late to bed, late to rise and the forecast wasn’t that encouraging, so headed out after lunch to mop up a couple of annoying ‘singletons’ instead. The first being Meall Chuaich above Dalwhinnie, which Irvine Butterfield described as:

A boring hill with an equally drab outlook. Its main merit is that it can be climbed quickly.

To which I can only add that his assessment’s probably about right although, with ‘boring’ (as so often) translating to ‘good for running’ and ‘quickly’ in this case proving to be 10:58 miling from van to van, there simply wasn’t time to get bored! (more…)