The weather, summer holidays and some bloke suffering from motion sickness took its toll on the turnout, but nonetheless five “mountaineers” pitched camp at Applecross. Being leaderless, and not knowing who else was supposed to be around, we staked out all corners of the campsite.

Saturday dawned wet and windy. Jim found somewhere out of the rain and finished his newspapers. Mark walked to Toscaig to go fishing. In keeping with the great fishing tradition of the Moray Mountaineering Club, Mark returned full of stories (like the otter that got away), but otherwise empty handed – if only you could live on stories. AndyB, Illona and Dan delayed setting off for some time, but eventually boredom got the better of them and they headed up the Applecross Archaeological Trail. Being mountaineers, the way-marked path was quickly dismissed in favour of a vegetation choked gully. After much thrashing about they finally located Andy’s cave. The Applecross Inn, a campsite band and two campervans provided a welcome glut of entertainment and culinary options for Saturday night.

On Sunday Mark and Jim headed up the road built a few decades ago by some youth in a hat. Illona, Andy and Dan went for a walk along the ancient coffin route from Kenmore on the north coast Applecross. The first leg passes through some lovely newly planted woodland and passes by several lochans, one of which had three Black Throated Divers. At the pass, and having successfully dodged the coffins, they turned left and went back north via the somewhat rougher track to Inverbain.

Dan Moysey