My cycling days are over so I sent OH and the Teenage HD on down the barely surfaced road from Kingshouse to Gualachulain. My loudly complaining exhaust disturbed a rock band who were shooting a video in front of Stob Dearg. Sorry guys.
About 15km of bad road later and I pulled up at the wee car park. I'd seen the cairn as I passed it a few hundred yards back. Bright white and shining in the autumn light.
The drop-dead rugged scenery and pristine surroundings would normally attract huge numbers of tourists to views like this, but the sump-rupturing pot-holes and uneven road surface seems to put all but the usual idiots like myself off. I'd passed the other two thirds of my family throwing sangwidges at the Red Deer a mile or two back so I figured I'd have a little mosey over to the cairn near the cottage at Gualachulain. It would give my hissing engine a little time to cool and rest that clattering exhaust in preparation for the return up the glen.
The clear-felling of the small patch of surrounding forestry has been instrumental in exposing the cairn but thankfully there has been no manicuring of the landscape around the cairn. The only concession to visitors has been the erection of a fine four-step stile (with a top resting platform) over the top of the Deer Fence. This allows easy access and a grand elevated view of the site. The bark, twigs and tree-stumps are gradually being consumed by Nature's decomposers and munchers.
The cairn is constructed from white river-rounded stones. It stands to a fine height. There is a lot of it left. A fine curiously veined boulder tops the cairn. The loamy peat has been washed off a lot of the cairn mound now and exposes most of the stones. They gleam a bright white with just a couple of rounded stones being of a rosey-pink.
The nearby cottage garden on the other side of the Deer Fence does not intrude at all on the site's atmosphere. From atop this lovely cairn I watched the sun sweep amber rays across the foot of the mountains on the far side of Loch Etive. I heard the sound of screeching brakes and a voice shouted "Hi Dad! I think Mum'll be about ten minutes." I headed back over to the stile. Time to go.
Ten minutes later we were heading back up the glen, exhaust spluttering, engine hissing, two bikes slung on the back of the otherwise uncomplaining Golf. Oban Fish Bar beckoned with its blonde, pony-tailed waitresses and the finest fish and chips available anywhere.
An instructive amateur site covering some major - and more obscure - Scottish monuments. I recommend the author's lack of that counter-productive 'partisan viewpoint' allied to good photography. Interesting to note an objective perspective of the 'tidying-up' of the Gualachulain cairn that has occurred post my 2015 visit.
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Posted by Howburn Digger
Posted by GLADMAN
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