Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin Wild Walks

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I've just left the shores of Loch Earn in Stirlingshire,

and I'm climbing up through the historic lands of the Stewarts of Ardvorlich

towards two very popular Munros - Ben Vorlich and Stuc a'Chroin.

I always think this glen, Glen Vorlich,

is a magical kind of place,

especially on a lovely autumn morning like this one.

And the house that I passed at the foot of the glen,

Ardvorlich House, has a couple of stones in it,

or at least used to have a couple of stones in it,

I don't know whether they're still there, and they had magical qualities.

One of them, the Clach Dhearg,

you used to be able to dip it in a bucket of water, twirl it round three times sunwise,

and the water took on healing qualities

in the diseases and infections in cattle.

The other stone that's in the house, the Glenbucket stone, was similar.

If the woman of the house twirled the Glenbucket stone round three times sunwise,

then anybody who drank that water would have their wishes fulfilled.

Nice stories. Whether they're true or not, I've no idea.

But certainly, I know my wish today is that this weather stays the same all day long.

The forecast is for rain and strong winds,

but I'm kind of wishing that the sun just stays like it is at the moment.

The estate here is very keen for walkers to stick to the footpaths

to avoid damaging the remnants of heather here in Glen Vorlich.

And at this time of the year, when the heather becomes this beautiful purple,

you can fully understand why this lovely plant

has become synonymous with the Scottish Highlands.

But there's another wee plant that you might find in between the heather -

this little yellow plant called tormentil.

And it's said, in days gone by,

this was a cure for nervous diarrhoea.

Now, it won't be any great problem going up Ben Vorlich,

but anybody who doesn't like steep ground

might want to take a few mouthfuls of this before they go up Stuc a'Chroin.

That's the summit route just ahead of us - Ben Vorlich, 3,232 feet.

In many ways this is my favourite time of the year.

It's certainly a toss-up between autumn and spring.

In springtime, I know I've got the whole of the summer to look forward to.

In autumn, I know I've got the winter to look forward to.

But we generally get better periods of good weather in autumn,

and there's something kind of special about the hills

when they take on the sort of brown, ochre-coloured hue

that you don't get at other times of the year.

Plus this anticipation that winter is just round the corner.

It's almost time to start looking out the cold gear,

looking out the ice axes and crampons,

for what we hope will be another good winter.

I think we're picking up the tail end of the hurricane

that swept up the east coast of America.

It certainly feels hurricane force, today.

Over in the Alps, there's a couple of mountains called Pollux and Castor,

they're the celestial twins of the Bernese Oberland.

And here in Scotland, we have quite a number of Munros that we kind of twin together.

We think of the likes of Ben More and Stobinian,

or these two that we're on today, Ben Vorlich and Stuc a'Chroin.

And yet these two couldn't be more different.

Ben Vorlich has a nice footpath running away up to the summit,

and Stuc a'Chroin, there's no real paths to speak of.

It's rugged, it's steep, involves a bit of scrambling.

So, certainly quite different.

Wow! Ben Vorlich.

It means "the hill of the sea bay,"

and I assume that's named after one of the bays down in Loch Earn.

And it's not to be confused with the other Ben Vorlich in the Arrochar Alps.

It's about, a good eagle's flight over in that direction, to the west.

Well, that's the easy one done.

The real difficulty, in this wind,

will be scrambling up Stuc a'Chroin, across there.

One of the great beauties of hill walking in Scotland,

when you're on the top, there's always this great sense of wildness.

And I think that's maybe what attracts a great number of us to the hills.

Because once you're above the forestry line,

then you are in a land that's not dictated to by agriculture,

where there's not paths and tracks all over the place.

You really are in the wildness of Scotland.

Particularly when you go above 2,000 feet.

It's on the mountaintops that we are in wild Scotland.

I think another reason why I enjoy this particular part of Scotland,

it's the land of my ancestors.

The McNeishs were a set of the clan MacGregor,

and this is all Clan MacGregor territory.

Rob Roy MacGregor himself was buried not very far from here,

at Balquhidder, in the churchyard there.

And my own clan, McNeish,

lived just at the far end of Loch Earn,

and it's said that they had a pretty fierce battle with the traditional enemies, the McNabs,

and the McNeishes were pretty well annihilated.

The story goes that only one boy survived that fight.

So there's a few McNeishes left today, not many of us,

but there's a few.

We probably all come from that one lad who survived that fight, on Neish's Isle,

at the far end of Loch Earn.

Now, that wasn't too bad, was it?

When you look across here from Ben Vorlich,

at this black face of Stuc a'Chroin, it looks almost impossible.

But when you get close to it, when you get beneath that face,

it kind of rears back,

and all you have to do is follow the zigzag path up through the crags.

And as scrambling routes go, it's fairly benign.

But we're not at the summit yet. It's 200 or 300 metres that way.

It's a disappointingly flat summit for such a nice wee scrambly route.

But here we are, Stuc a'Chroin. And I guess I've been quite lucky today,

I've had two of my wishes granted. The wind has decreased quite a bit,

and I didn't need the tormentil on the scrambly bit.

But granted wishes are not important on a day like this,

because beyond Stirling, I've got the whole of the lowlands in front of me.

And round this side, I've got the whole of the Trossachs arrayed before me.

And then to the north, all the hills of Breadalbyn.

I tell you, it doesn't get much better than this.