Happy Sunday!

In a spontaneous turn of events, a couple of friends invited me to join them on a hike yesterday. I was at their house waiting for the tow truck to take my broken down car to the garage when they came up with the idea of walking up one of the many, many, many hills around this part of the world. So, of course, I was delighted – even tho the prospect of getting up early for outdoorsy exercise after a night of drinks and nibbles (it was Eurovision night last night!) was a bit daunting.

I needn’t have worried. I woke up freakishly early (you know that waking feeling when you’re trying to decide whether a hangover will develop or not?), made sandwiches and coffee, and dug out my hiking boots.

I haven’t been hiking properly for about two years (and am not the fittest of people), so this really was a bit daunting but the company was great and we got there early enough to have a lot of time to make our way up the hill.

Clachnaben (Gaelic for “rock on the hill”) looks pretty impressive but it is still classed as a “hill”, not a munro. The ascent, however, was pretty challenging – well, it was for me – and changed between wide paths to very narrow ones on the edge of steep slopes, from smooth to rocky steps and rubble.

By the time we made it to the top, I was done for.

The views made up for the effort, tho: