Sometimes in life we all inevitably take the wrong thing too far, maybe we’ve walked down the wrong path for too long and guided ourselves into trouble – looking back we all wish that we hadn’t started off that way…

But here we are…

Any sort of hiking can lead into such regrettable situations, or at least by my trend. Today would be the day where I would walk off the wrong hill because I was so adamant I didn’t want to return the way I came.

Ben Wyvis is along a massif about a half hour drive from Inverness. It stands as a solitary munro, upon a moderate distance, steep in height massif with 360 views towards the Moray Firth, Inverness, the Great Wilderness and south towards the Monadh Liath Munros.

A mistake I shall not be making again in a hurry.

Let me welcome you to Ben Wyvis.

Ben Wyvis is along a massif about a half hour drive from Inverness. It stands as a solitary munro, upon a moderate distance, steep in height with 360 views towards the Moray Firth, Inverness, the Great Wilderness and south towards the Monadh Liath Munros.

It’s a simple day out, one that shouldn’t be complicated. 

Follow the path into the expanse, trace the river toward the massif and head straight on up.

It really didn’t need to be difficult.

Except, I am now a keen hill bagger, with an eagerness for ticking off as many summits in a single day so that I can rise through the ranks of the Hill bagging leaderboard. I turned a moderately short day into a hike that would last all afternoon and well into my evening.

Bagging – An Cabar, the Munro Ben Wyvis, An t-Socach, Glas Leathad Beag and it’s west top, Meall nan Bradan Leathan and walking back to finish Tom a’ Choinnich for a successful session. At this final summit I should have headed back up the Munro and made a return for the car that way. The right way. Plenty of hill bagging points to see me rise moderately through the hill bagging rankings. – I should be proud of this one.

However, in that pride my ego got the better of me.

I was tired, my feet were sore and I thought I had spied a deer stalkers track that would take me toward the tree plantation and a successful shortcut taken.

Oh how I was wrong.

Soon after I dropped off the hill the track faded and I realised I had made a mistake, the route I wanted to take didn’t exist, there were various deer tracks to follow, occasionally a quad bike run appeared but for the large part of the journey I was walking through a whole lot of bog and rocky terrain. What a terrible decision.

Realising I had literally added hours to my day, I accepted my fate and beelined it for the stream that flowed off the hill that cut so eloquently through the countryside. It had remained untouched by humans for a very long time, it seemed. Which meant that there was never any path, no trodden-down track ultimately this had become a soggy trek.

A common theme to all Highland walking and perhaps, I didn’t know how to read the land as well as I thought…

For years I have complained about the public walking off the beaten track, disturbing wildlife, ground nesting birds and breaking up the flowers and fauna and well today – I had become the very thing that I hated.

I throw my hands up and apologise.

Whilst trudging across the landscape, I was very unsure as to whether I wanted to include this hypocritical error into my writings – however, I do want to offer an honest insight into my doings and I am sure you could learn a thing or two by following from it.

Today, I made a mistake against my own advice and it really highlights how I must get better at reading my maps, trusting it more than my own intuition until I improve and it has motivated me even more to speak out about walking off piste when there is a perfectly good path you could take.

I say this because I felt terrible, not because I was getting wet feet walking river side, or I worried about picking up the many ticks that probably crawled about the land, but I felt like my feet had destroyed so much, Skylarks and Meadow Pippits launched from the ground high into the sky when I came too close to where they were hiding. 

I felt so ashamed.

This is why I want to record this trip and emotions, not because I want to tell you how silly and thrilling being off the beaten track is, but because I felt terrible, guilty and ashamed I had done such a thing.

So I implore you, stick to the route, you’ll cause a lot of damage, even if unintentional. The high road is often the one you will enjoy the most and in this instance – it was the quickest.

But to finish this piece off on a lighter note. Today – I assisted an elderly woman who was stuck on the hill, unable to climb down the way she had gone up – I don’t blame her really. “Take my arm I said, we’ll do this together. It hurt my knees as well”.

So if anything, at least I was kind to a human today and I can only ask for forgiveness to the trampling I did in the wild nature beyond the tree plantations at Ben Wyvis.

Several hikes later, as I write this up, I can confidently say that my eye-of-the-land has vastly improved and my mistakes happen less frequently.

Yours Faithfully

-That Wandering Rhys