Description - Craig Varr

Criag Varr

There you are, on the summit of Craig Varr looking down on the lime green, easily seen, spring bursting birches creeping like an army up the slopes. Below the two-part song of the wood warbler rises to the ear. Far below redstarts are nesting and on the moorland. Snipe call and drum with their curious otherworldly tail feather sounding as they dive erratically through champagne air. A line of hinds turret the ridge then file off like pheromone driven ants into the distance. The last of the plaintive calling whooper swans V their way in magestic grace north west to Iceland while most greylags head north east to Siberia. A few geese remain and fly hither and thither in honking jet fighter pair formation. Small flights of mallards consist of several drakes in abusive pursuit of a duck. Spring announces itself with curlews, oystercatchers and lapwings. Perhaps most evocative of all is the sometimes-seen cuckoo whose call reverberates around the strath like an auditory balm. Spring promises much and it does not disappoint.

There you are, where the heat bounces off the rock on the summit of Craig Varr on which the summer sun pulsates. You flop on the dry but verdant grass next to the summit cairn and looking west, the blue benevolence of Loch Rannoch sparkles in the rays. To the east three buzzards circle lazily with occasional languid beats and mew to each other whilst ever seeking food with powerful eyes. Around about the flowers bloom - tormentil, marsh lousewort, milkwort and insectivorous butterwort, its nodding purple flower belying the menace of its slippery insect engulfing leaf rosette. The deep guttural grunt of a raven reveals our largest crow watching from a rock on the ridge. Far below the village of Kinloch Rannoch is laid out like a toy and vehicles can be seen creeping in their petty pace along pencil thin roads. The Tummel snakes its tree-strewn way to the east and there lies the careless outline of Dunalastair Water nestling beneath Schiehallion’s breeze-caressed cone.

There you are, where the west wind is king on the summit of Craig Varr. The trees are bent to the will of the west wind. They are being stripped by an aeolian knife with a blade honed in the ocean. The dead leaf chaos dances and swirls, captive and helpless. It is a wind full of the Atlantic that takes no prisoners. With arrogant ease it scours Glen Etive and crosses Rannoch Moor with undiminished vigour before whipping the white horses on Loch Rannoch to a frenzied gallop. It is funnelled between the Sleeping Giant and Craig Varr, vibrant with the memory of sea spray. Open your coat to form wings on the summit and you can lean at crazy angles into the wind like a weathercock pointing west. Your eyes stream but you can still see the elongate expanse of Loch Rannoch, a dark grey form flecked with white where air and water battle it out. Open your mouth and your cheeks bulge ready to engulf the next nail-sharp shower that hurtles up the loch. Zephyrus is roaring with zest and verve and must be heeded.

There you are, on the summit of Craig Varr. You got there with some difficulty through frictionless snow, knee-deep on steep and slippery slopes where the path has vanished. Your lungs rebel at the cold air; your hair stiffens with ice. There is little life visible but the winter sun glints bravely off the ice crystals and hoar frost scintillates on the slumbering twigs in an incandescent spectral symphony that leaves man’s artistic undertakings to be pitied. The sky is a pale blue and paints the loch with pastel tints; the distant hills are gleaming white jagged teeth biting at the white fluffy clouds. Even now a raven calls to Odin and geese may chevron the air but the small birds are gone and the voles shelter in their tunnels beneath the snow. To the east Dunalastair Water wears a grey rim of contoured ice and Schiehallion adorns the horizon with its perfect snow clad peak. The air is still, there is a winter high, the sky is clear and night will soon bring the cold iron grip of glittering star encrusted darkness as the remaining warmth flees to space.