Rannoch Moor
This is no place for the faint-hearted. How often have people arrived by car at Rannoch Station and asked how far is it to Glencoe? The answer disappoints and yet intrigues. It's fourteen miles if you walk and about seventy if you insist on driving. Whilst such queries do not instil confidence in the map reading capabilities of the British they do emphasise that there is no road across Rannoch Moor. In the late seventies there was a vote to see if local people wanted a road to be constructed across the Moor - they did not.
The Moor is a huge blanket bog. It is a wild place, all the more precious in a world of diminishing wild places. Crossing it on foot or by mountain bike is an experience, almost certainly unforgettable.
Rannoch School organised a race across the Moor from Rannoch Station to Buachaille Etive Mhor and back to the Station - a distance of about 32 miles in combination with the ascent of Buachaille Etive Mhor, a Munro. Even though marathons and ultra marathons are fashionable these days this remains a very significant challenge, not least because of the terrain. The Moor is a massive peat bog laid upon impermeable granodiorite (granite to the non-geologist). It is waterlogged and is more than capable of sucking the boot off a careless foot. It redefines humps with constant up and downs and peat rills and heather that claws at the laces. Weaken and stumble and the midges will descend in clouds that threaten to block out the sun. The rain clouds may ride in from the west like an aquatic horseman of the apocalypse. Sounds grim, doesn't it? And it can be but, then the sun can shine and as you jog westwards Loch Laidon glints to the south and you cross the undulating peat as if on a roll or coaster. Burns rush in from the north and have to be crossed with care. After an eternity the impressive mound of Buachaille Etive Mhor begins to rise above the horizon. Another eternity and it gets bigger. Eternity to the power of ten and it gets to look like it's portrait that is in every Scottish calendar. It is beautiful and it is the sentinel that peers down on the gash in the mountains that is Glencoe. A few more eternities and you circumnavigate Black Corries. Once you could run straight through but the owners got the path re-routed round their boundary. Now you are on a gently sloping downwards track that leads to the invitation of the King’s House - not to be accepted. Take the punishing ups and downs of the West Highland Way to reach the foot of the Buachaille and a support group. Hereon ascend and descend at your own pace. The run across Rannoch Moor is hard, the run back is much harder.
Rannoch Moor is home to the Rannoch Rush (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheuchzeria) Dr David Bellamy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bellamy) studied for his PhD. Some years back he opened the information room at Rannoch Station which had been designed by his some. David Bellemy then guided the assembled locals into the Moor to find the Rannoch Rush. As he went he gave a running botany lesson and waded into bogs, grabbed at peat, which he then ate, exclaiming that it was pure and unpolluted. Part of Rannoch Moor is a National Nature reserve and there is no doubt that it is a very important and remote location. Hamish MacInnes (http://www.hamishmacinnes.com/) writes about his rescue of a Glasgow University who had hot lost on the Moor.
In the ice age Rannoch Moor had a 2000 foot thick ice cap which fed radial glaciers. It is underlain by a batholith of granodiorite which has resisted erosion. After the ice retreated forests grew. In the last 10,000 years the trees have come and gone but the roots of the many trees can still be seen preserved in the peat. The West Highland line was built by Irish navies across very insecure ground which had to be stabilised with brushwood. It passes through amazing scenery and has been voted the most picturesque railway in the world. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Highland_Line)
If you can manage it, crossing Rannoch Moor from Rannoch Station to the King’s House Hotel is an experience not to be missed.