Stob Ghabhar, SW Highlands
The Inveroran Inn has stood at the bottom of the Black Mount’s Stob Ghabhar for over 300 years. Sounds like a good excuse for a classic peak-to-pub.
The Black Mount traverse, between the two ancient inns of Kingshouse and Inveroran, has long been considered Scotland’s premier pub-to-pub route. But being a linear route that means a car at either end, and who wants to be a designated driver when there’s a post-walk pub involved? Besides, for the short light-limited days of midwinter, half the Black Mount traverse still makes for a full-on mountain day.
What we want on a mountain day is mountain atmosphere. Mountain atmosphere up on the mountain, and mountain atmosphere afterwards in the bar. So after the long pathway curving into Stob Ghabhar’s hidden eastern corrie, after crunching the crampons up the firm old snow of its north-facing wall, after the sudden and stunning view south across Loch Tulla and the airy ridgeline where the rocks are laced with hoarfrost and the cop-out summer path is buried inside the snowdrift, and after black ice-lumps in the starlight along the banks of the peaty river, then it’s time to unwind in the ancient and somewhat cavernous Walkers’ Bar of the Inveroran Inn, right there at the bottom of Stob Ghabhar.