SLEEP YOUR WAY TO SCOTLAND
There’s a way to cram more of the Scottish Highlands into one weekend than you ever thought possible, and it’s called the Caledonian Sleeper Train. Leave London on Friday night and wake up at Britain’s most remote train station on Saturday morning, ready for two days packed full of Munros, wildlife, lochs and wilderness.
Corrour is like nowhere else in the world. Deep in the Scottish Highlands, it’s a lost world of lochs, moors, glens, mighty Munro peaks and the legendary, isolated, Loch Ossian Youth Hostel. It’s a 16km walk or bike ride from the nearest road, and the only other way to get there is by train.
If you’ve seen Trainspotting, you might remember Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Tommy arriving on a train for a walk “in the great outdoors”. That was Corrour. It has the highest station in the UK at around 400m above sea-level. The train track cuts through the glen, bisecting the giant ranges containing Ben Nevis and Ben Alder. The 909m summit of Leum Uilleim provides a pointy backdrop to the Station House restaurant and B&B, which is the only sign of civilisation for miles. Arriving at Corrour by sleeper train at sunrise is a magical experience – that is, at least, if things go as expected…
Our journey began in the flatlands of Peterborough, with a very organised and detailed plan. After a day at work, a 19:30 train delivered us to London, where we caught the 21:15 sleeper train from Euston to Scotland. The train starts off with many carriages, some filled with sleeper cabins and others with standard seating. Throughout the night, the train speeds through the UK to reach one of four key destinations – Fort William, Glasgow, Inverness or Aberdeen – stopping at 39 different Scottish destinations along the way, including other key hillwalking areas like Aviemore, Arrochar, Pitlochry and, of course, Corrour. It’s one giant moving hotel that saves you two nights’ accommodation and maximises your weekend by doing the long journey to and from Scotland while you sleep.
Wake-up call
All was going well. A rail strike that threatened the trip had not materialised and everything was on time, so all that was left to do was sit back and enjoy a nightcap in the sleeper train’s restaurant/bar before bed. The cabins come in various forms, with doubles or twin bunks and even the choice of en suite. There’s not much room to swing a rucksack, but you get a comfy bed with bedding, towels and ear plugs provided, as well as an ingeniously designed wet room. It’s just like a very compact hotel room, one that even rocks you to sleep!
I was woken from my slumber by a knock on the door. Squinting at my watch, it was still only 5am. Unsure if I dreamt it, I thought I heard someone say “breakfast” before I drifted back off to sleep. Suffice to say that it was a rude awakening when a final warning was given to get off the train as we pulled up 3 hours early into Dundee due to a broken-down engine. The next 2 hours were a blur of Dundee’s city lights, which soon faded to winding country roads in the back of a taxi, the driver of which was seemingly in a hurry.
Instead of arriving in style by train at Corrour, we were spat out at Rannoch Station – one stop away from Corrour and the nearest we could get to it by road. We didn’t know it then but our change of plan was actually to be a blessing in disguise.
We had booked in at the Loch Ossian Youth Hostel for the Saturday night, which would have been a 1-mile walk down a private track from the station. Loch Ossian hostel isn’t just a place to sleep. It’s a tick-box in itself, being one of the two most remote hostels in the UK (the other being Glen Affric), and positioned magnificently right on the loch shore. Whether by train or track, getting there is part of the experience. We had boots on and were travelling light, and from Rannoch the map showed a perfect-looking 18.5km high-level route to the hostel over 941m-high Munro Carn Dearg (pronounced ‘Carn Jerag’).
We set off with our new and improved plan in the early morning sunshine. A track took us into Rannoch Moor where we bumped into a game-keeper for the Corrour Estate. It was stalking season and an A4 bit of paper flapping in the wind on a fence post told us stalking was in progress. The high ridgelines and main paths are generally safe, unless otherwise specified, and the game-keeper confirmed it so, and even helpfully suggested a slightly easier quad-bike track on the western side up to the ridgeline as an alternative to a rather arduous off-path haul up the southern nose of Carn Dearg’s ridge.
Running almost in parallel to the train track down in the glen below, the ridge was broad and rolled gently in mini peaks. Two golden eagles circled above as we passed two lochans before finally culminating with a stiffer climb up to the final and highest summit. For a Munro, this was not a well-walked ridge. The path was mostly vague to non-existent, which added to the sense of wilderness. As we climbed mizzle had set in, and brief glimpses through breaks in the cloud teased us with the outrageous views we were missing out on. We knew there were mountains as far as the eye could see, including a particularly fetching profile of Ben Nevis looking pointy and impressive that would be visible on a clear day. But we had to make do with the standard summit shot in the mist, with only the cairn to give any indication of which mountain we were even on. Still, fair-weather walkers in the Highlands are destined to spend most of their time disappointed, and even with no view it was impossible not to feel alive with the sense of space and the stinging rain on our faces. This was Scotland, it was a journey, and I had a feeling the best was yet to come.
No prisoners
Carn Dearg deposited us at Peter’s Rock, having stumbled down its rough northerly prominence above Loch Ossian. A plaque was mounted on the rock in memory of 30-year-old Peter J Trowell, who we discovered had been a warden at Loch Ossian Youth Hostel. Local paper cuttings from the time indicate that he failed to turn up for work one Wednesday in March 1979 and had been missing at that time for over a week following bad weather. It is said that his body was sadly found some weeks later in the loch when conditions thawed. This was a landscape
“It was impossible not to feel alive. This was Scotland, it was a journey, and I had a feeling the best was yet to come”
that could swallow people whole and was not to be underestimated.
Rejoining the track above Loch Ossian, and back out of the cloud, the majesty of the place started to reveal itself and lift the slightly sinister atmosphere. Plantation forest encircled most of the loch. On the opposite side another Munro – Beinn na Lap – reached up into the clouds. Tiny islands decorated the loch at the western end, covered in ancient Scot’s pine trees – a relic of how the valley would have once looked. Just The Station House was visible in the far distance. At first, Loch Ossian Youth Hostel was nowhere to be seen, as painted green and completely camouflaged by the surrounding trees it blended perfectly into its surroundings until we got closer.
If I’ve ever stayed in a more stunning location, I don’t remember it. It was everything you would imagine a dream wilderness lodge would be. The view extended down the loch’s entire 5km length, surrounded by mountains on both sides. It seemed a world away from the London bustle that we’d left behind the night before. Inside the hostel, the log burner was roaring and the Corrour Estate’s hydro-electric scheme had enabled a little haven of hot showers, sustainable heating and a fully functional modern kitchen all contained in a cosy wood-panelled ski chalet-esque lodge. Outdoor compost loos kept things in that department civilised and there were two dorms – one we hired for ourselves, and the other taken by local tradesmen who were working on renovations at the Corrour Hunting lodge at the other end of the lake.
Jan, the slightly eccentric hostel manager, was completely lovely and made us very welcome, regaling us with stories of the interesting and surprisingly sociable
life she leads in the middle of nowhere, 17km from the nearest public road. It seems Peter was not the only one to lose his life here. Over the years two young lads sadly spent their last hours at Loch Ossian before perishing in winter conditions in the surrounding wilderness. One fell through a snow-covered stream, and the other had set out to live off the land in true Into the Wild style, only to be found dead in a nearby railway hut in 2012. I was starting to get the impression that outside the sanctuary of the Station House and the hostel was an unforgiving wilderness that demanded respect and took no prisoners, especially in the depths of winter.
Shunned Munros
The next morning the forecast was looking good for the time of year, with typical November sunshine and showers forecast. The dilemma was which mountain to climb. We had all day before the train was due to leave for London just before 21:00. 935m high Beinn na Lap was Corrour’s second Munro and the obvious choice for many, being the mountain that presides over Loch Ossian’s waters. But Leum Uilleim, behind the Station House, had a steeper, more exciting looking ridgeline that promised a more appealing ascent. Falling just 5m short of Munro status (909m), it seemed a more compelling reason to climb it than to simply add to our Munro count.
Leum Uilleim did not disappoint. It looked much narrower and steeper from the Station House below, but offered an enjoyable airy ridge-top vantage point over Rannoch Moor and Loch Ossian. Ptarmigan, halfway through their winter moult, were half-white and fled as we made our way up the ridge. A strange roar could be heard in the distance. Rutting deer? The winter sun was soft and ethereal, and rainbows came and went between showers. The opposing ridge of An Diollaid provided a natural high-level horseshoe back down into the valley with grandstand views into the Mamores towards Ben Nevis. From this more westerly aspect Ossian’s neighbour, Loch Treig, became visible – sparking stories of The Hermit of Treig, a 74-year-old man who has lived in the wild for 40 years on the banks of the loch – and who has recently become the subject of a BBC documentary.
Time warp
The sleeper train schedule messes with your concept of time. In one sense, it felt a lifetime ago that we’d been crossing busy streets in London. And yet with only one night at the hostel, it was like Mary Poppins’ magic bag – we’d managed to pull out two full Scottish mountain days from just one weekend. So, mountain number two climbed, we sat next to the fire with dinner and a glass of wine. We met Katrina, the other hostel manager, who after a month campervanning around New Zealand had given up life as a civil servant to travel the world. For the past 9 years she’s shared the running of the hostel for one week in every four. It was a pleasant evening, and we felt all ready for bed. But instead we had a train to catch...
Standing at the station at 20:53, on the dark, remote platform and in horizontal drizzle, it seemed unlikely that a train would actually turn up and interrupt the isolation. But turn up it did. And soon we were whisked away off into the night heading south, with the Highlands and the wonderful Loch Ossian fading like a dream in the night.