Expedition 198 - 16th August 2008
The Kinlochmoidart Track

Once again, the forecast said it would be bad. Happily, my explorers didn’t believe the forecast and we had another good turnout: eleven young explorers, Benjamin, Caulay, Edward, Fern, Frederik, Matthew, Matthew E., Megan, Robbie L., Rowan and Thomas, ten adult helpers, Christina, Howard, John Dove, John Evans, Maris, Pamela, Philippa, Richard, Sandra and Sharon, with two dogs, Ellie and Jamie. (Jamie had recently celebrated his ninth birthday.) This was Megan’s first expedition and she had no difficulty in keeping up with the fast pace set by the older boys.

We assembled at Kinacara and walked down the road to the old mill, looking at the millstones by the road as we passed. Then we made our way to the next stream where everyone negotiated a tough ascent to the little settlement in the woods. Actually the bracken was very high and we only saw one of the houses, the explorers were prepared to take my word for the existence of the others.

Our furthest east point on the high ground was the Mill Burn where we looked at a very big birch tree and the boys had some time to investigate the waterfalls and see the pipeline, which once carried water to the turbine at the bottom of the hill.

The undergrowth was high and there was a lot of tussocky grass, so I was lucky in the route I picked across the hill – not only did we make good time but the older boys were able to capture one of the many butterflies in the area, a speckled wood, so that everyone but me saw it. This expedition was also marked by the presence of a lot of Boletus fungi, some of which returned to go into a cooking pot.

There was clearly once a path linking the little settlement with the old Kinlochmoidart track, but it is now very difficult to find. We found the last hundred metres or so and from then on it was fairly easy walking along the old track.

We stopped for our wafer break, with special dog biscuits for the four-footed explorers and the boys found a tree they could climb and play rough games in. I got them moving again and we went and had a look at the rocky burn the motorbikes of the Six Day Trial had been climbing in May. From then on it was a steady walk up to An Dun where we all took a breather on the top and looked at the view of Castle Tioram and a bunch of canoeists crossing the loch. I confess to being a bit nervous when there is a big group on An Dun and I didn’t let them rest long before we were all off down the hill again.

We had no trouble getting down to the road and we made a very long line as we walked along the verge back to Kinacara, accompanied by a seal swimming alongside some of the way.

This expedition marked ten years since we started, and I was very touched when a lovely chocolate cake and glasses of champagne were produced in the pantry to celebrate the occasion. Thank you all for your support, just to update the statistics, we have now had a total of 157 young explorers and 141 adult helpers at an average attendance of over eight explorers and over four adult attenders. I don’t have the totals for the dogs, I might work them out later.

John Dye