An Stuc, Meall Garbh & Meall Greigh

Day 2 of Mont Blanc "warm up walks" saw Chris and I almost melting in a scorcher of a day and experiencing a total nightmare traffic chaos.

We set off from the usual meeting point at the Little Chef at 10:30 ish and headed up Lomondside to meet a queue of traffic and police diverting traffic via Arrochar due to a "serious road accident on the A82"

So we followed the diversions and took sat in crawling and stationery traffic as caravan numpties and buses squeezed and scraped past each other on the far too twisty roads. We changed our plans and decided to head east to avoid the snarling queues once at Crianlarich and headed over to Killin and Loch Tay to climb the 3 Munros at the east end of the Lawers range.

2:30 we eventually set off from the Lawers hotel for An Stuc and plodded up to the stunning surroundings of the lochan in heavy winter boots. A steep climb up to the bealach betwen Meall Garbh then we dumped our sacks and summited the steep scrambly slopes of An Stuc. After that it was back down again, grabbing the sacks and on to the summit of Meall Garbh in half an hour, which seems like a bit of a cheap summit for this range.

The last munro is Meall Greigh which sits a good way out from the rest but is must gentler in stature. We summited that in evening sun and headed back to the car and a pint of fresh orange and lemonade in the Lawers Hotel.

Fearing the road might still be shut I phoned Jim to check the internet for news, he said there was no notices of the A82 being shut so we headed off to Crianlarich.....to find the A82 shut! No warnings before the town just a barricade and a "road closed" sign. No diversion information posted either, so a complete nightmare for any tourist heading from anywhere north of Crianlarich trying to get to Glasgow.

So we doubled back again to Killin and down to Sirling, then to Glasgow, past both our houses and half an hour onwards over the Erskine Bridge to pick up Chris's car in Dumbarton. Doubled back and home by 11:30

6 hours walking in glorious weather on a grerat route but 7 hours in traffic hell.