A Dangerous Business

Date: 18th August 2026

Start: Corrour Station

End: Corrour Station

Distance Travelled: 22.54 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Silk by Wolf Alice

Bog Holes Fallen Into: miraculously only the one

Now, where were we?

Oh yeah, Fort William station. Having just come back from climbing Ben Nevis, I was back where my day had began, suitcase picked up and now waiting for yet another train. If it wasn’t obvious, I am making the most of Europe’s fantastic rail network. Fantastic by Australian standards anyway, our national network has been described in the past as “10 networks in a trenchcoat”. Being able to go practically anywhere* on rail is a luxury we don’t have down under.

Anyway, the train rolls in on time and settle in for the hour journey to my destination for the night. I’m heading back on the same line that the Caledonian Sleeper took me in on, but only going a few stops back to Glasgow. I’m headed for the highest and most remote point on the UK rail network, a place that doesn’t even have public road access.

A place called Corrour.

The short story behind this station’s existence is it’s a compromise the rail company building the line made to the landowners back in the 1800s, that it could only pass through if a station was also built. It has somehow survived the test of time and is now quite popular with hikers and bikepackers. Recently, the station house was redeveloped into a proper restaurant, as was the old signal box which got turned into a B&B (there’s also a youth hostel about 1.5km away next to Loch Ossian). So yes, you can now visit and stay at an active railway station in the middle of nowhere. Fair warning, there’s only three rooms and it’s only open from March to October and the entire season often sells out months in advance.

But if you do manage to get a booking, you’re in for such a treat.

So what can one do once they arrive at Corrour? Well, first off you get dinner in the station house (I highly recommend the venison casserole), then I highly recommend doing something active the following day. There’s a lovely path around Loch Ossian you can do, or if you’re feeling adventurous, there’s three Munros to bag in the area.

Guess what I went for.

Sadly I would only have time to bag two of them, saving the third as an excuse to come back here sometime in the future. The two in question are Càrn Dearg and Sgòr Gaibhre; please don’t ask me to correctly pronounce two very Gaelic sounding names. If the guide I found was to be believed, climbing these Munros would essentially be the opposite experience of climbing Ben Nevis: no crowds, and no paths. Honestly, I couldn’t wait.

Well, perhaps I should’ve if I had the time. The forecast was typically Scottish, with frequent showers, low clouds, and decent winds flying around all day. Can’t be helped, this is the only full day I’ve got here so we’ll just have to take it as it comes.

That said, it didn’t start out all that grey.

Despite my wishes for more clear sky, the sun soon got blocked again, thankfully without any rain for the time being. The gravel road lasted for about 3km which went by in a jiffy. To go up the mountain itself, I was met with… well, this.

The paths on many of Scotland’s Munros weren’t purpose-built by rangers or volunteer groups. No, they just seem to be thin strips of land that had been naturally worn down by a few hundred people tramping over them over a long period of time. Case in point, the path up to Càrn Dearg. There’s no dotted line here on any of the official maps, but this vaguely resembles a path and it follows the GPS track that (hopefully) will take me to the top and back to safety.

My feet were wet within half a minute. The ground out here is saturated; makes sense considering all the rain they receive. Ah well, I expected this would happen and it’s not like this is the first time I’ve ever had to hike with wet feet. The climb itself wasn’t all that arduous, just steadily rising up the heather covered slopes.

The temperature dropped and wind rose as I climbed higher, but the bogginess did subside somewhat as a small silver lining. As predicted, there were no views to speak of and frankly not much of a view of the trail ahead either. I could only really trust in the map I had which said I was still pointing in the right direction, which was finally confirmed when I spotted the obligatory summit cairn.

Again, I’m sure the view on the 5 days of clear sky Scotland gets annually is really cool, but right now it’s cold and windy and I wanna get moving again. Question is, where do I move to?

Back into the bog, now descending towards a saddle between the two munros. I may or may not have taken a small tumble on the way down. Only thing hurt was my pride, mercifully no one it happen so I could keep it to myself… oh wait.

Anyway, conditions improved down on the saddle, occasionally the fog clearing to catch glimpses of the loch below and even the summit where I was headed. They only ever lasted for 30 seconds at most before the grey pea soup rolled in again.

The climb to Sgòr Gaibhre was more of the same, boggy, barely noticeable hint of a track that just went straight up; no switchbacks to be found here. But it was shorter than the first climb and I quickly found nyself in front of a much smaller cairn to bag the munro.

Right, this is when the fun begins. Conditions still being dicey and not fancying being in them a second longer than I had to, I darted towards the first thing resembling a path that got me off the top of the mountain. Thankfully it followed the GPS track so I figured it’d be smooth sailing all the way back to the loch.

I was then punished for my hubris.

Sure, it started off as a track, but after about 500m, the track just evaporated. Like, properly disappeared. Not even a muddy hint to follow.

Oh. Oh no. I’m gonna have to bash my way across the soaked side of a munro, aren’t I?

And that’s exactly where I had to go. Well my feet were already drenched, let’s just get stuck in, pun hopefully not intended.

The next two hours became a game of dead reckoning in one direction, checking All Trails, groaning when I realise I’m way off, and scrambling to get back on the “path”. Someone had to walk this way in order to get this trail published, what on earth did they see?

Did I mention it also began raining at this point, too?

Using my poles to check the ground ahead of me I managed to avoid a good number of random holes in the ground caused by the multitude of streams running down the sides of the mountain. All, that is, except one. By some miracle I didn’t lose a shoe or twist an ankle or worse, but I was becoming increasingly frustrated.

It’s not like I could just choose to not walk through this. I was the one who chose to climb these two munros, so I had to be the one to get off them. Motivated by the promise of a hot choccie back at the station house, I kept plodding, hoping to eventually see anything that could be even loosely classified as a track.

Then I did. I looked left, I looked right. Two parallel lines leading down the mountain roughly pointed at the loch that I could now see through the clouds. There’s only one thing this could be.

This is a 4WD track! We’re saved!

I never checked to see how far up it went, but if it got close to where I got off the summit of Sgòr Gaibhre I would’ve been fuming so hard. Anyway, that doesn’t bear thinking about, I now have a “formed” route to the bottom. Still very slippery and boggy, but a route I can actually follow. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, as they say, and soon I was back on a gravel road, passing over a lovely creek.

From there I could just follow the road back to the station. It just happened to be a rather long road.

The frequent showers were an annoyance, plus my hip was giving me a bit of grief, but after what I’d just gone through I knew I could cope. Plus I had a lovely loch to look at now. After about an hour, soaked by rain and sweat, the station house hoved into view.

I dragged my weary body into the cafe and had a delicious hot choccie with mini marshmallows and whipped cream, then got myself tidied up in my room before heading up to the top of the signal box to sit and reflect on what a day this had been.

Man that was a challenge. All-in-all it had only been a 6 hour trip, but 6 hours that had been hard won. It’s always a bit sad when the mountain you climb doesn’t have epic panoramic views for you to enjoy. At the same time, I still got to see some amazing landscapes, and I shouldn’t forget it’s a privilege to be able to travel halfway around the world to visit these places.

There’s still a couple more munros on my list to climb on this trip, hopefully I’ll have better luck with them.