After the rain: descent of Carn a'Ghille Chearr
Significance: Historic County Top for Morayshire (formerly Elginshire)
Member of: UK County Tops, Scotland County/Unitary Authority High Points, Marilyns
Parent Peak:
Nearest Higher Neighbour: Creagan a' Chaise
Elevation: 710m
Date climbed: June 13th 2025
Coordinates: 57° 21' 4'' N, 3° 25' 53'' W
Route Start & Finish: Car park at Ballcorach off the B9136
Route Distance: 11.6 km (7.2 miles)
Route Elevation change: +/- 497m
Subsidiary tops on route: Carn Eachie (705m)
GPX File: get via Buy Me a Coffee
Other routes touched (walk): None
OS Trig Pillar: TP2604 - Cromdale
Pubs / Cafes on route: None
Map: OS Explorer OL61 Grantown-on-Spey & Hills of Cromdale
Links: Wikipedia: (Morayshire), Peakbagger, Hillbagging
Carn a'Ghille Chearr is the Historic County Top for Morayshire and the 33rd highest of all of the UK County Tops. We bagged it in 2025 on our annual County Top weekend trip, along with the Historic County Tops of Nairnshire, Aberdeenshire and Banffshire.
In our original plan we were going to do Ben Macdui on the Saturday of our weekend away but, on checking the weather, we moved it to the dryer Sunday and went for the shorter, easier walk of Carn a'Ghille Chearr instead. It turned out to be a good choice, but did mean that we hardly got any views. In Jonny Muir’s UK County Tops book he describes it as “a miserable trudge through sopping bog over grassy tussocks” on a miserable day. We had a miserable day and Jonny was 100% correct.
The start of the route is a small free car park at Ballcorach off the B9136. Before you start take a few minutes to walk down to the banks of the River Avon for a nice view of the river and the bridge that you will have just driven across. To start the walk, first head north keeping to the western side of the river. After ~200m take the footpath on the left heading towards the mountain.
The route is straightforward with just one path leading up to the Trig Pillar at the summit. The path is well defined for most of the way but loses itself in the bog near the point where is curves towards Carn Eachie. We were in drizzly cloud by then so we relied on the GPS to keep us on track. We had read that there’s remains of a crashed plane between Carn Eachie and the summit but we couldn’t find anything despite a bit of hunting. Maybe it would have been obvious on a clear day.
On the return to strayed off route a bit, taking a more direct route to the start, cutting off the big curve that we came up on.
