5 short walks on Mull – part five
In this blog, 5 short walks on Mull – part five, I am going to share another of my favourite walks with you. This is closer to home than the Loch Buie walk. This is for those of you who don’t want to do the full Treshnish Headland Walk. You can do a section of it and still enjoy the views and the sense of the area.
Following the path all the way from Haunn to Cracking and back again can take 3 or 4 hours, or all day, depending on what you encounter on the way.
From Larach Mhor
Turn right out of our track towards Ulva Ferry. A mile or so up the road you will see a turning on the right, and a house on its own on the hill. Park carefully at the bottom of the track, it can be boggy when very wet.
Walk up the track and past Tin Shed Gallery, following round to the left of the Larach Mhor garden and towards a gate in the fence. Follow the path worn by other walkers, to the west, towards the sea. It is wet in places and there is a carefully placed ‘pallet bridge’ over a particularly boggy bit.
Boggy areas
Once you have crossed the pallet bridge walk up the heathery and rocky outcrop. This gives you a wonderful view of the glen below with the two settlements laid out, and the sea beyond.
Cross the burn and you reach Glac Gugairidh. Beyond it is Cracking with a solitary ash tree.
Scheduled monuments
Both villages are scheduled monuments and as such as protected by Historic Scotland. Please do not scratch or write on the walls, or climb on them. There has been some vandalism to the walls recently and it is awful to see.
We were always told by Tommy the shepherd who worked at Treshnish when we first moved here in 1994, that the villages were not ‘cleared’ during the Highland Clearances. That the people became ill and died from a typhoid outbreak. The Mull Museum however has a display which indicates that 6 or 7 families were cleared.
It is just over a mile from the roadside to Crackaig, over rocky and boggy ground at times. There is no phone signal.
