Category: Hill Walk

Mountain climbing and lunch with Shona – 6 February 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Today we were taking Shona out to lunch.

Scamp and I had planned to take Shona to Cafe Bothy. It’s actually called Coffee Bothy now, but we prefer the original name. It’s a great wee restaurant in a place called Blairlogie in Clackmannanshire. Isobel was the first one who found it, being guided by her granddaughter and Isobel introduced us to it. Shona had never heard of it, which isn’t surprising as it’s in the middle of nowhere on a farm off a single track road. Shona had Fish ’n’ Chips, Scamp had Mac ’n’ Cheese and I had Mince ’n’ Tatties. All with the apostrophe correctly place before and after the n you’ll notice! That was the main course. We all opted for cakes rather than pudding afterwards and it was Strawberry Tart for Shona, Cream Doughnut for Scamp and a Gypsy Cream for me with coffees to follow of course.

Fed and watered, Scamp suggested we drive to Dollar park for a walk. Unfortunately we couldn’t find it and instead we drove up and up and up a steep single-track road to a car park for Castle Campbell instead. From there we walked up and up and up, then down the other side. We had walked up the hill many years ago, but we’d forgotten just how steep the climb is. The two ladies gave up, when it looked like we’d have to wade across a ford, but I was determined to get a photo on such a beautiful day. As it happened, I didn’t need to ford the burn because there was a bridge tucked away out of sight from the road. I did manage to get up to the top, and got the photo I was hoping for, but I was really knackered after it. The castle wasn’t open. It doesn’t open until April. We may go back then and if we can get parked again, we might take our time and go visit the castle properly.

I walked back down the hill from the castle then over the bridge and up the hill on the other side wondering all the time what kind of vehicle the custodians must have if they travel that road every day to open up. Whatever it is it most certainly isn’t a wee blue car! The drive home was scenic, but I didn’t see anything that was any better than a castle among the trees with a rushing burn beside it. Very ‘Outlander’.

We dropped Shona off at her house with time to spare before Ben came home from school. Driving into the sun was strenuous, not that I’m complaining because the sun was shining, far from it. But I decided I needed to clean the glass in the car inside and out. When I got the Juke I got a big bag of useless spray bottles as part of the ‘deal’. I used the Bug Remover spray and the Seagull Crap remover too, but I remembered as I was driving home, peering through a grey windscreen that there was Glass Cleaner in the bag. I found it when we got home and cleaned all the windows inside and out. I also cleaned the wing mirrors. Hopefully that should make driving less of a bind.

The prompt for today was “Plum”. Being a generous person I added a couple more plums to the singular fruit that was requested and just to be sure they were fresh, I ate half of one. That’s what you see here. Believe that and you’re softer than these plums look!!

Alex had to cancel our photo walk this week because he was needed at home. Hopefully we’ll get out next week. This week was tight anyway. Just one of these weeks when everything piles up.

Tomorrow we may be going dancing in Motherwell. Scamp has been talking about it for weeks and we really need to go there to see how good it is and if it’s an alternative to Glenburn.

Heading North – 30 August 2023

Posted on by Zogman

Both of us heading north, just not together

Scamp was going to Pitlochry with the rest of the witches on the bus and I was driving to Perth to get coffee, tea, lunch and Coltsfoot Rock. The only place I know I can get the rock is in a wee herbalist shop in Perth.

It was a fairly pleasant run up until I reached the roadworks. The works have been advertised for sometime, but were describes as being at Broxden. I assumed they were at Broxden roundabout. Not so, they were for a long stretch of the road before the roundabout and in actual fact, the roundabout was clear of any an all works. It was a 30mph speed limit on the single carriage way through the roadworks and the person in front, whoever they were was holding exactly to the speed limit. I’m guessing they were running on cruise control. It didn’t bother me because I wasn’t in a rush.

Parked at the multi-storey where we park when we’re going to the dance weekends and took too heavy bags of books to the Oxfam shop. Next stop was the coffee shop for beans and tea, then over to Nero for lunch which was a roll ’n’ sausage and a cup of decent coffee. Final task was to get the Coltsfoot rock and thankfully the shop had plenty. With that done, I managed to sneak in to the 1 hour parking category and happily paid my £1.49! At the coffee shop I’d made enquiries of the best way to drive to Kinnoull Hill which I thought I might just conquer in the afternoon.

I found the road up the hill using the directions one of the girls in the shop had given me and parked in a convenient parking place. It was a steep climb and I then realised that my troubled cycling the other day hadn’t been an isolated incident. This hill just got steeper and steeper and soon I had to stop to take a breath. That gave me a chance to check how far I’d walked and how much further I had to go. The answer was depressing. Surely I must be further on than that? But no. The OS map on my phone confirmed what Mr Google said and I’d a long way to climb yet. I thought I could remember driving along what turned out to be a private road with Scamp and both of us walking through some woods to the viewpoint. This was nothing like that path. Eventually I gave up and walked back in the direction of the car. I did find some brambles though. Nice big black fruit that’s now taking up 100g worth of space in the freezer. Back at the car I followed my nose and found my way back through Perth town onto the notorious A9 and after driving through two torrential showers, arrived back home. Conquer Kinnoull Hill in an afternoon? Who was I kidding!

I stopped in Condorrat for 500g of mince and 500g of stew. I vacuum packed the stew and half of the mince to put in the freezer. The remaining mince I turned into a bolognese sauce an ate half of it with spaghetti for dinner.

Not long after that I got the call to say that Scamp and Co were leaving Stirling and I drove up through the rain to pick them up.

It seemed that there wasn’t much to see in Pitlochry, however they had a posh lunch and enjoyed the walk around the town, window shopping. My lunch was basic, but was what I was looking for and I’d ticked off all my boxes apart from climbing Kinnoull Hill. Ill leave that for another day when I’m fitter, or more likely when I find that road we drove up the last time!

No real plans for tomorrow. The wee car is feeling a bit thirsty, so I might put some petrol in its tank.

‘A’ listed ruin – 3 November 2022

Posted on by Zogman

I was off this afternoon with my brother to see a ruin.

In the morning I thought we’d made a bit mistake. There was sunshine early in the morning, but that didn’t last and the clouds started rolling in. Were we even going to any light on the building? Maybe not. Then, just after lunchtime the clouds began to thin and the sun was trying to get out. It might just work after all.

I picked up my brother just before 2pm and we drove to Wishaw. We had both checked when the light was in the best position for photographs of this ruin using The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) and Photopills both confirmed that the sun would be in the best position between 3pm and 4pm and we were heading directly at that time.

We parked at a burger van car park and walked down a private road. We couldn’t drive along it, but it was a sunny day and we had agreed that we’d go for a photoWALK today, so we walked. We walked for half a mile downhill and found Cambusnethan Priory sitting there. No barricades, no chain link fence, nothing to stop us wandering around this 19th century ruin. Halfway up one wall of the entrance there is a small sign warning you not to enter the building. That is the preventative measure. We wandered round taking pictures all the time. Of course, neither of us went into the building itself, because we’d read that small notice. The good light had gone behind a cloud now, it might have seen us coming down that long hill. It didn’t stop us taking photos. I don’t know how many my brother took, but my total was 54 photos taken of which 6 were rejected, so 48 keepers. The PoD turned out to be a view of the front of the building reflected in a very dirty, very big puddle. A ‘Puddle Pic’ my brother called it.

Now, what goes down must go up again. We packed our bags and climbed that big hill, and it was a big hill. We stopped once to look at a hole in a telegraph pole or maybe it was a power cable it was carrying. It was a wooden pole with a neat oval hole about three or four metres up from the ground. The hole was about 10cm high by about 5cm at its widest. It was neatly chiselled out probably by a beak. I’m glad I saw it, because it gave me an excuse for a rest. When we turned around the sun was shining brightly again and we both wanted to go back down and have another chance of some better lit photos, but we knew that wily sun was watching us and it would hide behind a cloud as we reached the building. We walked on and were on the longer, straighter part of the walk. This time I made it a request that we stop to get my breath back. That’s what’s wrong with St Mo’s. It’s a great place to wander round, but there’s not nearly enough hard climbing. I might go out every day, but I’m just doing easy climbs. Must try harder (climbs!). We walked on after watching the colours change on the trees.

I was glad when we were back on the level, potholed, puddled path again and even happier when we were on our way back into Motherwell. Dropped my brother off and we agreed we needed another day at Cambusnethan Priory.

Drove home to find that Scamp was making Prawn & Pea Risotto for dinner. All the chopping had been done and she was waiting for me to arrive so the cooking could begin. That was lovely risotto. Best I’ve tasted for ages.

Tomorrow were on the road again.

Well Done Colin – 15 September 2021

Posted on by Zogman

We woke to mist, or was it fog. Whatever it was, it was taking a while to clear. While it was clearing, Went out to take some photos of the sheep in the field across the road. I meant to shoot the sheep, but I got photobombed by the Shetland Pony stallion and I thought “Why not?” The resulting image worked for me.

Just after the sheep and photobombing stallion photo shoot, the mist started clearing quite rapidly and we were off to conquer the Nine Standards. The Nine Standards are nine (strangely enough), mostly conical cairns on top of Nine Standards Rigg which is over 620m above sea level. We weren’t climbing all 620m because Jamie was driving up to a parking place below the start of the main climb. Actually we’d walked the first part of it from Kirkby Stephen to the parking place last year.

The climb, or walk, started off well with Vixen leading the way and at a blistering rate. Scamp and I were bringing up the rear and I will admit that I was feeling the strain after about 20mins, even at Jamie’s relaxed pace. After a while we encouraged Jamie to go on ahead and keep Simonne company. Eventually at about two thirds distance I had to tell Scamp to leave me and walk up to meet the other two. I was almost totally exhausted. However, after about fifteen minutes rest sitting on some sheep droppings, watching the clouds form and reform over the distant hills I felt better, hoisted myself to my feet and plodded on up the never ending hill. Two more stops were needed to catch my breath and a couple of phone calls where I lied to Scamp that I was still sitting comfortably where she’d left me. No way was I going to tell her I was heading for the top. I think the others were almost ready to start the descent when I finally reached the cairns. A chocolate energy bar from Jamie and half a bottle of water sitting at one of the cairns gave me enough or a rest to start the walk down, which Jamie had repeatedly told us was much easier than the climb up.

He was right. The descent was much easier than I though it would be and best of all, instead of an ever present hill in front of us, we had a panorama of hills, blue sky and clouds to keep us interested. On the way down we met a group of three Auld Guys on their way up. We spoke a while to them. The lead walker was 76, the next was 86 and the final member was nearly 90. We were instructed to make sure to say “Well done, Colin” when we met him, and that’s what we did. He just laughed and said “Somebody must be broadcasting it!”

After Jamie drove us home we were treated to another, even more spectacular air show with a low flying helicopter another BAE Hawk. I wonder how much that operation cost. No idea where the helicopter came from, but the jet came all the way from Anglesey.

Scamp an I went for another walk along the road later in the afternoon to loosen our legs. Jamie and Simonne were making Parmigiano Chicken tonight.

The PoD wasn’t the cairns, or the view from the top, but the tree. It’s been in and out of Lightroom a few times since it was taken, but I like the look of it now.

Tomorrow is the day we all know must come. We all go home, but today was mighty!

Away to meet Silvanus – 12 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

It was a lovely day and we had already decided we’d go for a walk up Croy Hill.

Croy Hill is the easier of the two local hills. Bar Hill is a longer slog and nowhere near as dry underfoot as Croy Hill. Both of them were the sites of forts in Roman times. Little remains of the fort on Croy Hill, but on Bar Hill the remains are much more obvious. The initial climb was hard work, but then we’d a gentle rise up to the gate that leads on to the hill proper.

The hill was hoachin’ with walkers. Families, couples and solo walkers too, all headed up and over the hill from both east and west directions. I think one thing was attracting them. Rumour had it that there was a new occupant of the hill. He was over 6m tall and a bit of a hard man. Some called him Silvanus, the Roman’s spirit of the fields, but to me he was Heavy Heid. We were expecting to see him just outside Croy village, but there was no sign of the giant man. It wasn’t until we were walking down the other side towards Dullatur that we got our first sighting of Heavy Heid. He’s quite an impressive sight, looking out to the north and the wild tribes he was helping to protect the civilised southerners from. He was designed by Svetlana Kondakova and really looks the part of a roman centurion.

We took some photos of Heavy Heid, one of which became PoD and then headed back to the car by a lower path that turned out to be the track of an old mineral railway that carried the coal from a colliery near Auchinstarry to the steel making plants of Glasgow and the rest of the central belt. Found some Wood Sorrel plants which are related to Oxalis. Signage on the path could have been better, but luckily there were some walkers out today and they helped us by giving exact directions to get back to Auchinstarry.

Back home in time for lunch. It was an interesting walk. Strenuous climbs in places and then quiet walks through the woods beside the canal. A round trip too, which is always a good thing. I hate going for a walk and then having to come back along the same path. Much more satisfying to find a different way home.

Scamp was eager to get the front grass cut and she wanted the cutter raised on the mower. That change of height of only about 10mm made all the difference it seemed. She did the mowing, I did the strimming. It did look better when we were finished, even if I beheaded one of the daffs when I was strimming.

Tomorrow, Scamp is booked for a walk round St Mo’s with Veronica. I might finally do some painting. I’ll also need to have a look at the iMac which seemed to have a hissy fit tonight.