Tuesday 12 May - Hill of Garvock (NO 726 691; 277m)

Start Point: Viewpoint on B road to the NE

Distance and ascent: 4km, 60m?

Weather: Sunny, but a bit breezy and quite cool

I made an attempt on this hill on 23 May 2018. This is what I said at the time:

There was one more hill I intended to visit on my way from Aberdeen to TGO Challenge Control at Montrose (Hill of Garvock). The only thing that potentially saves this middle-of-a-field from falling entirely within the 'pointless summits' category is the presence of a tower atop it. I'll have to reserve judgement, as having driven to my start point, which sits about 1 mile and 30m of ascent away from the top, and having attempted approaches via two different fields, I left it unbagged due to overly frisky cows, with young, and an overly interested bull. I'm not generally too fazed by cattle these days, but these exceeded my tolerance level for bovine behaviour. I shall have to return to this one in the winter months sometime.  

I obviously completely overlooked the last sentence of that post when I decided that this hill needed to be bagged today. I think I've been in Montrose in May of every year bar three since 2008, but it's possible that this will be one of the last years when we have a need to be here, so there was an imperative for the nearest Marilyn to the town ticked off. I took Mick with me to help fend off the cattle. 

The left hand field (viewed from the viewpoint parking area) contained a sizeable herd that showed interest in us the moment we parked up and before we'd stepped outside, but the right hand field (with the 'bull in field' sign) seemed to be empty. That optimism lasted for just a few paces along its boundary, before we started seeing fresh cow pats. Fortunately, the herd in that field were out of sight on the south side of the hill, and didn't get to see us until we were a few steps away from our exit gate. The next two fields were empty, and the final field held both sheep and cattle, so we took a slightly indirect route for the final approach to the summit tower, allowing us to drop down the hill and out of sight of the beasts. 

It's an interesting summit, with its tower and excellent views in all directions (I'll gloss over the three communications masts a short distance away) and would no doubt be a popular place to go if it wasn't for the cows. 

A couple made a half-hearted attempt to follow us as we started retracing our steps, but once again we dropped down the hill out of their line of sight, and I think the sheep in between us and them may have also put them off from stampeding after us.  The herd in the final field had moved closer to the gate by the time we got back there, but whilst interested they didn't follow as we again just dropped low enough down the hill to put us out of view. 

I was happier than usual to be back at Bertie: whilst we'd had no trouble at all from the herds, we were lucky with where they happened to be congregated, and I'm glad to never have to go up there again. 

Summit shot. I understand you can go up the tower and I made a half-hearted attempt to unchain the door, but feared how difficult it might be to secure it again. 

View of the east coast countryside. It was a countryside and sea view in the other direction.

Proof that Mick was with me. He looked inappropriately overdressed, but it really is abnormally cold this May.

Those galloping cattle would have loved for that fence not to have been there.