Tuesday 2 June - The Bochel (NJ 23251 23248, 491m)

Start Point: Tombrae car park (NJ 218 257)

Distance and Ascent: 9.1km, 290m

Weather: dry for the first half an hour, then rain

Last night the weather forecast for today was a high percentage chance of continuous heavy rain. By this morning, it was showing light rain until 11am, a couple of hours of medium probability heavy rain, then greater than 95% chance of heavy rain for the rest of the day. Based on that, I figured the earlier I set out for this one, the better. 

It stayed dry for most of our drive to Glen Livet, and whilst we breakfasted on arrival in Tombrae car park. It then stayed dry for the first half an hour that I was out, during which time I walked the first 2.5km of 'Route 10', a waymarked route that goes around The Bochel, but for me was going to give me an easy route to walk in to the hill. 

To avoid the buildings at Tullich, the route crosses Crombie Water and goes along a fence line on the SW side. There's a trodden line, but it's obviously not hugely frequented, and as it's through non-cropped grass, it was rather soggy today. My mind already turned to the thought of returning a different way and thus, when I got to the point where I knew (from an info sign in the car park) that Route 10 met Route 3, I dropped a note to Mick to ask him to send me a photo of the info sign, so I could see exactly where Route 3 went. First, though, I had a hill to climb, so I veered away from both of those routes and set about the 150m climb to the summit.

The top of the hill had been in cloud for the whole of my approach, and the heaviest rain fell whilst I was on the top, so it was a surprise, just as I left the summit, when there was a sudden brightening of the sky and a glimpse of view opened up on both sides. I mean 'glimpse'. I tried to take a couple of photos, but by the second one the cloud had closed back in. 

The cows with calves in a field I needed to go through at Glack were a minor concern, but they ignored me, unlike the sheep in the next field that bleated at quite some volume. Even though the route wasn't particularly evident on the ground, it was easy enough to spot the pedestrian gates, and they led me to the access track to Glack, which in turn took me to a footbridge, then the road.

Walking the road back may not seem the most pleasing choice, but aside from it being the quick option in the miserable weather, I wanted to see how feasible it would be to drive Bertie up to the car park at the road end, and whether there was a phone signal there. If I'd wanted to take the chance on the former point (having already established that there was a better phone signal than at Tombrae), I could have messaged Mick to drive up to meet me, but instead I walked the 2.5km down the road, only to then almost immediately drive back up again - positioning for the hills I intend to do tomorrow. 

The forecast is better for tomorrow, but in reality it hasn't been that bad today. It's raining as I type this at 4pm, but until about half an hour ago, there had only been a few relatively short showers since I finished my outing. Annoyingly, despite the rain whilst I was out, the cloud had cleared off the summit by the time I reached the road and it hasn't come back down since.   

My objective, hiding behind cloud

Cloudy summit selfie. 

Unexpected glimpse of a view

Taken seventeen minutes after I left the summit cairn, and there's not a hint of cloud on the top. I should have spent longer over breakfast!
 

Monday 1 June - Tap o'Noth and The Buck

Tap o'Noth (NJ 48408 29321; 564m)

Start Point: car park to the S 

Distance and Ascent: 4.9km, 300m

Weather: low cloud and showers

 

I had this hill in my mind as a popular one, and with its own dedicated car park and information signs, that notion seemed to be borne out. However, with rain coming down as we had breakfast and got ourselves ready to go out, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d had the hill to ourselves, but before we managed to pull ourselves together, another car arrived. A chap and his young daughter got out and started up the hill, and ten or fifteen minutes later, we followed suit.

There’s a well-trodden, but not horribly eroded, path that leads you up to ‘the second highest hill fort in Scotland’, which made the going fast and easy. Alas, we weren’t to enjoy the hill fort, which is undoubtedly an excellent viewpoint, in its full glory, as we had entered the cloud around half way up and that cloud stayed stubbornly down.

I wandered around the remains of the fort, to make sure I definitely hit the highest point, then downwards we went. It rained on us to varying degrees the whole way down, so there was no tarrying and we were back at Bertie a matter of seconds over an hour after leaving.

I would say that almost all of the summits I’ve visited in the last week had merit, and it would have been a shame to have missed the view on any of them, but I think this one probably deserved clear conditions more than most. If I should ever find myself passing on a fine day, I would happily nip up it again.

As we drove off towards The Buck, we found a barrier part way across the A road with a ‘Road Closed’ sign facing the other way, making me glad to have driven to the Tap o’Noth car park immediately on getting up, rather than after breakfast, thus beating the road closure being put in place. I was also glad that the patching-up work must have been on the section of road we’d already driven, and thus we weren’t sent on a diversion to get to the next hill either. 

The Buck (NJ 41219 23386; 721m) 

Start Point: A pull-in on the B9002 at NJ 42031 25469 that was just wide enough to get Bertie-the-Motorhome fully off the road.

Distance and Ascent: 4.7km, 300m

Weather: some light rain and stubbornly low cloud. 

Once again, rain was coming down as we had tea and a buttery before I headed out for this hill – on my own this time as Mick had declined to join me. A good decision, as only the summit of this one would have met his ‘must have merit’ requirements, and the summit was, once again, stubbornly in the cloud.

The stats for today’s two hills, were almost identical (same ascent, with this one just 200m further), but this one was harder and slower work, being a boggy trod through peat and heather.

Having not read in advance what the summit feature was, it was a surprise to have a shapely tor suddenly appear out of the mist ahead of me. I made my way up it gingerly, having already slipped on wet rock enough times today, and made do with sitting, rather than standing, on the very highest point.

A quick descent, a small amount of faffing in Bertie, then as we drove away we saw that the summit was now completely clear of cloud. Darn it! I wasn’t short of time today and if the forecast had suggested there was any possibility of the rain stopping and the cloud lifting, I would have waited around for it. 

Tap o'Noth photos in reverse order: 

The actual summit

Trig, but not summit

Walking into the cloud, not much higher than the car park

The Buck photos, also in reverse order: 

The nature of the trodden line up the boundary line

Sitting on the highest point, with a view of the trig and little else

The summit tor looming out of the gloom ahead of me.
 

Sunday 31 May - Lord Arthur's Hill (NJ 513 198; 518m)

Start Point: I got dropped off and picked up at the end of the access road to Littlewood Park, saving me a walk along the main road from the layby to the SE.

Distance and Ascent: 4.7km, 340m

Weather: Sunny intervals

 

Parking in the layby (of which I didn't note the exact position) a distance away from the access road to Littlewood Park, I looked at the speed of the passing vehicles and considered how unpleasant the walk along the road would be, when it occurred to me that Mick could easily drop me off at the entrance, return to the layby, then pick me up again when I was done. So, I set out from the gate lodge and headed up the tarmac access road to Littlewood Park.

It was careless that I didn't take a photo of the house, which is both huge and grand. I was probably too busy considering my onward route, which I soon came to realise was going to pass rather closer to one of the estate houses than I would like. It felt as if I was heading into their garden, and perhaps not acting entirely in accordance with the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, and I was made more uncomfortable when I got to the modern kennels (having already passed empty old kennels) and set the dogs barking - a racket that they continued until I was out of sight, some time later.

The kennels is where I turned off the engineered track to take to an ATV track that led me, rather conveniently, right to the top of this hill.  

It was another fine viewpoint that I enjoyed for a short while before retracing my steps to the second field boundary (a fence line - I'd passed through a gap in a stone wall further up). From there I decided that rather than continuing down to the estate track and setting the dogs barking again, I would cut off a bit of a corner and head straight down the hillside. The heather was old and tall, but in descent it was easy enough (going up that way would have been awful). Lower down, when I entered the band of trees, it was young, unfurling bracken with last year's dead bracken wanting to trip me. 

It was then but a hop and a skip back down to the road from where, within two minutes, Mick came and scooped me up.