The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Sunday 30 August 2015

Dumyat

Saturday 29 August

Dumyat (just NE of Stirling)

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“You dumb yat!”. “What a dumb yat!”. Yep, it definitely sounds like an insult. It struck me as an odd name for a hill. Odd or not, it’s a modestly sized hill (418m) and has an approach which was in keeping with the direction of today’s keen wind, so it’s the objective I chose to break up our journey south.

Cups of tea in the car park allowed a couple of showers to pass such that it was in warm sunshine that we set out. Surprisingly (considering the regularity at which rain had been hitting us as we drove), the showers we saw approaching all skirted us and we had a fine outing, with pretty good air clarity and thus good views.

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Admiring the views to the SE

It seems an obvious hill for locals to visit on a Saturday afternoon, and there were a few other people around (mainly family groups, which is always nice to see), but it wasn’t at all crowded.

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I paused to read the inscription on the military memorial – but can’t now remember what it was marking, except for the detail that it dates back to 1967 and was replaced by a new memorial in 2014.

Our return route was very similar to our outward one, having not the time available for the larger circuit I had plotted when I originally looked at this hill last October. On the way down we received the news from a passing runner, who we had first met shortly after leaving the car park, that the dog which had been following her for the previous twenty minutes had been reunited with its owner. I’ll bet that was the chap, who wasn’t wearing running gear, who positively careered past us early into our ascent.

The stats were 4.1 miles walked with (apparently) 1100’ of ascent.

6 comments:

  1. Pronounced, De-my-it, Dun of the Maeatae. I haven't been up Dumyat since the new memorial was unveiled but it is the badge of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. I read your post last night and had dreams of Warlock Glen and my first rock climb nearly 50 years ago on Raeburn's Gully.

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    1. I knew that someone would come along and tell me that the obvious English pronunciation bares no resemblance to the correct name, although at least with this one I can tie the the correct pronunciation to the spelling (i.e. it's not like Findochty being pronounced Finnecty!).

      Hope the dreams were good ones :-)

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  2. Just looked at the map - there are a lot of steep contours in that vicinity. To help Marilyn enthusiasts (like me) it would be helpful if you could add the OS grid ref. to the post so we can go quickly to the hill on the map.

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    1. I did make a bit of an effort in the latter part of this series of posts by putting a vague description of the location within each sub-heading, but your suggestion of including grid references is a good one, so I will try to remember to include them in future.

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  3. Wow what a fantastic monument.

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    1. It is, although what you can't see in the photo is that someone has graffitied their name in the top right hand corner. I really cannot understand some people.

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