Mealna Letter (Duchray Hill) (NO 161 672; 703m)

26 October

Start Point: A93 at track entrance to Westerton of Runavey

End Point: Where the county boundary crosses the B951

Weather: Mainly wet – rain below 500m, snow above. Biting northerly wind.

Distance and ascent: 10.7km, 450m

 

I had on the agenda a TGOC East recce involving the tracks around Westerton of Runavey and a couple of locations around Loch Beanie, and it had occurred to me that it would be jolly efficient to combine that with a visit to Mealna Letter – taking advantage of having Mick as my driver to make it into a linear route.

I nearly jibbed on this plan, given the weather, but on seeing how friendly Mealna Letter looked from its N side, it made its way back onto my agenda. Looks weren't deceptive - it was easy going terrain. 

I'd not ascended very far from Loch Beanie before the rain turned to snow, and soon after I was up in the cloud too. Not being conditions in which I wanted to take off my mitts and overmitts, I was thankful for the voice control of my phone to call Mick to let him know that he could drive around to the other side of the hill and I'd see him there. To think that it was only a week and a half ago that I was warm in my shirt-sleeves on Ben Vrackie!

I seldom tarry long on a summit and this one was no exception. A trodden line took me down to the forest and a tall ladder stile over a deer fence at the point where I turned S to the road. There I dithered as to the best way to go and decided to head straight down the fence line, on the W side of the fence. I reckon this was the worst choice of the three obvious options. The best was probably to continue on to the next fence line and go down that. As it was, I made my way gingerly through grown-over forest detritus next to the fence until, about half way down I noticed there was a trodden line on the other side of the fence. A while later I crossed the fence to take advantage of it, and after some remarkably boggy ground, I reached the road. 

 Just after Westerton of Runavey

 

 

 Loch Beanie

 

Summit selfie

 Bonus snaps for Conrad:

 

Hill of Persie (NO 122 560; 445m)

Wednesday 29 October

Start Point: Craigton

End Point: layby just S of spot height 223

Distance and ascent: 5.3km, 240m

Weather: cool but dry with sunny intervals

Benefitting again from having a driver, I had Mick drop me off at Craigton, allowing me to ascend the easier way, using the path through the forest, then descend the quicker way, straight down to the road.

It was, I think, a good choice. I enjoyed the route up to Loch Mharaich, first a grassy sunken path through the trees then through clearings, where the map suggests there should have been evidence of hut circles, but I didn’t notice any.

(photo out of order because that's what Blogger likes to do, when it finally agrees to upload them at all)

By the time I was approaching the loch, I could see: 1) that, per recent aerial photos, a big chunk of the SW section of the forest has been felled; and 2) there were some rough felling-machinery tracks that could potentially be of benefit to me. I dithered for a few moments contemplating whether I would be better continuing towards the loch, or taking the track heading SE. I opted for the latter and at NO123566, I gambled on taking a line that had been created by the felling machines. As these things go, it was a friendly one – not horribly strewn with bits of tree causing endless tripping hazards and only a couple of small boggy wallows to be negotiated. Even better, it led me right to the forest’s boundary wall. I was feeling quite smug about my choices at this point, even as I made my way up the rough ground next to the wall, trying to avoid catching a foot in any of the old fence wire hidden in the grass.

Friendly, as lines left behind by felling machines go

My smugness lasted until, 20 vertical metres below the height of the summit, I found myself atop a cliff – not a crag through which I could pick my way, but a line of vertical rock. Fortunately, I had hit it right at its NW end, so it wasn’t much of a detour to find some steep-but-descendable ground through felled trees, to another felling-machinery track at the bottom of the dip. If I could have just found that track to start with, the going would have been even easier than the way I’d gone.

I was soon at the summit and a couple of minutes later I was on my way down to the road.

The map snippet above shows that I took an indirect line after leaving the summit, again because of the escarpment, but even with that bit of a wiggle it was relatively straightforward to make my way down to the road, using trods where I could find them, and just yomping through the rest. My line across the final couple of hundred metres to the road certainly wasn’t to be recommended, as I was wading not just through grass but through standing water (four days later my shoes still haven’t dried out); a line nearer to the forest would have been drier.

 

Mount Blair & Meall Mor

Monday 27 October

Start Point: Parking by county boundary on B951

End Point: Minor road by Blacklunans

Distance and Ascent: 12.4k, 600m

Weather: Sunshine and showers, mainly at the same time.

With it being such a cool morning, I opted for a beanie and (stupidly) didn’t take a peaked cap with me. I thus walked up Mount Blair (and part way down the other side) without being able to see anything ahead of me, with the autumn sun shining straight into my eyes. At the same time, I was being lightly rained on. The resultant rainbow apparently ended on Bertie-the-Motorhome’s roof, although we found no pot of gold there later in the day.

With a good grassy track the whole way to the summit, it was an easy hill. Continuing down the S side of the hill I was surprised to find a good trodden line through the heather.

A slightly cluttered summit with cairn, trig, an extensive topograph and a mast.

My plotted route had me dropping down the SE spur, but now I was in a quandary: to see where the trodden line went, or to see what the going was like if I veered off into the heather. As I was recceing this route for Ali, I phoned her to ask what she wanted me to do, as a result of which it was the trodden line that I followed. Surely such a good line, with sturdy stiles over fences, had to go somewhere?

At Glack of the Barnetts, the line petered out and as can be seen from the map snippet above, I took a rather indirect route down to the road (looking to see if there was a trodden line that was being illusive; there wasn’t).

Reaching the road and easily negotiating the wall/fence combo on the way, I went directly across the tarmac and up the forest track towards Meall Mor.  

Once I’d run out of track/ATV track, I continued alongside the wall, switching sides a couple of times in search of the best ground. Being now dry and with the effort of the hill, I divested myself of my outer layer on the way up here, although the bite of the wind at the top nearly had me putting it back on.

 I'd like to claim that the hair situation was a result of the wind

I didn’t fancy descending the grassed-over rocky ground of the wall line, so took a slightly more direct line down through the heather, which would have been hard going in ascent, but was fine with gravity on my side.

Back at the road, it was a simple 3.5k march along tarmac to my pick-up point – even that wasn’t a bad walk, with various points of interest along the way (if you’re interested in things like decaying boathouses, abandoned hotels and ‘Grand Design’ type houses).

15 October 2025: Ben Vrackie revisit

 

On 17 May 2017, at 6 in the morning, on a day without a cloud in the sky, I set off up Ben Vrackie. Two hours later, without meeting a single person (unsurprising considering the time of day), I got back to Bertie-the-Motorhome and rushed off to meet Mick.

If I’d known that some eight years later I would find myself going up there again, I could have saved myself the early start and the rush to reach Blair Atholl by 9am!

Today's visit to Ben Vrackie didn’t, strictly speaking, require me to visit the summit, as the purpose of this TGOC East recce was to see what the ground was like dropping off the hill to the NE, to pick up the track on its N side, then to see whether the track to Shinagag is still evident on the ground. However, given that my route took me within metres of the summit, it would have been silly not to have nipped up there.

The Visitor Centre at Killiecrankie was my chosen start point (mainly because it was my end point, so it made the logistics easier if I started there too), so I left Mick & Bertie in the car park and headed off up what I would assess as the less-oft trod route. Most people ascend from the car park to the N of Pitlochry, and thus I only met one couple until I reached the main path at Loch a’Choire. 

 Loch a'Choire on approach and looking back at it

Looking up that stone staircase I couldn’t believe how many people were ahead of me. A group of about 10 had stopped for a break, and decided the best time to set off was moments before I reached them. I was so close to the summit by then that it was a toss up as to whether to just slowly bring up the rear, or to make them aware that I wasn’t a member of their group and that I’d quite like to pass. Reaching a switch-back where there was a well-trodden cut-off, I made an impulsive decision and managed to pass the whole group – but goodness, was I huffing and puffing by the time I popped out in front of them. Maybe the slow plod at the rear would have been the better choice!

With 17 people on the summit, I didn’t loiter. A quick selfie, a few snaps of the view, then onwards with my route. I did stop for a chat with a chap on the next nobble along the way, one of the topics of which was the bellowing of the stags, close by yet invisible (technically camouflaged, rather than invisible, I suppose (because I know that Mick will pick me up on the point when he proof-reads this post!)).

The initial trodden line petered out, but the going was easy enough to pick up the track (a grassy, boggy ATV track), and it was along there that I started seeing the deer. Great groups of does being tracked by bellowing stags both sides of me. Fortunately, the stags were sufficiently transfixed by their harems to not see me as a threat. 

A locked deer-fence gate, followed immediately by a well-secured six-bar gate. What’s that about!?

The views from the next, out-and-back section of my route were superb, but I fear my photos haven’t captured the array of colours.
 

I didn’t need to go the whole way to Shinagag, opting to turn back at the point where I could clearly see that the rest of the way ahead was clear and problem-free.

Lovely old grassy track to Shinagag

At Loinmarstaig the area was alive with pheasants. More surprisingly, there were patches (I would say fields but that feels like the wrong term in the context of the hillside location) of brassicas growing.

 

At the exact location where I took this photo I was supposed to be checking out something that was immediately behind me. I only remembered that element of ‘things I was supposed to be checking out’ about a kilometre later, by which time I didn’t feel inclined to go back.  

 

Aside from the autumn colours, the only other notable feature of the rest of the outing was the wooden walkway by the waterfall along the Allt Girnaig. It’s an odd location for such a grand walkway, and I can’t imagine many people go up there just to see one waterfall, which is perhaps why the walkway has fallen into such disrepair – not only with lots of broken planks, but with part of the structure itself having suffered a failure. I proceeded along it with utmost caution.

It was then a stroll along a track back to Killiecrankie, after an excellent outing, mainly carried out in my shirt-sleeves, it was so warm in the sunshine.

(20.2km, 880m)  

9 October 2025: Dalwhinnie Not-a-Backpack

On the ‘things that need checking out for TGO Challenge East purposes’, there were a few that could be incorporated into a route from Dalwhinnie. I’ve already done a couple of short backpacking trips out of Dalwhinnie in the last year, and didn’t feel any need to walk the whole of the aqueduct track again, so instead of catching a train from Newtonmore, I begged a lift from Ali to the nearest lay-by to my route, saving me around 4km. With Ali being one of the TGOC-East coordinators, and these being her routes that I’m recceing, she was happy to oblige.

I’d opted to split the route into two days, 22k and 15k, and having calculated how long I thought the first day would take, I didn’t get an early start, opting to set out at around 10am. As things turned out, 9.30am would have been a better time!

I still had to walk a couple of kilometres of the aqueduct track. The late start allowed the earlier rain to move away and hints of brightness to start to show. 

My initial route, up the track into Coire Chuaich, was one that I walked last October, but this time, on reaching the end of the track, I was to continue pathlessly to pick up the track to the N of Bogha-Cloiche. It’s roughly the route Mick & I had on our TGOC Route Sheet in 2013, but we didn’t walk it having decided that going over the Munro of Meall Chuaich would be both easier and more rewarding.

After a rough and pretty hard couple of kilometres, I crested the rise just before I was to cut over to the single-dashed line old track marked on the map, and what should I see before me, on a hillside in the middle of nowhere, but a great big JCB digger. A few moments later another came into view.

 Big diggers on a hillside in the middle of nowhere.

They were easily avoided, but having made my way down the sometimes-boggy ATV track towards Maol an t-Seilich, it was first to the sound of a helicopter operating nearby, then to the sight of a sizeable worksite below me, around which I was going to have to skirt. 

Big worksite with helicopter in action

Scattered amongst the worksite were a number of chaps wearing high viz (and presumably ear defenders – something I could have done with as I walked past), with the helicopter going to one of them, who would attach a number of bags (presumably of sapling trees) to the winch line, for the helicopter to fly them a matter of 50m away to another chap who would unload them. It didn’t strike me as the most efficient way to move bags such short distances, but what do I know?

I left the worker's vehicles behind at Maol an t-Seilich and cut down the hillside to the Loch an t-Seilich dam, having established last year that it is now the only ‘bridge’ remaining over the Tromie, S of Woods of Glentromie. There I found the perfect lunch location:

 A wall of perfect height AND a backrest = lunchtime perfection.

With lunch dispatched (and already beginning to suspect that I had once again undercatered, even though I was only going to be out for 24 hours), onward I went to the Allt Bhran. There I checked out an old track that isn’t on the map, a set of new tracks that haven’t made it onto OS maps yet, an unmapped bridge and the path on the N side of the Allt Bhran that I confirmed is absent on the ground between the two weirs. Well, I lost it, couldn’t refind it, and after a while of yomping arduously through heather I gave up looking for it and escaped to the track on the other side of the water. I briefly looked for the path from its other end, as it left the Glen Tromie track, but couldn’t easily find it. 

 Looking up the Allt Bhran

 Eye-catching colours on the way to Bhran Cottage

I was feeling the efforts of the day by now and was looking forward to getting to Bhran Cottage, an unoccupied building behind which there’s a good pitch. Alas, I got there to find that it was being used as a hub, with a mobile office outside and quite a few vehicles. As I approached, another vehicle drove in via the ford, which made my mind up that I wouldn’t be comfortable camping there. No matter, the day was young, so I would just continue a short while into tomorrow’s route.

The vehicle that had just crossed the ford contained two dogs, and as it parked up and let them out at the building, they came chasing after me. The dachshund didn’t worry me too much; the snarling collie I held off with the pointy ends of my poles until it gave up on me. That said, I wasn’t sufficiently confident that it had gone away for good to sit myself down to divest myself of my waterproof socks and undersocks, so that was done standing up, before I plunged into the water. Another vehicle came along as I was fording, but it kindly waited until I was across, and fortuitously there were some huge planks of wood on the other side that gave me a seat to re-don all the socks.

After leaving the main track, just before another worksite, I rather enjoyed the next section as I headed up the Allt na Feinnich, and there were plenty of places I could have pitched a tent up there. However, the forecast winds (gusting 30-40mph) were a reality and I didn’t relish the thought of a night listening to a flapping tent, so I decided to hold out for a pitch on the other side of the watershed.

Alas, the ground on the other side was rough, hard going for walking, and not a pitch to be found. I might have found a pitch by Loch Cuaich, but by then I was back in the full force of the wind. I had decided by then that I wouldn’t be heading N to Phones on my plotted route (through more estate vehicles working up there), which meant that the most obvious place for me to pitch was by the shooting hut just S of the Loch, where I knew there to be a nice flat area of cropped grass and shelter from the wind. However, by then I was going to be 3.5km, mainly downhill, from the A9 and given that I was only backpacking this route because I thought doing the whole thing in a day would be too much so soon after my 24-hour race, I wasn’t in the market for spending the night by myself in a tent when I could so easily reach ‘home’.

 Loch Cuaich was a bit choppy in the wind

So, down to the road I continued, calling Ali for a lift as soon as I had a signal. I reached the road just in the last dregs of usable daylight, and was in Newtonmore in time for tea (albeit tea had been delayed when I called for a lift just before it was about to be served … apologies to Adrian who was cooking).

Yes, the outing would have been a whole lot easier with just a day pack than it had been with a full backpack, but that has to be balanced against the stress of knowing that I needed to do the whole route within the day. It probably wasn’t sensible for me to do 35km (950m of ascent), with lots of rough going and with a full pack, 2 weeks post-race (my watch’s health stats certainly suggested not, and I was pretty exhausted by the end of it), but I’m not a fan of a flapping tent, and particularly not when there’s a bed within easy reach, so I have no regrets.

 

 

Blath Bhalg (NO 01938 61113; 640m)

2 October 2025

Start: Parking area at track end to W

Distance and ascent: 7.1km, 380m

Weather: Heavily overcast with low cloud base and mizzly until the last 3 minutes when it started to rain.

 

 The straight lines at the east end of this route look suspiciously like they've been plotted rather than recorded, but that's because I was following a fence and fences do tend to run in straight lines! 

 

A couple of days ago I thought that I would include this hill in a recce I'll be doing of a route out of Pitlochry, but I wasn't up for such a long outing today and that route would have involved a pathless yomp out of a forest and up the final 1km of this hill. Looking for something to do this morning, during our drive from Perth to Newtonmore, I saw that not only was there a good parking area to the W of the hill, but reports told me that there was a trodden line all the way up too*. Perfect! 

 

It didn't take many powers of observation to realise that I wasn't going to see much on this outing, and I was in the cloud soon after setting out, thus I have no idea what this hill and those surrounding it look like. What I could observe was that the ATV track was through moderately deep heather in its lower reaches, before becoming less high-steppy further up.  

 

Bellowing stags could be heard off to my left as I made my way over the two nobbles before the summit, but I could see nothing of them (or of anything really). 

 

With visibility being as it was, there was no cause to linger on the summit. A couple of snaps were taken, a message sent to Mick to let him know I was on my way down, then I simply retraced my steps. 

 

The cloud had lowered yet further in the time I'd been out, and with Bertie-the-Motorhome within my sights, it finally decided it could hold its water no longer. Oh to have been 3 minutes quicker or have set out 3 minutes earlier! There was no scrambling into a waterproof jacket, as it had been mizzling when I'd set out so I'd paused to put the jacket on after only about 100m.

 

Despite not seeing where I was walking, I'd still enjoyed my little leg-stretch, even if I would have preferred slightly more favourable conditions!  

 

The sunglasses may have been optimistic!

 

 

(*That trodden line - curious how it's so well trodden considering that there's only one written log on hill-bagging for this year, and eight 'date only' logs.) 

 

Cat Law and Creigh Hill

Cat Law (NO 31888 61065; 670m) and Creigh Hill (NO 27078 59356; 498m) 

Friday 29 August

Start and End: end of track to Corriehead, to E (no parking; I was dropped off) to Backwater Dam car park

Distance and Ascent: 16.6km, 780m

Weather: Low cloud for Cat Law but some sunny intervals later. Incredibly, given the wet forecast, I only had two periods of approximately 1 minute of light rain. 

 

Ignore the green dashed line and the blue line

  

My original intention had been just to visit Cat Law (which was the scope of the TGOC-East recce that was on my agenda), and check that there was a viable route off to the N. However, after travelling all of the nearby lanes on StreetView, I couldn't find anywhere that Mick could wait for me in a Bertie-sized vehicle (as it transpired, there's a track entrance at about NO361588 that would have served the purpose). I thus looked at a linear route and it jumped out at me that I could double the Marilyn count and make the logistics a whole lot easier if Mick dropped me to the E of the hill and then waited for me in the car park of Backwater Reservoir. 

 

The route up the lower reaches of Long Goat was quite lovely, I thought, although apparently when I looked back over the blooming heather, dotted with a series of ponds, I failed to take a snap of it. 

 Looking past one of the ponds towards Long Goat

 

 The best sort of track - easy walking but no longer an eyesore on the landscape

 

It might have been equally lovely higher up, but I was in cloud of varying density by then. 

 

 A faint line between Long Goat and Cat Law. If I'd had knee-length waterproof socks, my feet would have stayed dry; as it was the water off the grasses ran down my legs and into my socks. 

 

There had been hints that the sun was trying to break through as I made my way from Long Goat to Cat Law, but the cloud was still winning as I stood on the summit.  

 In the full-size version of this snap the trig point is visible, a distance behind me, in the middle of frame.

  

Having stood on the highest point, I detoured over to the trig, then took a bearing to my next aiming point, which was Bodandere Hill. Fortunately I'd not gone far before I remembered that I was supposed to be checking out a route down the N spur, not just deadheading to where I wanted to go. I soon put myself right and found an ATV track/trod by the fence.

 

Where the track veered off S after Hill of Stanks, I'd plotted my route to take the 'path' to the NW, but I knew that in reality I'd probably just go straight down the hillside to cut out a zig-zag. There turned out to be an ATV track heading straight on, cementing my 'take the shorter route' decision. 

 

My plotted route then went up Craig of Balloch, which looked, from the map, to be an interesting geological feature. From its high point, I would then head S towards my next hill. However, the line of the path that cuts over to Craig of Balloch is now such horrible terrain (there's a new deer fence, so there's nothing to have grazed the grass and no trods) that I wasn't even half way along it when I contemplated how much harder it would be to just head straight up the hillside. 

 

Having not tried my intended route, I don't know how much harder the 'attack the hillside' option was, but it involved deep heather and bilberry through a young conifer plantation, so it was certainly on the fitness- and character-building side, and was made worse by being harangued by flies that I couldn't outpace. 

 

As ever, one foot in front of the other eventually netted the required result and it was a relief to get to the deer fence on the ridge, along which was a faint ATV track. More of a relief was to find a pedestrian gate through the fence, saving me from any clambering (I'd entered at a gate at the bottom, but it was padlocked, so I'd had to climb it). 

 

My recorded descent route, after visiting my summit, looks reasonably sensible; it felt far less direct at the time, perhaps because the road didn't look too far away when I first saw it, but seemed to take an age to get closer (yes Mick, technically it didn't get nearer to me!). 

 

Looking across into Craig of Balloch

Sensible ascent route?!

Plenty of snacks on the way

Summit selfie (Blogger won't let me put a caption on the previous snap, which was looking from Macritch Hill into Glen Quharity)

Low water in Backwater Reservoir. The owner of the campsite we'd stayed at the previous night told us it had been on the news a day earlier, due to its abnormally low level. 
 

I'd thought I might nip back out in the afternoon to visit Hare Cairn, but a bit more examination of the map and aerial photos told me it was better accessed from the west, and if I'm doing that then it makes sense to do it at the same time as Crock. It's possible I may have to revisit Creigh Hill, as I now belatedly see that it has another summit that the map says is of equal height. Hill-bagging.co.uk says that the summit I visited is actually 498m (versus 497m marked on the map), but usually if I notice such similarity in heights, I visit the second summit by way of insurance to not have to return in the future - and by the very fact that I didn't visit both summits, sod's law says that the summit will be moved at some point! 

Mount Battock (NO 54964 84461; 778m)

21 August 2025

Start Point: parking area by Millden Lodge, to the S

Distance and ascent: 15.3km, 760m (the detour into upper Glen Dye was my main objective on this outing, not an accident!)

Weather: Disappointingly cool and overcast, against a descent forecast, with a bit of moisture in the air as I approached the summit. 

 

My main objective on this outing was to check out the state of the old path, marked on 1:50k maps, that goes from by Stobie Hillock and into Glen Dye, and the alternative of continuing up the track to Hill of Turret before dropping into Glen Dye. However, it would have been remiss to have expended time and energy doing that for someone else's benefit and not have continued on to visit Mount Battock for myself, so that's what I did.

There's nothing much to say about the Mount Battock part of the outing. Good tracks lead to Hill of Saughs and a decent trodden line then extends to Mount Battock. Lots of fence posts lying in the bottom of the peat hags confirmed that this can be a soggy route, but ground conditions have been exceptionally dry this year, so I was able to just stroll across without any threat of sinking. 

 

Slightly further along the same area of peat were some sunken posts; these looked newly placed. 

 

Obligatory summit selfie.

 

My plotted route was a circuit, but in the interests of having time for at least one, if not two, more recces later in the day, I took the quick option of retracing my steps, albeit without the detour via the top of Glen Dye. 

 

After lunch, still in Glen Esk, I set out from E of Cornescorn, crossed the river and took the obvious tracks (via Cornescorn) to Burn of Mooran. I then followed the burn downstream to pick up the tracks further S, which I followed back to Cornescorn. I didn't quite retrace my steps from there, but cut off an even bigger corner, versus following the track, than I had on my outward leg. Another relatively unremarkable outing, although it did have the added interest of cows with young calves browsing the hillside, a couple of which I accidentally herded a way along a track, and a section of hillside so covered in bracken that I had flashbacks to the Bracken Brecon Beacons. (7.7km, 210m).