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).