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!