Wednesday 27 May - Pressendye Circuit

Pressendye (NJ 490 089; 619m)

Start Point: Tarland Camping & Caravanning Club Site

Distance and Ascent: 16km, 570m

Weather: Sunny. A bit cool first thing, but pleasantly warm for most of the outing. 

 

My first thought for this hill was to approach it from the same start point as I'd used for Craiglich yesterday afternoon, using forest tracks on the SE side. Then I read that there's a waymarked circuit from Tarland and when I found that there was a C&CC campsite just a few minutes' walk outside of the village, it was an easy decision to spend two nights there, with Mick joining me for the circuit over Pressendye and the neighbouring lump on the ridge, Broom Hill. 

Checking out public routes on OS digital mapping, I found one uploaded by Country Walking Magazine, which seemed like a good bet to me*. As it turned out, we were consistently 25m adrift from their plotted line the whole way around. Not a problem, but curious as to how they managed that (I was picturing that they'd recorded individual waypoints on an old Garmin handheld gpx device in the mid-1990s). 

Anyhoo, we took the route in an anticlockwise direction and it was all rather pleasant. Of particular note, there's a plethora of paths, tracks and bike trails in this area, making it seem that either the local council or some other body has made a real effort to attract people. Not only was our route well waymarked (a rarity on a hill walk in the UK!) but it featured a good handful of benches and picnic benches. We detoured to one for second breakfast, before soon passing a couple of picnic benches (although our bench had a view; the picnic benches were sheltered within the forest). 

From the map it appears that views to the south, from Pressendye to Broom Hill and beyond, would be absent, due to the forest, but in reality the trees that remain are far enough down the hillside not to be in the way. When we turned to cut down through that forest we were again pleasantly surprised. My expectation when seeing a conifer plantation marked on the map is that it will be a dense, commercial one, so it's always pleasing to find widely spaced mature trees with a blanket of lush green grass, which is exactly what we found here. 

The last few kilometres of the route are along a minor road, and it was just before we reached the tarmac that we passed a couple setting out on the circuit in the opposite direction. Other than having spied one biker a distance away on one of the mountain bike trails earlier, they were the only people we saw until we were practically back in the centre of the village. 

You may see an odd little spur with a circle on the end on our route, just before Tarland - that's where we saw a mown strip across a field and decided to see if we could use it to shortcut back to the campsite - which, as evidenced by the recorded gpx line, we couldn't. 

Photos in reverse order: 

Such an unexpectedly nice section of forest

Obligatory summit selfie

I think I saw five different benches/picnic tables on this route (I'm counting this as one, not two!)

Second breakfast at King's View. Mick is hoping you will notice the lack of a cup of coffee in his hand, as someone forgot to pack the small flask for this trip, and that someone also didn't think to pick up a new one in Montrose. (For the avoidance of doubt: I'm the 'someone' here; I'm not telling tales on Mick!). 

The views were hazy, but we could make out Mount Keen, Lochnagar and Morven from here.

Pressendye on the right, Broom Hill on the left

A lovely path through an avenue of trees on the outskirts of Tarland, not shown on the 1:50k map and not particularly obvious on the 1:25k either, so if I hadn't downloaded a route, I wouldn't have known to come this way. 
 

(*When I went to the OS digital mapping website, it only made obvious one route from Tarland, which was the one uploaded by Country Walking Magazine. When I just went to look at a detail using the OS digital mapping App on my phone, it showed me absolutely loads of routes and I had to search around for the Country Walking one. I now realise that the web version of the App defaults to 'Recommended' rather than 'All Routes'. No doubt, if I'd noticed that feature and chosen one of the others at random, it would have been more accurate and less 'straight-liney'.)