2.7 miles 1 hour 74m ascent
Easing myself back in to walks, I decided to visit Morton Castle and explore Morton Woods which proved a shorter walk than I had expected.
Morton Castle stands on high ground above Morton Loch. The original castle may have stood here since 1260 but the present buildings date from the mid 1400s. Presumably there would not have been much of a loch back then since the loch’s dam is only a couple of hundred years old.
Since we were visiting in drow ‘n’ smirr the views were a little limited and the castle isn’t shown in its best light.
After exploring the castle we headed back to the entrance gate to cross the road into the woods. The kissing gate, as seems usual, swung over a dirty puddle of uncertain depth. Since the dogs went before me I was forewarned to step around its edges.
Once in Morton Woods I found there were some waymarkers so I decided to forego my planned route and see where the waymarked path took us. As a backup, since Sweep has a bad leg I decided that if we weren’t obviously heading back by 45 minutes we would just re-trace our steps. I imagine in better weather there might have been some views, but we had to make do with trees.
The dogs enjoyed splashing through the puddles and running into the woods, while I picked my way around puddles. We spent the early part of the walk on forestry tracks through a piety of woodland: young conifer, some deciduous and felled wasteland.
The last way marker we passed, set on a short piece of wood on the ground, had I presume been repositioned, whether by accident or malice I cannot tell. But rather than following the forestry track off to the left we continued along a less well maintained track. I suppose in retrospect it was just the track left by vehicles involved in felling.
There was more mud, larger puddles, and more detours to keep going. We did though seem to be looping back to where we started so on we forged. The path, looking less and less like a track, turned up hill cut back on itself then gave up any pretence of being a path.
The forest break
A forest break headed up from my left so we headed up along that. There wasn’t any sign that it had been used as a path but at least there weren’t that many boggy sections. Any hope that this might still be the way marked path when the forest break ended. I am sure the dogs could have made it through the woods but the branches down to knee height would have stopped me.
The lactation of conifers
A little to the left was a plantation of young conifers (PS the laptop tried to autocorrect plantation to lactation). Between us and the lactation of conifers was a barbed wire fence, but luckily, amidst the fence posts at the fence corner, was a space large enough to get the dogs through. There was a 5m margin around the new trees, which was mostly grass, and not boggy, so we followed that which led us back to the minor road near Morton Mains.
Morton Loch
From there it was just a short way back to the car, but since it had ben just a short walk we went back to explore the castle again before leaving.
Heading back to the car and a treat
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