5.24 miles 2h 13m 190m
At long last. We, the dogs and I, got to the top of Butterhole Hill. It sin’t a difficult Hill and to be honest, if I was on my own I could have climbed it easily. Having the two dogs presented some additional challenges.
Previous near misses were due to a combination of the hill being covered with sheep (not good when walking with dogs, even on a lead), boggy ground amounting to a actual pond, a wall and barbed-wire fence. The latter a particular problem when it comes to man-handling wriggling dogs over the barbs. I had come at it from Mabie and from Auchenfad in the past. Walking up through the farm would have been easier but that seemed like cheating.
Because it is outside the Mabie boundary I have been able to pretend it isn’t an actual “Monica” but it wrankles each time I see it.
I hadn’t set out to walk up it this day but chose the brown walking route then the track up to Auchenfad Hill. I noticed that there were no sheep on the hill and that might have drawn me towards it. There is a wee dip between Auchenfad Hill and Butterhole Hill which held a pond the last time I was there, but it had dried up or drained away when I got there. And where the wall beyond it had a small bend, the stones had fallen. And beyond the fallen stones the fence was just a single strand of barbed wire at waist height. High enough for the dogs to walk under and me to dip under.
And so we made it through and walked up the hill. The summit is a dip with surrounding higher ground, a little like the remnants of an iron age fort though I can’t find any evidence that there was ever a fort there.
The name Butterhole is said to come from Bittern’s Hole (but without stating any evidence), but it seems unlikely that bitterns would frequent a hill-top so I presume the hill is named for the farm below it. And perhaps the name does relate to dairy produce rather than wading birds.
