Drow 'n' Smirr

9.8 miles  4h 30m  ascent 723m

Pykestone Hill

Pykestone Hill, Middle Hill, Drumelzier Law

This walk starts at the tiny settlement of Drumelzier. The area has a close link with Merlin (Myrddin) who was killed here by a method he himself had predicted; to be bludgeoned, stabbed and drowned and apparently a thorn tree marks Merlin’s grave. There are ruins of a fort, presumably the fort of the reaping-men which gives Drumelzier its name. I had intended visiting these but developed a painful knee while tramping over the hills and left with just my newly bagged Donalds.

Footbridge at the ford

Luckily the lower stretches of Drumelzier Burn have plenty of footbridges, and it certainly raises one’s spirits to find a bridge where the OS marks a ford. The bridges were basic, without handrails, and were slippery with moss, so some care was needed.

Larch and Spruce

I crossed one of these bridges close to where I had parked and walked along the east bank of the burn for 500m before crossing back to the farm track and crossing again where there is a choice of bridge or ford. This leads between two stands of trees. These were a mixture of autumnal larch that were shedding their golden needles and spruce holding on to their greenery.

The path on the east bank of the burn had a mild slope, enough to be noticeable but not difficult. I mention this now since I wonder if it was a trigger for my later problems.

Beside the track is a rock with a small plaque inscribed:

Jim Cox
1934 – 2003
In memory still I climb the hill
and hear the curlews haunting call
listen to the murmuring rill
and see the purple heather bloom

After the spruce and larch the path splits, and I took the fork to the right which slowly climbs over Den Knowes. I climbed from autumn into winter, the heather gradually becoming hidden beneath a thin blanket of white. Once over Den Knowes Head, the snow was deep enough to crunch beneath my feet (reminiscent of a pericardial friction rub). I suspect that the path over this last kilometre to Pykestone Hill is usually boggy, since an additional sound, of cracking ice, warned of deeper puddles. I decided it was better to avoid the path and walked on the heather instead.

By the time I reached Pykestone Hill, with its trig pillar and small cairn I was in a winter wonderland. It was a little too early for lunch so I pressed on for the next target, Middle Hill. There are a couple of minor summits on the way, but this is essentially a ridge walk. The going was unpleasant but not difficult. The ground was boggy with scattered pools but snow hid the boggy sections.

The Thief’s road could be seen wending its way up the side of Dollar Law. Presumably it was somewhere beneath my feet but lost under the snow. It was while walking down from Pykestone Hill that the unpleasantness in my left knee began to manifest. Anterolateral discomfort worse when the knee was bent, much worse going downhill but unaffected by heel-strike. This was the first time in several months I had ventured out without a walking pole, having decided that carrying the pole, usually strapped to my rucksack, was a waste of effort. I blame to sloping path at the beginning, though decrepitness and lack of stretching may have played a part.

Grey Weather Law

The first of the minor summits was Grey Weather Law. This lived up to its name. The top was covered with light mist that still allowed the sun to be seen but diffused the sunlight. This combined with the white ground made me wish I had brought sunglasses. Visibility was very poor, but cleared as I descended just a few metres.

In the col between Grey Weather Law and Long Grain Knowe, the Thief’s road heads off towards Dollar Law and I headed up the deeper heather threading between boggy sections. Middle Hill was also in mist. There was a lone pole in he ground but I felt the highest point was a little way beyond it.

Shepherd’s Cairn, Glenstivon Dod

I returned to the bend in the fence and finding myself in mist headed out on a bearing for the Shepherd’s cairn on Glenstivon Dod. I was pacing out the distance but after a couple of hundred metres I emerged from the cloud and could see the cairn. Glenviston Dod is in fact higher than Drumelzier Law so that was the last of the mist.

Whereas all the other hills were white, Drumelzier Law was black from here with a double white line of a path climbing it. The descent to the col awakened my knee pain, but the ascent, done in the walking equivalent of first gear, was not especially sore. Unfortunately, the path which should have offered the best terrain was icy, so it was more climbing up heather.

Drumelzier Law: no lunch here

There is a small cairn on a knoll at the top of the steeper section of climb and I decided to break for lunch in the lee of this. It seemed to get colder as I sat there, despite the addition of an extra layer. At first I thought this was just because I had stopped walking, but the next event made me question this. I poured myself a coffee from my flask and the wind blew the coffee out of the cup, mostly over me. Luckily it was lukewarm so it didn’t do any damage.

Drumelzier Law summit

I put lunch back in the bag, wiped the coffee from my glasses and got moving. By now the wind had turned very cold indeed so I didn’t hang about at the summit. The first 100m descent was quite painful so I decided to change my descent route. The original plan was to head down towards a sheepfold where the Finglen and Drumelzier burns meet. I chose instead the gentler gradients over Logan Head and Finglen Rig.

Culter and Tinto from Logan Head

This was harder going at first in deep heather but then I came across a track of burnt heather where the going was very much easier. There where several small cairns along the way. In the picture you can see a cairn and the path of burnt heather, with Culter and Tinto in the distance. I rejoined the farm track by the ford marked on the OS (where there is also a bridge) and followed that back to the car.

Den Knowes from Logan Head

I left the ruins of the fort etc. for a day with a better knee.

10.5 miles  4h 35min  ascent 645m

Deer Law-Black Law-Greenside Law

Though a relatively short walk this one needed three maps. To be honest it was an out-right Donald bagging expedition, but also an opportunity to try out my new piece of equipment: a fold up mat to spare my backside the from wet grass. I splashed out on this one paying the extra £1.50 for the deluxe version.

I parked at the Megget Dam and after standing for a while, amazed by the sheep grazing on its grassy slope, I set off downhill to Glengaber. There is a farm track just before the farmhouse which is completely blocked by a massive pile of manure, but luckily this isn’t the path to follow. The track around Broomy Law was visible from the road and easily reached by crossing a field at a gate a few metres past the house. The field here was neither boggy nor muddy and must have been magically transported from some distant paradise.

Pile of Manure

The stony track slowly climbs up Glengaber Glen, hugging the base of Broomy Law, with the burn burbling below amidst heather and ferns. A sheep pen near Boar Cleuch was succumbing to nature and filled with ferns. Presumably there must have been many more sheep up here in the past, and perhaps even boar?

The rocky track crosses a couple of small streams and then ends with a ford over Cons Cleuch at a collection of sheep pens. From here I climbed up onto Deer Law, initially following a faint track but eventually toiling across pathless grass and heather, the ground growing boggier the higher I climbed. This was a typical convex hill where the horizon was always just a few metres away and the top only seen when you have almost reached it. The combination of the going underfoot and uncertainty about how far was left to climb proved quite tiring and I had several stops to admire the view back down the glen.

Deer Law

Deer Law is a good 180m shorter than its namesake, Hart Fell, but does have its own cairn (well a few rocks anyway) and one of these is flat enough to serve as a seat amidst the soggy grass. From here the rest of the route was visible for the first time. I followed the fence over Conscleuch Head then up to Black Law.

Now I am quite used to the cols being boggy, but Conscleuch Head seems to have forgotten that it is a hill and gone native with the cols. There is bog, hidden muddy holes, black peat mush and supersaturated sphagnum moss, all requiring care when picking a route. I could see the change in colour half way up Black Law that marked less boggy ground and looked forward to reaching it. Despite care in placing my feet, I fell foul of a mud filled hole but most of it had been wiped off within a minutes.

Black Law’s summit is a 600m plateau with a small rise at each end, that to the east being 2m higher. There are deep furrows running along the summit which are too large to have been made by a vehicle other than a tank. They must be natural however since they degenerate into a network of channels when they reach collections of peat hags, whereas a vehicle would have cut across the peat.

I had my lunch on Black Law, protected from the damp, cold and irregularity of the ground by my new seat/mat. I was however denied comfort since the weather chose just this time to crank up the wind to blustery.

The map suggests that it should be all downhill as far as Foulbrig but heading down to Redsike Head definitely has some uphill sections. Luckily there were more opportunities to practice coping with bogginess. I found myself crossing the fence several times when  faced with uncrossable sections on my own side. The fence had seen better days and many posts were rotten. There were a great many pieces of fencing wire lying about and these were difficult to spot looking quite like grass. I tripped over these several times with much cursing and stumbling.

Cairn on Redsike Head

At 570m the fence takes a sharp left hand turn and goes down to Foulbrig. I followed the fence but looking back it would be better to continue in the direction of the original fence and join the path above Bitch Cleuch. I had been uncertain if the single broken line on the OS map would be an actual path or a mere ghost, so followed the fence down to the aptly named Foulbrig, a flat area of marshy land that I would not want to cross after heavy rain. Standing by the fence contemplating which way to walk across this section I looked down at the fence post. It’s centre had rotted away and two dead newts lay within it. That’s not something you often see.

Manor-Megget Path

The right of way from Manor Glen to Megget is actually a substantial and well maintained track and I chose to follow this for 50m of easy ascent, rather than follow the fence line directly up Greenside Law. There is a small cairn beside the track where it reaches its highest point close to the 567m spot height on the OS map. I had hoped there would be a track leading up to the summit from here, but did not see one so headed up through the heather. There were at times faint tracks that I took to be animal tracks. The final 60 metres to the summit were across uneven ground with the similar terrain to the rest of this walk. My heart lifted briefly when I saw a cairn on the horizon ahead, but once there it was clear it was not the summit. I couldn’t really tell I was at the summit until I could see over the far side.

From the summit my plan had been to head for the pile of stones marked on the map and then towards a sheepfold where I would join the path back to the Megget Road. Unfortunately given the shape of the hill, I could not see the pile of stones and since the actual summit is unclear it was difficult to use a bearing, so I headed off perpendicular to the fence. The pile of stones was nowhere to be seen, though in retrospect (inspecting my GPS track) these were the cairn I had passed on the way up. I eventually came upon a vehicle track that I followed all the way back to the Manor-Megget path, close to the sheepfold.

From here I was able to walk the last mile or so back to the car, via Craigierig, on firm dry land.