4.39 miles 1h 47min ascent 168m
4.39 miles 1h 47m ascent 168m
Just two lochs for us, Reòidhte Lochan and Loch Drunkie. We had seen Loch Venachar a couple of days earlier.
There is a map at the car park. But beware, it is oriented with north downwards. And that certainly confused my navigation. We walked along a forestry track closed to vehicles, to the north of Druim Buidhe, that brought us to Loch Drunkie, then back along the Three Lochs Forest Drive.
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2.6 miles 2h 53m ascent 340m
The hill’s original name is thought to have been Am Binnean, or small pointed peak: a good descriptive name. But Sir Walter Scott called it Ben-An in his poem The Lady of the Lake and that name seems to have been taken up by Ordnance Survey and become the accepted monika.
Continue reading13.4 miles 5h 25m ascent 373m
Strochanlachar-Trossachs Pier
Loch Katrine was gouged by glaciers during the last ice age, named for the ceathairne, highland robbers such as Rob Roy MacGregor who stalked its surroundings, and co-opted by Victorian engineers, who raised its water level by seventeen feet to provide healthy water for Glasgow. It inspired Sir Walter Scott to pen The Lady of the Lake, and his descriptions kick-started tourism in the Trossachs.
Continue readingThe wanderer’s eye could barely view
The Lady of the Lake, Walter Scott
The summer heaven’s delicious blue;
So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.
9.2 miles 3h 37min ascent 344m
The Silver Jubilee Road, which from its name must date back to 1977, was to be a multi-use (vehicles, horses, legs) trail in the beautiful Tweedsmuir hills. There were to be seven stops: Covenanter’s View; Auchenmode Burn; Roebuck’s Leap; Laird’s Cleuch Rigg; Blackcock Knowe; Overmenzion Way; and Fruid Outlook. Each presumably would have had a small car-park, information board and picnic table.
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2.8 miles 1h 4m ascent 75m
Another Wee Monica. A forestry track from the Trostan Road, a footpath with a residual red way marker post to the Shambellie forestry track and then the remnants of a footpath up Barlay Hill. All easy going.
4.52 miles 1h 50m ascent 183m – failure 24/11/2022
4.24 miles 2h 2m ascent 145m -success 25/11/2022
A Monica is a hill named on the OS 1:50k map. A Mabie Monica is such a hill in Mabie. Some hills don’t have a marked summit and their upper contour lies only partly in Mabie. These have an asterix in my list. Locharthur’s highest point actually sits just outside the boundary wall. It is marked on the 1:25k map.
I set out on the 24th to go up Craigbill Hill, intending to use the old MTB track from the west side but found it completely overgrown so had a go at Locharthur Hill instead. It is mature forest and should have been an easy walk but a great many of the trees have fallen. Having gone up and down three times trying to find a way in, I eventually found my way completely blocked about 30m from the summit. All efforts to get by the trees failed and when it started to rain, heavily, I gave up.
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