{"id":10030,"date":"2025-03-31T13:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T12:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/?p=10030"},"modified":"2025-04-21T14:31:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T13:31:33","slug":"butterhole-hill-another-of-monicas-neighbours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/dumfries-galloway\/butterhole-hill-another-of-monicas-neighbours\/","title":{"rendered":"Butterhole Hill: Another of Monica’s neighbours"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

5.24 miles 2h 13m 190m<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Criffel from Auchenfad Hill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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the way in<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Butterhole Hill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-10030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumfries-galloway","tag-monica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10030"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10038,"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10030\/revisions\/10038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.screel.co.uk\/walks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}