Tom Buidhe (NO 214787, 957m)
Tolmount (NO 210800, 958m)
Crow Craigies (NO 221798, 920m)

21 kilometres
910 metres of ascent

These three rounded summits form a horseshoe around the headwaters of the White Water, which flows down Glen Doll to join the South Esk in Glen Clova. I’ve visited them all before, but never linked them up into a logical circuit. I’ve climbed Tolmount from the north and the west, but never from the south. For a year or two during the 1980s I believed I’d climbed Tom Buidhe, in deep snow and worsening weather, only to realize later that a combination of poor navigation and a desire to nip up and down quickly had sent me up the steep face of Meikle Kilrannoch instead. This realization of an embarrassing error meant that I had to immediately return to Glen Doll and climb the thing properly, the very next weekend. And Crow Craigies is, of course, the legendary summit that gave its name to the annual expeditions of the Crow Craigies Climbing Party, which I’ve been detailing in these pages for six years now. I conquered its gentle whaleback summit more or less by accident as the culmination of an aimless walk up Jock’s Road one spring afternoon.

But this time I was going to traverse them all, exploring the interlinking watersheds that divide this area of high plateau between Glenshee, Glen Isla, Glen Doll and Glen Clova. I briefly entertained the notion of including Mayar in my circuit, which would have included a visit to the watershed between Glen Doll and Glen Prosen, too; but on the day the prospect of the long crossing of the peat hags between Mayar and Tom Buidhe began to significantly undermine the undoubted joy to be had from a four-watershed day.

So I set off up Glen Doll along Jock’s Road, as far as Davy’s Bourach. I’ve written before about the stories of John ‘Jock’ Winter and David ‘Davy’ Glen, so I won’t repeat them here. A little beyond Davy’s Bourach a small plaque is fixed to a boulder, commemorating the lives lost in the winter tragedy of 1959 which led Davy Glen to build his bourach on this spot, as an emergency mountain shelter.

The Ordnance Survey marks a path branching off Jock’s Road to the left at around this point, and descending to the White Water, but it’s not evident on the ground. I found my own way, contouring around to gain sight of the river, and then walking upstream along its high heathery bank until the river bed rose up to meet me, with the dome of Tom Buidhe ahead.

Then it was just a long rising traverse, picking my way up across trackless ground, to reach the dome of Tom Buidhe. There are a lot of Tom Buidhes in Scotland—the name means “yellow hillock”, and that is indeed the appearance of this Tom Buidhe, rising only a little above the surrounding plateau and clad, for most of the year, in yellow grass. From the summit, I had a view north to my next hill, Tolmount.

But first I had to turn west, descending along a fairly substantial track that points straight towards Cairn of Claise. At this point, all the water to my left drained into the Canness Burn and Glen Isla, and all the water to my right into the White Water and Glen Doll.

I turned right on a branching track just before the curiously named little lump of Ca Whims, which you can make out in the middle ground of the photo above. The original Ordnance Survey Name Book entry for this feature records that, “The derivation of this name cannot be obtained”. Dorward hazards that it comes from cadha fuaim, which he translates as “pass of ?echoes”, while Watson renders the Gaelic as cadha fuaime, and opts for “hill of echo”. Watson seems to have the right of it with his Gaelic grammar, fuaime being the genitive form of fuaim, meaning “noise” or “echo”, but seems to go astray with cadha, which generally denotes a narrow or rocky ravine. It seems like a very odd name for a gently rounded lump in the middle of a wide plateau, however, and I’m tempted to believe the Ordnance Survey’s original report that the derivation “cannot be obtained”.

So after that fascinating toponymic diversion, I crossed boggy ground in the col to reach the shoulder of Tolmount. The path at this point briefly turned into one of those paths that is slight worse than no path at all—not quite visible enough to follow reliably, but just visible enough to tempt you to spend time looking for it once you’ve lost it. But it sorted itself out higher on the hill.

Now, having rounded the most westerly source of the White Water, I was on to a new watershed, with the White Water draining to my right, and water to my left draining north into the steep gully of Glen Callater.

The path took me up past the rectangular ruins of a substantial shieling just short of the summit.

It appears as a tiny rectangle on the six-inch Ordnance Survey map of Aberdeenshire, Sheet CVII, but otherwise I can’t find out anything about it.

The summit itself is set just too far back to afford a view down Glen Callater, but a very short walk brings it into view, with Loch Callater gleaming in the distance.

Then downhill to step across the northern source of the White Water, and a brief ascent on to Crow Craigies, and a new watershed—water to my right was still going into the White Water, but water to my left was now descending into Glen Clova and the South Esk. From the summit, I had a good view towards the distant head of Glen Clova at Bachnagairn, and the little pool of Loch Esk.

I last looked down on these from a different angle, when I made my traverse between Glen Doll and Glen Clova.

I dropped southeast off Crow Craigies, and then turned around to admire the little line of crags on its northern side that give it its name.

At this point I rejoined Jock’s Road, but almost immediately stepped off it again to make one final ascent, of an unnamed 874m summit which the good people over at the Database of British and Irish Hills have tagged as “Crow Craigies South Top”. I figured that this might be a good location for a retrospective panorama of my route, and so it proved to be.

Then it was just a matter of winding my way back down into the Glen, rejoining my upward route.

As I passed Davy’s Bourach, I trotted up to the cairn on the little viewpoint that looks down the glen. But it’s also a nice spot from which to look back towards the plateau and judge the loneliness of the bourach, nestled below the crags of Cairn Lunkard.

And then the long walk back down through the forest to the car park. I think I’ve walked it too many times this year, and it seems to get longer every time. So my next outing will take me elsewhere.

Ben Vrackie (NN 950632, 841m)
Meall na h-Aodainn Moire (NN 941622, 633m)

14 kilometres
900 metres of ascent

This one is much less eccentric than most of my “familiar hills from an unusual direction” reports—the route to Vrackie from the west is well-documented, but considerably less-travelled than the tourist route from the south. There’s even the potential to link the western approach with a southerly exit (or vice versa), because both approach routes now form part of what’s called the Bealach Path, linking Pitlochry and Killicrankie over the moorland, with a return link through the Tay Forest Park on the Killiecrankie Path. You can find out more about these (and other) routes from a pretty booklet about the Pitlochry Path Network, available as a pdf file here. But I’m afraid I didn’t know anything about the woodland Killicrankie Path when I set out, so this is a straightforward there-and-back-again walk rather than what would have been an interesting circular hike.

I have weird history with Ben Vrackie. I climbed it back in the 1990s, on a damp, still day when the cloud base came down to 600 metres, and as I approach the summit through thick mist, I suddenly realized that I could hear a child weeping. With the hair standing up on the back of my neck I jogged uphill towards the sound, to discover a family group sitting at the summit, the father comforting a little girl. He turned to me and said, in outraged tones, “A goat just stole her sandwich!”

Now, that’s not a phrase you hear every day, but it was probably uttered on an almost daily basis on the summit of Ben Vrackie during the ’90s, when walkers were plagued by a couple of near-feral goats. They were quite prepared to climb on top of people and to stick their heads into rucksacks in search of food, and were sufficiently infamous to generate a detailed report in The Angry Corrie (Scotland’s First & Finest Hillwalker’s Fanzine). You can find an excessively flattering portrait of the offending animals here.

Secure in the knowledge that the goats have long since departed for the Great Sandwich Bar In The Sky, I parked at the Killiecrankie Visitor Centre and walked a short way north along the old A9 (now humiliatingly demoted to the B8079) before turning right through the tunnel under the new(ish) A9 and heading up the road past Old Faskally House. I soon encountered a poem affixed to a gate that bypasses a cattle grid on the road.

The tarmac ends at a three-way branching which is confusingly signposted, for me at least:

The sign to the Bealach Path appears to point steadfastly towards a large padlocked gate (here decorated by a recently sheared sheep). What wasn’t immediately evident is that there’s a fourth way, to the left of the sheep and behind the grassy mound, which at the time I arrived was little more than a pair of faint tyre tracks crossing a field. This unpromising looking line turned out to be the correct route, gradually become clearer as it ascends the hillside, and eventually turning into a well-worn track that has suffered some catastrophic water erosion along part of its length.

(A new section of path has been created that bypasses the worst of this, forking off to the right as you ascend.)

The track slowly ascends towards Meall na h-Aodainn Moire (“mound of the big face”, of which more later), and eventually a signpost points off to the left, signalling the route towards Ben Vrackie. OpenStreetMap suggests there’s a branch farther back along the Bealach Path, bypassing the slight rise and fall incurred by the signposted route, but I didn’t notice it. It’s round about this point that Ben Vrackie starts to look quite challenging, as you get a view of its steep southern face and pointy summit:

The path descends to the head of Loch a’ Choire and then loops around its pretty northern shore to join the tourist route coming up from Pitlochry. I scared up a couple of irate mallards as I passed the reed beds.

Then it’s just a matter of climbing what is in effect a three-hundred-metre staircase to the summit—the final steep section has been beautifully engineered against erosion with a set of irregular rocky steps.

At this point I began to run into various family groups clattering down the path in T-shirts and trainers, with scant regard for on-coming traffic. Each time, I’d stop and step courteously off the path to let them pass. This action seemed to trigger a strange solicitousness, or perhaps I’m just looking particularly old and weary these days. But three times during my ascent someone turned to me as they passed and asked gently “Are you all right?” in the sort of tones usually reserved for wild-haired, bare-footed and pyjama-clad people roaming the streets at midnight. Three times.

So I was feeling slightly put-upon by the time I reached the summit to enjoy the airy views that had been obscured by mist on my previous visit. Here’s the view north to the triple summit of Beinn a’ Ghlo:

And then there was this:

I’ve encountered the “photographing my dog sitting on the view indicator” thing before, when I climbed East Lomond, but I thought it was some sort of one-off eccentricity. Now I’m guessing there’s a social media meme driving this otherwise inexplicable behaviour.

After a bit of lunch, I headed off down to the loch again, where I encountered a pretty memorial bench in a fine location:

And notice, if you will, the prominent hill at upper left. That’s Meall na h-Aodainn Moire, and I wonder if its distinctly cliffy appearance from this angle accounts for the name “mound of the big face”.

At this point I decided that I’d visit its summit rather than retrace my steps along the lochside. So I followed the path, visible above, that runs along the earth dam that pens in Loch a’ Choire, passed another nicely placed memorial bench, and then followed a slot in the heather that took me up to the broad shoulder between Meall na h-Aodainn Moire and Stac an Fheidh. I wandered out to the heathery top of Stac an Fheidh (“high rock of the deer”) to grab a photograph of Vrackie that shows the line of the path well:

Then I followed another track that took me high on the shoulder of Meall na h-Aodainn Moire before dropping down to join the Bealach Path just north of its highest point in the Bealach na Searmoin. (This is “pass of the sermon”. I don’t know why, but wonder if it was a route by which outlying communities reached the old parish church at Moulin, long ago.)

A diversion to the summit of Meall na h-Aodainn Moire gave me a nice view across the bealach to Meall Uaine (“green mound”). No prizes for guessing how it got its name:

Then it was just a matter of retracing my steps to the car. Along the way, I had my best wildlife encounters of the day, in the form of a succession of Peacock butterflies on the trackside vegetation:

And that was that. My surreal relationship with Ben Vrackie felt like it had been preserved by the weird solicitude of the descending family parties, and by the canine-portraiture episode on the summit. But there was one more bit of weirdness to follow. As I took off my boots in the Visitor Centre car park, I was abruptly approached by a young woman who was clutching the traditional mobile phone in one hand and a little bottle of mineral water in the other.

“Have you done the bungee jumping?” she asked, without preamble.
“No, I haven’t.”
“But have you ever done bungee jumping?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, what have you been doing?”
“Walking.” (I waved a newly doffed boot at her.)
“Where’ve you been walking?”
“Ben Vrackie.”
“And that’s a hill, is it?”
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t done the bungee jumping?”
“No.”

At which point she turned on her heel and left as abruptly as she came. A few seconds later, I heard her voice floating across the car park: “No, he was no use—he says he hasn’t done the bungee jumping.”

I’m glad we got that settled.

Cairn Lunkard (NO 232781, 863m)
Craigs of Loch Esk (NO 237786, 851m)

17 kilometres
790 metres of ascent

This is a classic circular route over the plateau between Glen Doll and upper Glen Clova, but it’s been fifty years since I last walked it. I was put in mind of doing it again during my recent trip across the plateau from Cairn Broadlands to Cairn Damff.

Quite an obvious path links the glen heads, these days, but I aimed instead to pass over the low humps of Cairn Lunkard and the Craigs of Loch Esk.

So there was the usual forest walk along the lower stretch of Jock’s Road, before coming out of the trees and getting a sudden view of upper Glen Doll, with the thin ribbon of the path ascending along its north side.

I’ve described before how the old droving route of Jock’s Road supposedly got its name from a local shepherd in the nineteenth century. I’ve always thought that the prominent little knob at the head of Glen Doll, called The Lunkard, would be a good viewpoint from which to appreciate Glen Doll and the line of Jock’s Road, and so it proved to be.

While I was taking the panoramic view above, I was receiving the continuous attention of a pair of irate kestrels, who must have had a nest nearby.

“Lunkard” is a Scots word meaning “temporary shelter”, and the drovers may have made camp in the sheltered cleft below The Lunkard, after descending from the exposed plateau. The successor to these camps is the mountain shelter of Davy’s Bourach, which lies a little farther up the glen.

I’ve written before about the Gaelic meaning of bourach—“a mess”. But it seems to have acquired quite a selection of meanings in Scots, of which “mound”, “heap” and “hovel” might all apply. Given the shelter’s construction, I think there’s also more than a passing connection to the verb bourach, which means “to burrow”. The “Davy” involved was David Glen, a local outdoorsman who was involved in the recovery of the bodies of five members of the Universal Hiking Club of Glasgow, who perished in foul weather on New Year’s Day 1959 while crossing the plateau. Glen set about constructing this emergency shelter soon after—three dry-stone walls and roof constructed of timber and corrugated iron brought laboriously up the glen, completed in 1966.

Beyond the bourach, I followed Jock’s Road a little farther, looping below the steep side of Cairn Lunkard and then walking to the summit along its short and easy-angled northwestern slope. I paused to take a photograph of the view of Cairn Damff and Craig Damff to the east—very much changed from the snowy conditions in which I recently visited them, then dropped off the hill into its northern lee for a bite of lunch.

A stroll across the moorland took me to the Craigs of Loch Esk, with a view of Broad Cairn and Lochnagar.

then a short descent to the north brought me in sight of the Craigs’ namesake, Loch Esk. I crossed the remote outflow of Loch Esk a few years ago, on my way from the Glittering Skellies to Fafernie Shiel—more on that trip here (including an explanation of what a skellie and a shiel might be).

A few metres farther down the hill, and I was on the well-worn plateau path, which quickly took me down to the larches and Scots pines of Bachnagairn, at the head of upper Glen Clova, and one of my favourite places in the world.

From there, the path broadens into a track, which took me below the cliffs of Juanjorge. (I’ve written more about that odd name when I described a visit to the top of the cliffs last year.)

And I finally got a chance to walk across the new bridge across the South Esk, just above Moulzie farm, which replaces the old one swept away by winter floods a few years ago.

It certainly beats the temporary bog-trotting route along the west side of the river which was the main route up the glen for a year or so, in the absence of a bridge.

Lundie Craigs (NO 281378, 353m)
Keillor Hill (NO 281385, 334m)
Donald’s Brae (NO 293396, c280m)
Auchtertyre Hill (NO 293398,  278m)
Newtyle Hill (NO 296399, 270m)

8.5 kilometres
210 metres of ascent

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a new walk in the Sidlaws. This one accesses an old ridge-walk from a new direction. I’ve previous visited these hills either from Tullybaccart to the southwest, or Newtyle to the northeast. This time, I’ve followed a circular route that passes through the farmland around Long Loch. I left the car at NO 298379, where the tracks from Wester Keith and Sunnyhall join—there’s scope here to roll a couple of cars on to the rough verge beside the cattle-grid, out of the way of all farm traffic.

A short distance up the track to Wester Keith, I passed the big coded-entry gates that bar unauthorized vehicular access to the boat-houses on Long Loch.

But the track to the loch and adjoining Palmer Wood is accessible for pedestrians through a little gate opposite the Easter Keith farm buildings. I passed that, and carried on along to Wester Keith. Here, just beyond the farm buildings and cottage, a rather muddy patch of ground provides access to the fields beyond. My route from there went through a succession of farm gates to reach Westerkeith Hill.

The grazing land was entirely unoccupied when I passed through, but there was copious evidence underfoot that cattle had been here—so it’s not a route that will always be accessible. At the upper end of the field system, a broken wooden gate (easily stepped over) gives access to the hill slope beyond. I climbed steeply uphill for a short distance to join the broad grassy track that swings around the shoulder of Westerkeith Hill and on to the ridge. (This track is just visible in my photograph above, as a narrow line of darker green crossing the hill in a rising rake from left to right.)

Following the track around in a long ascending curve gave me a fine view down on to Long Loch.

And then, shortly afterwards, got me to my first summit of the day, Lundie Craigs.

My onward route took me across to Keillor Hill, the heathery lump in the middle distance in the photograph above. Apart from a tiny bit of bundu-bashing through the heather to acquire the summit of Keillor Hill, the whole traverse follows fairly evident (if intermittently boggy) paths and tracks.

The Keillor Hill summit is traversed by an old 4×4 track, rapidly becoming overgrown, and I followed the remaining slot in the heather downhill for a short distance until it reached a gate in the ridge-line fence, and a fairly major track that runs the full length of the ridge.

After following this track for a while, I arrived at the Mackenzie Meridian, an isolated stone tower which I’ve written about in my report from a previous visit.

Some distance beyond the Meridian, the track reaches a junction, with a left turn that takes you down into a confusion of paths from which you can eventually find your way into the Newtyle Path Network. Straight ahead it passes through a gate and runs farther along the ridge. I seem to remember a “Beware of the Bull” sign at this point, some years ago, but it was not evident on this visit. Also at this junction, there’s a little stile that gives access to the grazing land on the slope of Pittendreich Hill above Long Loch.

I hopped over it to take a look at what sort of access it might provide, but very quickly found myself approaching a flock of sheep with young lambs, so retreated back to the ridge-line and the main track.

This runs on over Donald’s Brae, and then passes a little south of the summits of Auchtertyre Hill and Newtyle Hill. So I made a short excursion to visit the two rounded summits, both clothed in spiky yellow gorse which was giving off a strong smell of coconut in the still air.

I missed my line slightly at this point, and ended up having to bear right a little (and then search for a gap in the gorse) to find my way back on to the track as it descended into the moorland below Newtyle Hill.

The scent of coconut from the gorse was now pretty overwhelming, as you might be able to realize from the picture.

On previous visits, I’ve encountered English Longhorn cattle grazing around here—I presume the same herd I photographed during a previous trip up the other side of Newtyle Hill. And I presume they account for the “Beware of the Bull” signs one encounters in this vicinity. I’m prepared to walk a long and circuitous way to avoid disturbing an English Longhorn bull, but on this occasion it wasn’t necessary. I could hear cattle lowing in the distance, but never saw one.

The track eventually makes a right turn to service some wildfowl hides at the oddly named little pond of Hunkrum Dubs. But my route took me along a narrower path that continues straight ahead, to the southeast. There’s a trick to getting off the moorland at this point, which is pretty much moated around with fences. An obscure little path branches southwards at NO 305393—it’s actually more visible if you look for it in the distance to the right, rather than trying to detect any sort of branch directly off the southeast path. After a short distance, this took me to a stile over a fence into a little corner of woodland. And after a short walk through the trees (scaring up a particularly astonished-looking roe deer in the process), I arrived at a decaying bridge over the Neuk Burn, with a gate on the far side that gives access to an open field otherwise surround by an electric fence.

I don’t trust that bridge at all. The woody has the spongy consistency of expanded polystyrene, and I elected to step across the burn below instead.

Again, the field was empty of livestock, and I was able to head south along its eastern edge, where the forestry marked by the Ordnance Survey has now been cleared. At the end of the field I arrived at another gate, which took me out on to a farm track that continued southwards.

Keeping to the southerly line, this track eventually gives way to a path that runs along the length of a strip of newly planted trees, their green protective covers looking like some sort of odd art installation.

Then there was another gate, and a track down the east side of the private grounds of Thriepley House took me to the road. Then it was just a matter of walking a short distance along the tarmac, past Thriepley’s mad mash-up of Scots Baronial and Italianate styles, and I was back at the car—wondering where I might be able to source a cherub finial for our garden shed.

Craig Mellon (NO 262773, 866m)
Cairn Broadlands (NO 270777, 852m)
Craig Damff (NO 247777, 846m)

15.5 kilometres
800 metres of ascent

Craig Mellon and Cairn Broadlands dominate the view up Glen Clova as you approach the road-head—neatly paired humps with Glen Doll on the left and upper Glen Clova on the right. The broad slope between the two humps is called The Ought, which comes from Gaelic an-t’uchd, “the brow of the hill”.

Behind the pair, an undulating and steep-sided plateau separates Doll and Clova, an outlier of the larger massif that extends as far as Glen Isla, the Cairnwell Pass, and Lochnagar above Glen Muick.

It’s a round forty-five years since I’ve visited these hills—in 1976 my father, brother and I walked from somewhere near the high point of Jock’s Road, above Glen Doll, and descended The Ought to get back to the car park. This time, I aimed to follow a similar route in reverse—up The Ought, and then west across the high ground to descend on to Jock’s Road for my return journey.

There’s a zig-zag path through the forest and up to the plateau marked on my 1:25000 Ordance Survey map. It starts from the driveway of Glen Doll Lodge, and strikes up pleasantly through the trees, crossing a broad forestry track that isn’t marked on my map. When it reaches the tree-line, it used to run westward along the inside of the forest deer-fence to a tall stile. It still takes the same route, but the old fence is gone. Instead, you can just walk around the weathered remains of the stile and out on to the open hillside.

I followed the path for a while, but as I got higher it became hard to follow through the drifted snow, and I instead struck off on to my own route, which brought me out at the cairn of Craig Mellon, with an impressive view of Driesh, the Shank of Drumfollow and Corrie Kilbo across Glen Doll.

It’s a feature of all my planned hills for the day that they have an interesting promontory that extends outwards from a flat summit set back from the edge of the plateau. So after admiring the view from the cairn for a while, I strolled up to the featureless patch of tundra that is the true summit of Craig Mellon, and then made a ninety-degree turn towards Cairn Broadlands, which is the rounded lump in the middle distance in the view below, with the line of a path picked out be drifted snow.

Drifted snow proved to be an impediment to progress—some of these little white patches are an innocuous inch or two deep, but some of them conceal holes into which a leg can disappear thigh-deep. So I picked my way circuitously, trying to stick to areas where I could see at least a tuft of vegetation.

The north wind blasting across Broadlands was positively Arctic, so I tarried only long enough on the summit to take a photograph of the view of snowy Lochnagar.

Then I dropped a short distance southwards on Broadlands’ own little promontory, where I sat for a bite of lunch out of the wind, admiring the view down lower Glen Clova.

Then up into the wind again, and a contouring line across the plateau to reach my next summit. The going was unpleasant in places, with the low peat hags full of snow and melt-water, and easy lines difficult to find, but by circuitous routes punctuated by futile cursing, I eventually arrived at a little bulge in the plateau with a cairn on it, and a view across to Mayar and the line of impressive crags on the south side of Glen Doll.

This spot, justly ignored for centuries by all who passed it, has now been labelled Craig Damff, which is actually the name of a row of crags that form the north side of Glen Doll at this point. They fall away from the edge of the plateau in the middle distance of my photograph above, as partners to the crags on the south side. But this is a local high point, and in hill-bagging circles that means it requires a name, even if that is borrowed from some other part of the scenery. (Likewise, Craig Mellon correctly refers to the little craggy promontory that extends out over Glen Clova, not the undistinguished lump that has taken on that label in hillwalking circles.)

And so I descended a short distance to the interesting bit of this hill, Cairn Damff, which extends as a rocky promontory above Jock’s Road. (The view below looks back across Glen Doll towards Driesh.)

My descent route then took me around three-quarters of a circle, starting north and then contouring around below the steep western face of Cairn Damff while trying to say above the deep snowdrifts covering the burns running below. In fact, I was so keen not to descend into the snow-stuffed terrain below me that I forgot my chosen line to reach Jock’s Road, which would have crossed the watercourses higher up and then allowed a gentle descent to join the track.

I realised my error when I caught my first sight of Jock’s Road, an improbable distance below me.

Oops. No, not going down that way. So I turned around and made a descending traverse while the line of Jock’s Road rose to meet me, and I eventually came out on to the track some distance below the point at which I’d originally planned to emerge, at Davy’s Bourach. (I’ve written before about why this old droving route is called Jock’s Road, and about what a bourach is—see this previous post about the Mounth Roads for more information.)

Then it was just a matter of descending Jock’s Road below the real Craig Damff to reach the forest in the lower reaches of the glen.

No matter how often I walk Jock’s Road, I’m always surprised at how long the final section through the forest takes. But eventually I got back to the car park.