White Meldon & Cademuir Hill

[snowgoose]

Finding the right hill is always helpful and fortunately this was an easy one car park right at the start a dog-friendly stile and nae coos Brilliant. Nice day, not cold, broken cloud with sunny bits and no wind to speak of. The way up was quite obvious, steep in places, and the grass was a bit damp which made it quite slippy in places - nearly lost my footing once or twice and would have had an unexpected descent if I hadn't had my recently-acquired walking pole to hand.

Brandy the dug at the trig point.

Good view of the Borders hills from the summit

The weather was changing fast

I was expecting to have a problem finding the starting point for Cademuir Hill, and the route up but it turned out to be straightforward too. I came in from the Manor Sware - Kirkton Manor end and drove right round the hill to the first forestry commission car park. The un-forested hill looks more interesting than the sub-2000 and seems to be part of the John Buchan Way, so it would be worth doing that side of the hill sometime. Some other walk reports suggest it is difficult to get onto the right path, but the tracks and paths must have been cleared, or made easier to follow, because I had no bother. The left-hand path goes through a small gate, leads up to the forest track, where you turn left. After a while there is a clear path off uphill to the right and after that it is just a case of following the most used looking path, and avoiding routes where trees have come down and blocked the path. It was extremely silent in this wood, despite there being a drone zooming around the whole time I was on the hill as I found out when I came back down.

Is there anybody there?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No - it's one of those things.....I thought you weren't allowed BBQs in the forest.