Dunsinane, Black Hill & King's Seat

[teaandpies]

It's been a while since my last walk so I was please to be able to grab a wee hill on a recent escape to the country with the girlfriend however the weather put a bit of a downer on it.

The hill is normally climbed from the other side but as we we staying on its slopes we had a minor advantage of being able to step out of the house and cutting across the field


View from the front door

The well trimmed (by sheep and cows) grassy slope was steep but easily manageable even the most unfit could do this hill.


View back to the den

Once across the field it was a just a case of following the treeline to the low point between the hill fort and Black Hill.


The pass between the hills

Once the 'views' opened up over New Farm and beyond we turned left up an obvious path that zigzaged up to the top more like a single zig then zag to be precise.


Atop the fort

It was difficult to really make out much detail of the fort.


Cairn

Unfortunately the best view we got was this this monstrous hole in the ground...


Quarry

We descended the fort in search of 'MacBeth's Well' but after a 5 minutes of looking around we gave up and headed up the side of Black Hill.

The fort is more obvious from its neighbouring hill.


Dunsinane Hill

Arriving at the summit cairn took mild effort. The cairn was nice.


Atop Black Hill

Once we left Black Hill we did get a little jumbled up in the spaghetti of criss-crossing paths and in the clag we almost ended up in a real nasty bog but we just walked up and around it. There's a path that goes right across the bog but it's definitely a summer path


The wee body of water

We lost the path we were on and picked up a different one that hugged the edge of a relatively steep drop off before choosing a spot to break off to find the summit of Kings Seat.


The trig looming out of the gloom

It was nice to reach the top but we didn't bother hanging around for long.


A nice trig


Those views...

We headed back the way we came before choosing to make an effort to reach the road. We only had to jump one fence into a empty field and at the bottom of it there was a gate to the road.


Looking back up to the hill

A couple of Ks along the road and we were back to our temporary home and back in time to see England get beat in the 6 nations...sweet sweet defeat


and back to the den

Typically, the weather the next day cleared. Time to depart, oh well


The following morning

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[Gordie12]

My dream house, walk out the front door straight on to a hill........................

Probably not worth telling you about the great view from the King's Seat

[teaandpies]

My dream house, walk out the front door straight on to a hill........................

Probably not worth telling you about the great view from the King's Seat

It's alright, I've seen the other reports!

[Sgurr]

Sent an American tourist here when he asked for Macbeth's Castle. Alas, too late I realised he probably meant Cawdor, which still has an actual castle Looks as if you had a reasonable time, and at least the legs got stretched, and the bull that was across the path when we went seemed not to be (never heard any reports of US tourists being gored by one, but still feel guilty nevertheless.)