gammy leg walker wrote:The best person to ask would be Dave Hewitt on here,knowes the Ochils like the back of his hand.
Thanks – although I keep finding little neuks and corners that are new to me (thank goodness), and I don’t know the northern side anywhere near as well as the Hillfoot slopes.
grantyg wrote:has anyone here done a route
As Mr MacEwan says, the Ochil 2000s route could well serve as a template. The connection between Dumyat and the main range is deceptive – the glen gets steadily deeper and more fiddly to cross the more you try and straighten out the line, so as hakirby says aim for somewhere towards the east end of the Lossburn reservoir – there’s a reasonable quality path goes down the north side to here, might be worth checking out beforehand.
The stretch over the 540m bumps and so towards Blairdenon has various options, as there are useful grassy ATV tracks here and there. It can be worthwhile losing a bit of extra height in the dip before the rise to the Greenforet/Blairdenon ridge, as the ground closer to the fence tends to be boggier. Getting from Blairdenon to the col before Ben Buck is the crux in terms of route-finding – I’ve crossed this upwards of 40 times one way or the other and still haven’t found a guaranteed dry route over the middle bit. The initial meander down off Blairdenon by the grassy path/track is very pleasant and straightforward, however – but the track then just sort of stops in a hollow and it’s a case of tussock-hopping and squelch-leaping for a few minutes after that. There is the option of swinging to the south a bit, where the track – still quite squelchy, but not too bad – heads towards Craighorn (which is a nice summit, worth taking in).
Once you’re up on to Ben Buck it should be straightforward all the way to Whitewisp/Innerdownie – clear paths throughout. In terms of a Muckhart finish, if you wanted to spice things up a bit at the end you could drop into upper Glen Quey (worth recceing the deer fences on Whitewisp beforehand, as there aren’t as many stiles/gates as there should be), then climb back up on to Commonedge (possibly via the minor diversion of Castleton Hill, which is a pleasant spot). Seamab is then the obvious and rather shapely target, and from there a Woodland Trust path system gets you down to Muckhart pretty directly – again it would be worth recceing this section beforehand.
AlisonFox66 wrote:it took me around 8 hours in summer when I was younger
A couple of other Ochil regulars and I once did a traverse that took in every 600m bump we could find. We counted 23 of them, including some that are so minor that you’d hardly notice they were there – Ben Buck Far SW Top, Ben Cleuch NW Top, Whitewisp SE Top and so on. Took us just over eight hours – walking steadily but not rushing, and with a couple of proper snack stops en route. Good day out.
