free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
This Sub was a sidekick walk to one of our unsuccessful crash site searches. A good "quickie in the neighbourhood" if you have a couple of hours to spare. It is possible to access Hill of the Wangie from the south, from the village of Dallas, but Kevin again used his knowledge of local roads and tracks and suggested the northern approach. We hoped the track up the northern side of the hill would take us closer to the illusive trigpoint, but we still had to do some forest trashing to find the summit. A different kind of entertainment
At the start of the forest track:
It was a lovely, sunny day but very windy. A large chunk of the forest higher up the hill had been felled and replanted, so at the moment, views to the north are pretty decent:
The Loosiemouth Lighthouse on the horizon:
Zoomed:
If you want to experience looking at the world from high above... here is your chance!
We reached a sharp bend in the track, now we were as close to the summit as we could get without tree-bashing (about300m). The next move was to find our way through recently replanted area of conifers.
This way!
The first 150m through the young pines were not too bad, we managed to negotiate it without twisting our ankles...
Next, we had to do some proper forest trashing, bent in half
No wonder I look confused here
Through the dense forest, we reached another felled area, this one still not replanted. The lonely trig point in the middle looked sad and out of place. We hopped over the bumpy terrain to the trig, where Lucy posed for her 17th Sub (our 49th):
The summit of Whangie is such a disappointment. There are no views as the surrounding forest covers everything. Just piles of dead wood everywhere...
...and countless wind turbines on the nearby Cairn Uish:
We snapped a few photos and decided to leave this sad, depressing summit immediately. Retraced our steps through what was left of the forest back to the comfortable track, where views were nice and walking easy:
A typical view of rural Moray:
I think Hill of the Wangie proves my theory that there are Subs nobody would visit if they were not on the Marylin list. It is sad indeed. We only climbed it because we were in the neighbourhood anyway and had some time to spare. Maybe a walking-cycling combination of this top with the nearby Burgiehill (a Sub you can almost drive up) would make it attractive to some...
In my next story we will travel deep into the autumnal Cairngorms and visit a forgotten Corbett which should be on every hillwalker's list. TR in progress, tors included
