Lockdown - 9 west Fife Tumps almost equal a munro

[Fife Flyer]

This is my first post for quite a while, lockdown and restrictions are affecting our everyday life. Living in Fife we don't have any big hills and having climbed all the Marilyns I suggested to George why don't we try something different - TUMPS. As there are no Tumps listed on here I enrolled on Hill Bagging and was gobsmacked how many Tumps there are in Fife alone. This is all new to us, so plenty of planning is required. Once the hills have been identified I then utilise the GPS system on here to plot my routes, then download them onto my phone and then onto the Viewranger App.
Last week we ventured into Pitmedden Forest in North Fife & tackled 4 Tumps in the local area.
So onto today, the plan was to tackle 9 different hills, which I thought was ambitious especially at this time of year.
The hills in the order we climbed them:

Bandrum, 225m
Saline Hill, 359m
Easter Cairn, 355m
Knockhill, 364m
Cult Hill, 264m
Outh Hill, 324m
Park Hill, 339m
Georgeton Hills, 349m
Wether Hill, 335m

Yes I know they aren't huge and you can see by the total ascent that we didn't even reach 900m. We knew parking would be a problem so we limited the amount of driving. We arranged to meet at Knockhill at 9am and drove round to Steelend.


Started off by parking in the empty car park at Saline Golf Club before plodding gently up the fairway


Car park with the Ochils in the background


Bit of old machinery on display


One of the greens looking in good nick


A cairn but not the summit


Cairn inscription


Looking out across the Forth


Looking across to what would be our next 3 targets


Looking to Knockhill from the summit stone on Bandrum


Saline Hill our next port of call


After descending down to the road through Steelend we walked past the football ground then turned left towards the trio of hills


Gorse seems to be a common obstacle on the smaller hills


We are aiming for the white patch to the left of the gully


Mushy tufty wet grass to pick our way through


Looking back to Steelend & Bandrum which is where the few trees are


The way ahead


Luckily we didn't have to climb over the deer fence


Not far to the summit of Saline Hill


Looking east, the smoke from Mossmorran (near Cowdenbeath) can be seen


Looking down on Steelend and Bandrum from Saline Hill


Looking from the cairn on Saline Hill to our next 2 targets


Looking westish, Ochils on the right


Saline Hill cairn


The Ochils with a nice dusting


Descending off Saline Hill


The lower approaches to Easter Craig, thought we might have to scramble but we didn't


Looking back


Approaching the summit of Easter Cairn & guess what - there is no cairn


Looking across to what would be our final hill Wether Hill, just poking up through the forest


Next on the menu - Knockhill, we opted to stay to the right of the wall/fence


After a short descent we had to cross the mush before ascending Knockhill


Indicates how steep it gets, but the good news is it doesn't last for very long


George getting his breath and admiring the views, looking back to Easter Cairn


The snow line on the Ochils is very clear


Knockhill trig accompanied by a few masts and buildings. Any idea why that mast is pink?


This is for our absent colleague who is not allowed in the Kingdom - Parminder


Knockhill Racing Circuit in the background


Scotland's premier racing circuit


We followed the access road down initially which was very icy and then opted for the direct route down


Now we are ascending Cult Hill, there is space for one carefully parked car


Cult Hill trig can be seen for miles, first obstacle is the field


Any suggestions as to what vegetable the stalks belonged to?


The sheep must have been in the field and to vary the diet they were given a few turnips. A nice change from grass everyday


George head down for the gradual ascent, watching out for icy patches


Wall & fence to climb over


Not far now, George is homing in on the trig


Here you are Parminder - just for you


Wether Hill is the pointy bit above the forest


Looking across to a smaller summit nearby

After Cult Hill, ideally we would have called at Wether Hill, but there were 2 cars already parked and as the parking is probably limited to 3 we headed back to Knockhill to park safely.


We are now heading up Outh Hill - the first of 3 on this leg, a couple of gates to climb over


We left the cars at Knockhill entrance and rather than walk along the main road we opted to take the scenic route


Gained a bit of height, looking back towards the racing circuit


We came across plenty of these manmade ridges?


The summit of Outh Hill, not very exciting


Looking to our next 2 hills in the distance


The way up Park Hill


A slightly more exciting summit - Park Hill


Loch Glow in the distance, part of Dumglow on the left


Dumglow looking rather impressive


Looking back across the tufty stuff with Knockhill in the distance


Georgeton Hills, looks like a few undulations to enjoy


Looks like an ATV track going up to the summit, that will do nicely


Dumglow and Loch Glow - looking a bit frozen


The summit of Georgeton Hills

George & I discussed the way back to our cars, we didn't fancy retracing our steps. Ideally we wanted to try and keep a bit of height to avoid the low level mush. We decided to follow the ATV track and hopefully it would take us in the right direction.


The ATV track went through this gap in the wall, we had to limbo underneath the wires - not sure how a vehicle gets through?


Old ruined building


We descended down that, avoiding the rocky bits


The track we were following


There were 3 of these wee bridges


There were a few visible holes in the bridges


We were a bit surprised and shocked to come across this wiggly electric cable, it certainly wasn't there an hour ago when we climbed over the gate


We carefully unhooked the cable and scaled the gate, then rehooked it up


We are now onto our 9th and final hill, Wether Hill - this is the limited parking area, the gate has to be kept clear for access, there were fresh vehicle tracks in the snow


The track through the forest for Wether Hill


Won't be long till we leave the track


Off piste now, following a fence uphill


Into the forest very soon


The wall was probably built long before the trees were planted


Exiting the forest, definitely one of our easier forestry walks


Looking back down on the forest from just below the summit


Looking across to Knockhill, summit of Wether Hill offers great views


Arty shot looking towards the Forth


The Ochils


Camera photo zoomed of Loch Leven and West Lomond

This was another cracking day, I enjoyed the planning and research involved and as lockdown is continuing for a few more weeks yet I am now in possession of the OS map for Fife. Our next outing will hopefully involve picking off the rest of the Tumps west of the M90 as there are still eleven, some will be an absolute doddle the rest watch this space.

[IreneM]

Very interesting walk report Martin. Lockdown has certainly made us explore our local area to discover new walks.

I admit I had to check the map for a couple of the lesser known lumps though

[parminder]

BRAW,,,,

[Sgurr]

Very interesting. When I did the Fife Marilyns in a day Dave Hewitt pointed out that someone had done TEN Fife Hills which included Saline ad Knock, which I have done, but so long ago as to barely remember. If you were JUST doing Saline and Knock (I would then drive on to Benarty) which way would you do them? Had thought of parking atNT055942 (is there public access in a car?), Walking directly up Knock across to Easter Cairn and then Saline and cutting back down after Easter on the return where a path seems to go round Knock. From what I can remember/see this would be mostly on footpaths. Was yours on rough ground at all? Any comments? Might try to add these next time if there is one, but am prob. too old.

[Fife Flyer]

Very interesting. When I did the Fife Marilyns in a day Dave Hewitt pointed out that someone had done TEN Fife Hills which included Saline ad Knock, which I have done, but so long ago as to barely remember. If you were JUST doing Saline and Knock (I would then drive on to Benarty) which way would you do them? Had thought of parking atNT055942 (is there public access in a car?), Walking directly up Knock across to Easter Cairn and then Saline and cutting back down after Easter on the return where a path seems to go round Knock. From what I can remember/see this would be mostly on footpaths. Was yours on rough ground at all? Any comments? Might try to add these next time if there is one, but am prob. too old.

We parked in Saline Golf Club car park, walked up the golf course to the summit of Bandrum. We then headed down towards the main road through Steelend, walked along the footpath and headed into the scrub just before the football pitch. Then we headed up through gorse. over a fence and kept to the right of a deer fence that was protecting a new plantation, from there it was straight up Saline Hill. Accessing Knockhill from Saline Hill takes you over Easter Cairn but once again there are 2 barbed wire fences "deterring" humans from trying the direct route to Knockhill. We continued almost all the way to Steelend farm before climbing a single fence and then wading through mushy ground. Ideally leave another car at Knockhill and then just walk down the access track to the masts from the racing circuit.

[Sgurr]

If I can get husband to chauffeur as last time, I can just walk over. Looks as if I might need to take a mat to get over the fences.