Couple of easy marilyns - Cairn Table and Common Hill

[gld73]

Another day off from COP26, so another chance to do the next couple of nearest hills to where I was staying in East Kilbride after Nutberry Hill and Middlefield Law last week. A beautiful crisp, clear, cool day, perfect for hill walking; in other circumstances it'd have been good to do a proper mountain, but I made do with another 2 small hills, Cairn Table and Common Hill.

Cairn Table
2.2hrs 10.2km 400m
I hadn't realised when I did last week's 2 hills that this one was so close by. Even as I drove down into Muirkirk from the north side I could see the large cairn on top of Cairn Table, and it didn't look like it would be a long walk up. I parked in the walkers car park at Kames and could have done the circular walk as per the WH route, also marked on the map in the car park - but I decided to use the same route up and down as it was a bit longer, plus avoided the notoriously wet and boggy initial stretch of the direct route up. So, instead of taking the path from the car park towards the hill, I went back to the road and continued up past the golf course, following the lane past the information boards about John Loudon McAdam and then the large memorial cairn in his honour.

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The track continues on; a good footbridge goes off to the right over the river, that's the right of way to Sanquhar. I stayed on the track for a short distance after passing it, then just before the track fords the river, took a worn path up through the vegetation on the left, marked with a waymarker pole. The path is wet and muddy in places, not surprising after all the heavy rain last week, but all manageable in hiking boots. It gets stonier and widens, continuing at an easy gradient all the way up to the huge cairn and trig point at the summit. No-one else in sight despite the beautiful weather. Taking in the views, I considered at this point doing a return route over the hill to the west, but decided against it when I remembered I'd only taken one bottle of water with me and didn't have much left already. Return was therefore by the same route, which at least meant I got back to the car with dry feet.

Information signs beside the track say it's where McAdam practised his road building techniques and materials

Memorial cairn to McAdam at the site of his tar works, Cairn Table in the background

Summit area of Cairn Table

Cairn Table trig point, looking over to Common Hill (I think. It was in amongst wind turbines somewhere over there anyway)

Common Hill
2.3hrs 12km 395m

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It would have been easy to park at the windfarm entrance, but to add an extra mile each way to this short, straightforward hill walk, I parked in the village car park to start from the centre of Douglas instead, walking back west through the village and taking the road toward the wind farm. Could have done this route in trainers, the tarmac road goes straight into the the good wind farm track, and this track is followed all the way up to its high point. A short distance up the branch to the right from here gives a few more metres on good track before popping up on to the grass once you've got to wind turbine no.9, where the trig point is just a few metres from the track.

Entrance to Hagshaw Hill wind farm, could park here if you want to make the walk as short as possible.

View of Tinto through the wind turbines from Common Hill summit

I don't know which hill in Scotland can claim title to being the one from which the most wind turbines can be seen, but Common Hill is in with a chance. On a clear day like this, I could see hundreds of them (literally), there were wind farms in every direction, near and far. At least there was just enough of a breeze today for many of the turbines to be turning.

Returned the same way.