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Strangely enough (or maybe not strangely enough), it's only now that I've been able to motivate myself to write up this outing from the depths of First Lockdown, in late May 2020.
At this stage, as we all no doubt remember all too well, there were significant restrictions on our daily lives (well, for those of us who weren't Boris Johnson, anyway

), and it wasn't permitted to travel out of one's own council area - which wasn't too handy for me, since my council area is East Dunbartonshire which is about as mountainous as the average pancake or doormat

... However, on looking at the small print of the Scottish Government guidance on outdoors activities, it turned out that one could actually walk outside one's own council area, as long as the start and finish points of the walk were inside one's own council area. That did put the S2K Marilyn of Duncolm just about within reach: not the most exciting of peaks, and I'd done it before, but still and all - when Life hands you lemons, you chuck them straight back at Life's face, as hard as you can manage...
So, Groundhog Day. Duncolm from my front door, again. This was towards the end of that spectacular run of weather that Scotland enjoyed during First Lockdown, and that did make those two or three months a lot more bearable than they'd have been otherwise. I set out nice and early from my own front door in Milngavie, feeling a wee bit like Bilbo Baggins, although hopefully my day wasn't going to involve a dragon, talking birds or the Ring of Power - that wouldn't be Plan A, anyway. As on the last occasion when I bagged Duncolm from my front door, back on a very wet January day in 2015, I firstly made use of the popular Cattle Creep under the Milngavie railway line:
I made my way through Milngavie, eventually heading out of the village in the direction of Low Craigton. Almost as soon as I left the outskirts of Milngavie, things were already starting to look surprisingly bucolic:
By the time I reached the hamlet of Low Craigton, the surroundings had become even more bucolic:
I crossed the A809 and headed along the northern of the two tracks to Tambowie Farm, passing the farm buildings and eventually forking north uphill under a line of pylons towards the forestry visible at the top of the hill.
When I reached the south-eastern corner of the forestry, there was a nice view back south over Glasgow:
As I'd remembered from my January 2015 outing, there is a narrow strip of grass between the south edge of the forestry and a barbed wire fence, and this grassy strip can pretty much be walked all the way west to Maiden Paps and the Jaw Reservoir, although it is pathless, intermittently boggy and also occasionally encroached on by the forestry, so that there were several Man Versus Spruce moments as I made my way along (Spruce won on points, I'd say

!).
Eventually, however, I reached the western edge of the forestry, with Maiden Paps and the Jaw Reservoir dead ahead.
After negotiating a couple of barbed wire fences, I got another fine view south over Glasgow from the larger Pap:
There was a pleasing vista westwards towards the Jaw Reservoir:
...And yes, Duncolm itself was now visible in the distance, over to the right of the reservoir! When I was last here in 2015, I could barely see the reservoir itself through the relentless sheets of rain, so I hadn't realised that Duncolm was such a distinctive wee hill.
There is a good ongoing path along the south edge of the Jaw Reservoir, as far as the boathouse at the southern end of the narrow strip that divides the reservoir from Cochno Loch:
Beyond the boathouse, however, there is just a much rougher path that traverses the steep southern flanks of Cochno Loch, eventually fizzling out at the western corner of the loch. This was the view back eastwards:
Now, as I remembered from 2015, this is where this route really gets interesting, with some very rough and pathless terrain between Cochno Loch and Duncolm. On a fine summer's day like today, it wasn't quite as bad as it had been back in 2015, but it still wasn't pleasant - in fact, this is probably some of the roughest terrain that I've ever had the dubious pleasure of walking, anywhere in Scotland!
First of all there was a deer fence to negotiate:
Then ... endless tussocky bog, interspersed with wee birch trees. I made fairly slow work of it, although Duncolm was growing steadily closer...
A bit more bush-whacking, and I eventually (and to my considerable relief) joined the good path that leads up to Duncolm from Hardgate via Greenside Reservoir.
The final ascent up the volcanic plug (presumably) of Duncolm itself was fairly steep, but the path made fairly light work of it, and soon enough I was up at the summit trig point, which boasted surprisingly good views northwards towards the (Arrochar) Alps and the Bonny Banks.
Me in my sexy brown hat:
Looking westwards I think, with a glimpse of sea in the distance:
...And looking south-east over Glasgow:
Time to head back down, however. Thankfully my return route was much more straightforward then my pathless approach: I just followed the path that leads all the way down to Hardgate via the north-eastern corner of Greenside Reservoir.
Loch Humphrey (I think) visible in the distance now. There is another good route I believe that approaches Duncolm from Bowling via Loch Humphrey, but unless - God forbid - there's ever another lockdown, I doubt that I'll ever attempt that route.
Greenside Reservoir visible now, with another line of pylons:
From here on, it was a straightforward stoat down to Hardgate, followed by a rather less pleasant road walk all the way back to Milngavie.
Well, this walk was pretty much the only show in town at the time, and on the whole it was none too shabby, I suppose

.