free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
Well that's it done, had one final blue balloon on my Angus sub-2000 map and it is finally ticked off. Certainly the worst of the Angus subs, possibly the worst hill I've ever done and I've done a lot of the lower-ranking hills
I had my route planned, but had to change because there was a notice saying the track to the left was closed with motion activated CCTV warnings, another sign said the route was blocked. Fine, I'll go the other way...
Aside from the flies the initial walk on the track was fine, taking the left fork at a gate all the while looking to see if there was a good way up but with new plantations and fallen trees nothing appealed. After a couple of failed investigations, we found a 'track' that cut across to a wall and followed that up initially through thick heather which was hard going but then it became more grassy. Spotted a fence post on the left with what looked like a start of a very narrow path but initially continued to follow the wall a bit further but fallen trees made it impassable. Okay, post route it is then...
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- start of the route up
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- Zena spots the wall
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- The random post
I don't think it was a path, but we made our way through among the small trees feeling like giving up numerous times but we continued on eventually reaching a slightly better track and following that towards more mature forest. Here there were two tracks, the first looked blocked with fallen trees just a short way along but the second looked clearer so we took that one. Should have just looked for ways around the trees, eventually we were driven into the forest by the sheer number of flies. Among the trees it was fly-free and we found a forest ride, two actually there seemed to be another running parallel to it, and followed that. It felt that we were going the wrong way, but the GPS on my phone showed it was the track I wanted to be on. There were a few fallen trees to navigate around but this bit was good going and we soon reached more open moorland. Other reports mentioned a faint path, we didn't find it so just headed off through the heather and geez the flies! So many flies! They were driving me mad! And of course for whatever reason my shoe lace had to keep coming undone and no matter how I tied it, it just did it again!
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- trying to photograph the view...
Eventually we did reach the summit. Few quick photos before we were surrounded by even more flies and then it was trying to figure out how to get down again. The easiest way would have been to head west to where we could see the track we had originally planned to be on but the signs at the start of the walk...so we followed a path down to the east looking for a way through the trees. Eventually we found a nice firebreak which led down to a wall, but the next one was heading in the wrong direction. We could however see the track below and headed down first over a gassy stretch then there was some clambering over fallen trees to eventually reach it. What a relief!
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- Zena at the summit
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- Another of Zena at the summit
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- Zena
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- Zena and the flies
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- the nice bit through the forest
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- Finding the way down
I have to say this is one I'm not likely to repeat!
