A very Good Friday in the Shire

[Graeme D]

I had messaged Allan a few weeks ago to see whether he and his young lad Harris fancied joining Ailsa and myself for a day walk the second week of the Easter fortnight. We would be on Arran for most of the first week but I could do with something to distract Ailsa from her phone for at least one day of the second week. Allan replied that Harris was fully booked for the second week but they'd be up for doing something on either Good Friday or Easter Monday, that something being specifically the south Aberdeenshire Sub2Ks of Strathfinella Hill, Kerloch and Cairn-mon-earn. We settled on Good Friday and arranged to meet at the large car park at North Drumtochty woods on the north side of the minor road through Strathfinella between Clatterin' Brig and Auchenblae.

Part 1 - Strathfinella Hill
Time taken - 2.4 hours
Distance - 4.6km
Ascent - 270m

Allan pulled in about 5 minutes after me and we quickly decided to head southwest back down the road to start from the grassy track leading into Holeglen Wood a short distance north east of Loch Saugh. I had recognised this on the drive in as being the spot where McMole started this hill in 2019, having found it to be a better option than the gated track a short distance further west from where Rodmeister had set off a couple of years prior to that for a walk through the woods with his grandchildren that was still a pale imitation of anything that the infamous Crock could offer back in the day!

A recreation of McMole's photo from 5 years ago

I blame the kids for the fact that we carried on up the path into the woods rather than through the gate to our right, which, we discovered on the descent, would have given us a more straightforward ascent route on a grassy track up through the open moorland beneath the pylons.

It's the kids fault! Either that or the dog!

We soon decided to leave the path, which was turning left and deeper into the woods, and to cross the burn and scramble up a steep bank of bracken on the other side, which soon led us to a deer fence. We followed this until we reached a new looking gate in the fence near the end of a track coming in from the woods to our left. This track may or may not have been where we ended up if we had stayed on the path in the woods earlier.

Short sharp ascent through tick hell

Looking north from the gate

Once through the gate we cut the corner of the open ground through an area that looked like it might recently have been planted. BrewDog may or may not have been responsible (private joke for the benefit of Nathan!)

If only BrewDog did forestry!

This lead us to another gate and path through a firebreak over the crest of the hill. After a few hundred yards or so we crossed a path where a left turn would lead us east on another firebreak path that ran just south of the summit, or at least what passes for a summit on this hill.

Path over the crest of the hill

Left turn into the Death Zone

This path was quite snowy in places and Ailsa and Harris had some fun in the snow, although we did remind them that the Death Zone was no place to be hanging about any longer than necessary. You wouldn't have seen Hillary and Tenzing making snowmen on their way to the summit back in '53! It might even have been Scott's undoing on his ill-fated attempt at the pole in 1912!

Do you wanna build a snowman?

We were quite surprised to hear voices behind us and turned to see another group closing in on us. Damn those pesky Norwegians!!! We implored the kids to redouble their efforts and be the first to plant the flag at the trig point. This seemed to do the trick and get them moving again!

One more left turn led us to the airy summit perch at 8488m with expansive views across China to the north and Nepal to the south. The Norwegians knew they were beaten and walked on past in dejection!

Views are perhaps obscured by the shadow of itself that the vast mountain is casting

I'm sure that had there been a trig and the tech had existed, Hilary and Tenzing would have been all over it taking selfies and slowmo videos just like us!

Some would call it blurry, I'd call it arty!

Harris wondering when it will be his turn!

The photographic evidence that we all made it!

Once we had had a bite of lunch and the kids had jumped off the trig pillar from every conceivably angle, we set off retracing our steps back to the top gate. Allan had looked at the routes on the three hills we had in mind and thought that Kerloch was probably a bit too much for Harris. Time was marching on anyway and the sun seemed to have made itself scarce. Maybe we'd had the best of the day!

Back at the gate with overcast skies above

There were tears at the gate when a gate swinging exercise went slightly wrong but there was no need for Caberfeidh to be called to perform an amputation and we were able to continue our way down the tussocky, open hillside with all limbs present and correct. Once under the power lines, we found the grassy track that led us back to the gate a short distance up the path from our parking spot.

Almost back at the cars (behind the tall trees)

Back at the cars we agreed to meet up at the start point for Cairn-mon-earn and went our separate ways, Ailsa and I over the Cairn o' Mount and Allan and Harris the other way round in search of a suitable place to do a bit of impromptu gardening!

Part 2 - Cairn-mon-earn
Time taken - 1.8 hours
Distance - 2.1km
Ascent - 180m

Allan was parked up in the layby just north of the start of the track into Durris Forest, the start point mentioned on the Cairn-mon-earn hill page on here. He had checked out a report by WalkingWithKids which took a short way up from the road straight up a firebreak right to the summit. The parking area up the track seemed to be closed due to use by construction traffic so we left the cars in the layby and took to the firebreak.

Starting up the firebreak from the A957

The path (there was one) went off into the trees before re-emerging into the firebreak a short distance later.

Path through the trees

Back into the firebreak

It had been a bit cold and overcast when we were coming off Strathfinella Hill but by the time we could see the hardware at the summit of Cairn-mon-earn the sun was back out and the temperature back up. The path became a bit sketchy the higher up the firebreak we went but the way ahead was clearly obvious!

Easy going overhead, tough going underfoot

Shortly before the summit the firebreak opened out into a cleared area and the path curved round to the sprawling, bouldery summit with its masts and concreted areas suggesting that there used to be more hardware than there is these days.

Tweedles Dee and Dum with views across the North Sea coast

Tweedles and Faithers

We had a chat with a local couple who were regular visitors to this summit with their dog before retracing our steps back to the layby and heading for home.

More trig climbing

Adding a few more centimetres to the height of the hill before heading home

It had been a wonderful day with Allan and Harris and a great start to the Easter holidays. We agreed that we would have to organise another Aberdeenshire Sub2K day out, possibly in the summer holidays if not before. Kerloch had escaped us after all and a quick look at the bagging map showed a veritable Aladdins Cave of subbies in this neck of the woods.