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As both myself and my walking companion for the day are below that magical age where the government allows you to drive yourself about we have to arrange for others to give lifts or walk with us. In this case we managed to wrangle a lift to the Pentlands for a continued version of the last walk we did (last walk report).
We set off at about 09:30 and were in the car park and ready to go by 10:00. The first third of the route we have done before and has a well trodden path along its tops. As we had started fairly early there were few others walking and it was nice and quiet for the first bit. The path heads out of the carpark behind the toilets and through a small clump of trees for perhaps two hundred meters before crossing a small road and heading of towards the hill. You leave the main track after a few hundred meters and ascend a small bank up onto the shoulder of Turnhouse. The views back from here were certainly improved form last time when the clouds had been scraping over our heads.
- The view back from the ascent of Turnhouse
From there you pass through a small clump of trees and walk along the side of a secondary summit until the last short push onto the top. Just before we reached the summit it started to rain so we donned the waterproofs only to have it finish within a minute. Once at the top the views really open out. The view along to the next hill, Carenethy, and along to the last hill of the day, Allermuir, are excellent.
- The view from Turnhouse back to the last hill of the day, Allermuir.
The walk over to Carenethy is quick and fairly painless. There is little drop in height, only about 130 feet if I remember correctly and it is not too distant. The summit of Carenthey has a rather large bronze age cairn of about 20m in diameter and 3m or so deep in the center from my guess. The veiw are great back towards Turnhouse and on towards Scald law.
- The cairn on Carenethy.
- Looking back to Turnhouse
- Looking onwards to Scald law, the highest point of the walk.
There is a fairly long and flat descent to the bottom of scald law, the highest point of the pentlands and the walk. The climb up is steep and seems far longer than it ever looked from the bottom but the path zig-zags a fair amount so you cover a greater distance. The summit of Scald law is fairly flat and also boast a trig point, one of two on the walk. From there the path goes down the side of the hill slightly and makes for the bottom of east kip.
- East and West kip from just after the summit of Scald law
From there the climb up east kip is very short and far from as steep as it looks from the base. The is a short walk and then to West kip where the summit is surprisingly rocky compared to the surrounding hills. As we descended from West kip to meet up with a path that crosses the Pentlands we were nearly blown off our feet and quickly descended to the relative calm of the plateau. We followed this path for about a mile until just after it crosses a small burn; a faint path leads to the summit of Hare hill. Hare is completely unremarkable except for the fact it has three summit cairns within fifty feet of each other and a sixty foot wide and ten deep depression between the three.
- The three summit Cairns of Hare hill with depression hidden behind the rise in center front of picture.
After descending off hare you meet up with a large path that goes between hare and black hill. As there is no path to the summit of Black hill from the direction we approached it from and the side is very steep for at least two hundred meters we made the inanely stupid idea to ascend via a gully filled with looses stones and heather. If you look at the picture below you will notice a nice green slope beside a small stream in the right of shot, I have no idea how we missed this as the obvious route of ascent but we did. If you ever approach black hill from the same side as us DO NOT use the same route as us. It took us nearly twenty minutes of slipping and cursing to reach the top with a fair few scraped knuckles.
- The side of Black hill we had to ascend.
- The rock flow on the left is the one we ascended by.
After that it appeared to be an eternity of wading through heather until we reached the summit of black hill. You could be forgiven for missing the summit as the cairn has a measly seven stones in it and wouldn't trip a blind man running for his life. There is thankfully a path leading off black hill which provides nice easy walking. We decided to pass on the summit of Bell hill as it was getting on by this point and we wanted to finish. From there Harbor is equally small and uninteresting apart from the view down to a small loch with an almost perfect hexagon of Sitka spruces around it.
The climb onto Capelaw is rewarding in that it is short and that you get brilliant views back down the ridge. The hills of Turnhouse, Carenethy, Scald Law, East and West kip all for the most wonderful line from this vantage point.
- Looking back at all the hills so far.
An annotated version of the above picture
- Same picture with the hills labeled
From here we raced round the last hill Allermuir, as our lift was setting of to pick us up. The main path goes below Allermuir so we raced up it, stood at the top just long enough to get blown off our feet again and raced back down past the firing ranges and back to the carpark. It took us eight hours in total with at least an hour to eat our lunches so seven to do the route. All in all a very enjoyable day out with good weather for most of the way round. If only it will stay like this for my munro's in a few weeks time.
