Burgiehill on Boxing Day

[HighlandSC]

163
Date - Sat 26/12/2009
Hills - Burgiehill (254m)
Route - Parked at NJ101580 and began walking SE up the track. To add a bit of length to the walk I turned left at NJ104572 and walked just over 1km NE up the track before turning right at NJ114578 and right again at NJ115576 and walked SW along the track until it joins the road at NJ102568. Cross the road and continue SW on the track. Turn left at NJ097566 and follow the track to the summit masts/trig point. On the return I retraced steps back to the road and turned left for a brief walk down the road before turning right back onto the track at NJ101570. Continue and turn left at NJ104572 for the final downhill track back to car.
Weather - Cold and clear.
People - Me
Time - 3 Hours
Distance - 10km
Ascent - 160m
Max Altitude - 254m

200912261150burgiehillcompletetrack.gpx Open full screen  NB: Walkhighlands is not responsible for the accuracy of gpx files in users posts

As I was staying at my parents near Forres over Christmas I took the oppurtunity to escape on Boxing Day and took a jaunt up Burgiehill. I've never really walked in this forest but know the area/roads like the back of my hand, this being my home ground.

It was a fairly relaxed, easy walk through the forest tracks with a few oppurtunites along the way for a brief view over Forres/Findhorn/Burghead/Moray Firth. A laugh was provided by a couple of skiers going down one of the tracks - one of them fell over and did a nice uncontrolled roll down the hill before coming to a stop. Don't think he was too chuffed to look up and see me about 50m laughing at him and taking a pic! (unfortunately I seem to have mistakenly deleted the pic of him lying on the deck - I'm annoyed at that!).

After the walk I took a drive to the nearby Califer Viewpoint (NJ083571) for a proper view of the area.

Loads of pheasants, as usual, mulling around on these roads


As shown above, the roads were fairly clear, but it was problematic parking on the untreated bits. A few back and forths I managed to get the car off the road enough


Let's see how good you can make forest tracks look....




Now where'd I put my sun lotion?


Mother made me sandwiches for this trip , but first I got stuck into the Jelly Beans provided by Santa [Beware of the pomegranate ones ]


Burghead. Black Isle across the Moray Firth




??


The Moon






ViewRanger GPS on my mobile doing it's job perfectly - not far from all the masts!!. If you have a GPS enabled mobile phone this is an option worth considering.


Summit masts


Trig point lurking behind the mast enclosure. As this was an easy walk I used it as another oppurtunity for big pack carrying training


On the way back after walk down the road a little you get back on to a track offering nice views over the Moray Firth




Findhorn

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Califer Viewpoint

califerviewpoint.gpx Open full screen  NB: Walkhighlands is not responsible for the accuracy of gpx files in users posts

And one from a day of rather different weather...








Looking South back toward Burgiehill - you can see the mast

[Paul Webster]

I know someone who lives near Califer hill and wanted to see your ski pic to see if it was them

Thanks for the report, good to get first ones in on Marilyns. Especially good with the gps track OS map as it actually makes a good route description for other baggers heading this way.

[HighlandSC]

It looked like a mother and son perhaps? It was the young lad that crashed. I've rescued the pic from my recycle bin but you can't make out who it is.
1230 26/12/09


I think this is their car:



The gps track I get from ViewRanger is fine to overlay on a map visually, but I think they'd be far to rough to follow again as a route on a gps, I presume it's just my phone/viewranger but I get spikes and loss of signal all the time - most of the one's I upload on trip reports have been manually edited to fill in gaps/remove ridiculous errors.

[mountain coward]

I thought being on your bum a lot was expected if you're skiing! I can never understand how they manage it at all! I certainly couldn't...

I love that area - I used to visit that coast a lot and camp in my car at the old airfield at Findhorn. I also spent some time at RAF Kinloss and Lossiemouth - I preferred the latter for RAF stations, but I suppose Kinloss is in a much nicer spot really.

[HighlandSC]

I lived the first 12 years of my life in Kinloss (Dad in RAF), then Forres until fairly recently, so I've spent a lot of time in the area and many many days in Findhorn...

















I'm probably biased but I'd much rather stay in Kinloss closer to that than Lossiemouth, although Lossie is still nice! Beach not as good but a nice coastal area all the same. We used to go 'boy racing' in Lossie on Sundays and get ice cream Oh and the par 3 wee golf course at Covesea was good Although it'd never beat a good beach party, big fire, loads of drink, nonsense going on behind sand dunes ....fortunately those were in the pre-everyone-has-a-camera-phone days!

[mountain coward]

"nonsense going on behind sand dunes" I've got a couple of nice sunset pics of Findhorn Bay I'll try to remember to put on here when I'm online at home after these nightshifts...

[foggieclimber]

Did this hill today and found your report useful, thanks.
I did shorter walk though parking near NJ102568.
Lots of snow.


Few photos below:

[mountain coward]

Just adding my 2 Findhorn calm harbour in the evening shots:

[HighlandSC]

Very nice

[mountain coward]

That poor tunnelling dog in the previous shots must have been absolutely knackered by the end of the walk!

[foggieclimber]

That poor tunnelling dog in the previous shots must have been absolutely knackered by the end of the walk!

He wasn't too bad as he was following a tunnel made by me. I was knackered