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With a late afternoon engagement looming, Hill of Fare fit the bill perfectly for a reasonably short walk close to Aberdeen.
The walk starts at a small layby by the busy A980 and soon passes the beautiful building of Raemoir Lodge.
Tracks lead steadily but fairly gradually up the hillside to the expansive plateau. It's a fairly barren place, but the conditions underfoot were good (not boggy at all) and the weather was too.
A little spur of track heads off towards the summit, which is located slightly off the path in the middle of deep heather. Keep an eye on the map for where to turn off though and it wasn't difficult to find. From the summit (and the rest of the plateau) much of eastern Aberdeenshire is visible, including Deeside, Bennachie and the ever-present Seaton Flats in Aberdeen. Someone really should have thought about how many hills they would be visible from before granting planning permission!
After doubling back to the previous track junction, we continued clockwise around the plateau "circuit", which was by now surprisingly busy - in fact, busier than every other hill we've climbed in Scotland! Plenty of walkers out and about, and some cyclists too.
The track eventually descended out of the chilly wind, winding through forestry back towards the start. An attractive old quarry was passed on the way, now flooded. The ground was littered with what looked like small, hard raspberries - but were actually immature pine cones, which we later saw on the trees as well. A drizzly rain shower passed by near the end, but we were sheltered by the trees and it didn't amount to more than a few spots in the rain.
By the time we got back to the car, the sizeable layby was full - with half-a-dozen cars packed in. So the advice would be, unexpectedly for an un-dramatic sub-2000 footer on a cloudy, cold day: get there early to get a space!
This was certainly a worthwhile walk though - definitely worth a trip from the granite city.
