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Tinto is one of those hills I feel inadequate not ever having clambered up. There are some hills that you feel you should have walked. When you start getting into the pleasures of clambering up hills and you talk to hardened enthusiasts the names are bandied about so often that you quake with embarrassment as the admission finally escapes that....er....well...I haven’t....yet...done that! I ‘m thinking of Schiehallion (conquered only in September after 4 years walking), The Cobbler (yup, done it), Ben Ledi (nope!) or Ben Nevis (saving it for when I have 2 or 3 days spare to go up to Fort Bill and nothing planned).
Then about 4 years ago whilst spending the best year of my life working in Manchester and commuting there and back from Glasgow I began to get excited looking out the window of the train and picking out favourite views. Initially it was the sharp clean features of Atkinsons Pike on Blencathra, The Golf Ball on top of Cross Fell or the lovely gouged out bit between Skiddaw and Little Man Skiddaw. But pretty quickly the big beacon of Tinto Hill took over as the train slipped around 3 sides of its glorious sprawling bulk.
So I was especially pleased when my friend wanted to lead me on a walk and said that she had always had her eye on Tinto. She had always liked the name “Fire Mountain” which Tinto means due to a reddish tinge to it. I had done some research to try and impress her.
“That’s a load of Fersite”
“No its true” she said, “I read it in a book”
“Fersite sandstone” I explained. “Gives it the reddish colouration”
The intention was to use it as an intro to Walk Leading and Navigation. Now I know what you are all thinking....Tinto has a path, it goes straight up, you then go straight down. But that is not the point...All of us, even us Big Rough Tough Mountainy types started navigating somewhere and I pretty confidently predict that it wasn’t on a fogbound An Teallach with a broken leg and shaking a compass held to our ear screaming “I can’t hear anything it isn’t working!”
And I am always...always really pleased to go out walking with people and get them used to features on the map.Tinto is a very good hill in my book for showing how contours relate to the ground under your feet and all around you with the variations in gradient of the path, as well as the spurs that jut out to the west side, the scree ridden slope of Maurice’s Cleuch.Oh and did I mention that both of my companions were jolly nice lady women type persons too!
We took the roundabout route down the M74 towards Abington, wondering if we had actually gone too far. I should explain. Most of my walking has been north of Fort Bill, in Kintail and Wester Ross. That and the fact that whether walking their summits or driving through them, I find many of the Southern Uplands rather samey, smooth round, grassy, tussocky if shapely humps. So going south I am most definitely out of my territory.
The weather forecast had allowed us a one hour window of bright weather in between squally showers. Certainly prospects were bleak as we had met at Lenzie and discussed other options like Falls of Clyde if there was no point going up. And the wind and rain did not let up on the trip down. Bright patches appeared in the sky.....over somewhere other than Thankerton and Tinto. Our first site of the big hill showed its top quarter covered in dense mist. It didn’t look promising but I assured my companions that with my compass and torch ppacked we wouldn’t get lost, and as for a map.....no I didn’t have that, oops.
Stopped at the renowned Tinto Tea Rooms. Not having done the research properly we thought that was where the walk started. We were soon put right though by Mrs Basil Fawlty tapping on the car window.
“You can’t park here. This is private property,”
“Oh sorry. Our mistake. We do plan to come back to the tea room after walking the Hill, will that be OK”. I thought that was alright and started winding the window up. However she wanted another go.
“I might close up”
“What?”
“If it isn’t busy, I’ll close up and put the barrier across, and you’ll be trapped”
Taking a hint that we had met that very rare strain of Scottish Hospitality that has made Thankerton in South Lanarkshire the absolute mecca for the world’s tourist trade that it is we drove up the road to the right car park. The wind was blowing trees and cows sideways, well trees anyway. The rain was starting to come down in Niagra proportions and the sky was looking as black as Jack the Ripper’s conscience. Clearly we had to go for it.
We struggled up through intermittent showers blowing straight into us.Why is it that no matter which direction you are walking, the wind and rain is always coming straight at you. Now and then there was a clear patch. The sky brightened. Then darkened but brilliantly as we reached the top, it was as clear as...er.....daylight. and very bright blue sky day light at that.
It may have been windy. We had trouble standing up in what must have been 50 mph gales. I had read as part of my research that Tinto is popular with Hang Gliders. Well let me tell you. Take off in that wind and you would have landed in Norway. BUT it was so clear. There grand views to Culter Fell.
![Culter Fell (r) from Tinto.JPG]()
- Culter Fell (r)
West over the trig point you could make out Dungavel near East Kilbride.
South there was the other Dungavel and in the distance the Leadhills and Lowthers.
Broughton Heights
The viewfinder looks a bit forlorn but is none the less impressive to see atop the enormous cairn.
We started descending down the path back to Thankerton and the view north was stunning with the Pentlands particularly good.
One thing I like about being up high is looking at all the clinical lines in the scenery. The wooded copses look so clean and shaped. I like man’s imprint on the landscape, paths cut through heather or ditches and roads snaking through the scenery. I really liked the little bump of Quothquan Law and the way a wood wraps around it almost like a ruff. I took quite a view pics of that.
That also reminds me, partway down we saw these shapes in the side of the hill. I’m sure they aren’t sculpted but one of my companions thought they looked like a duck.
And I add the picture for 2 reasons. One it gives me a pretext for showing a photo of the side of Balcknock in Glen Fruin that looked for all the world to me to be two rabbits in a clinch, snogging.
But also because, if it was a duck, it put me in mind of those Hill figures in England. The White Horse of Avebury Vale or the Cerne Abbas giant waving his giant club above his head and er...waving...his giant Hampton below his body. I had a vision of years to come when Tony Robinson and the Time Team excavate, not the White Horse of Avebury but “The Giant Duck of Tinto”. That’ll teach them for going to the pub every night after a day ploughing up fields.
On the North West horizon, though we could see what was coming next in terms of weather.
And so it proved. A cloudburst drenched us just as we were oh so near to the car, and just after we were feeling rather smug for not having bothered with waterproofs as Craghoppers dry out so easily in a bit of wind. The downpour was torrential. So much so that the path became a stream.
We could even hear the water babbling along like a river.and then......
Frustratingly...the rain stopped and the sky was as blue as you get.
Looking back we all agreed that had we seen the cairn at the start, rather than it being somewhere in the mist, it would have made the walk up so much easier as it really does look so close.
We changed out of our wet soaking clothes. Plans to stop at the Tinto Tea Room had to be cancelled, because true to her word the proprietor had managed to clear everybody out of it and as we went past at 3 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon - it was closed and the barrier put up to stop anyone else having a good time and enjoying a cup of tea and some cake.
