Fife Coastal Path addendum - a detour to Norman's Law

[nigheandonn]

I climbed to the summit of Norman's Law simply as a detour from the Fife Coastal Path, but I can't tag it from that report, so will give it a note of its own. It's worth doing, either in passing or in its own right - small but pleasant and obviously a lovely viewpoint on a better day.

From the minor roads around Creich and its nicely random castle there were tiny hills in all directions, with Norman's Law as the biggest of them.

Over Creich Castle

From a bit further down the road it was standing out well. The Fife Coastal path turns off the road at a track a bit past Pittachope, with a parking space and an information board at the start of it.

Norman's Law

The coastal path has entirely given up on being coastal at this point, and just wandered off to climb hills and enjoy itself - it runs along the top of the woods, roughly parallel to the summit.

The Fife 'coastal' path

The sign at the bottom says that the summit is a short detour from the path, but doesn't tell you anything about how to make that detour, so you just go on walking past and past the hill. Eventually I gave up hope and climbed the fence where the bank it was on had got a bit less steep, just past some kind of tank - but I did find out afterwards that there is a gate at the far end of the field, once you've walked right past.

Across the field

I thought I would be finding a way up the middle of the slope, but having got over the fence at the far side more easily, with the help of the stones from a broken wall, I was on a trace of path which seemed to be taking me towards the end - and in fact there was a clear little path winding right up the end of the hill to the summit, which was pleasingly close.

Path up the end

So presumably more people visit this hill than I had realised - an idea corroborated by the fact that that summit has a trig point *and* an enormous old cairn *and* a viewfinder - people must like it here.

Norman's Law summit

The viewfinder was no particular use on a day like this, though - it wanted me to look at the Cairngorms and the Perthshire hills, when all I could see for the cloud was the river and the little local hills with the Hopetoun monument on the Mount, and a hazy outline of the Lomond Hills in the distance. But it was a nice little viewpoint, even with no particular view - just a perch above the countryside all round.

The Mount

Lomond Hills

There's no obvious alternative descent route to the north, which is a shame - I'm never in favour of marching up and marching down again. The Fife Coastal Path's descent is by forest tracks to the south east, although a loop round from there by Denmuir and Brunton would probably make a nice longer walk, and if I had been up here otherwise it would have been as part of a link to the other local hills.

I like long distance walking, and i enjoyed the Fife Coastal Path, but it was nice to see a summit again!