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

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


Postby nigheandonn » Tue Apr 10, 2018 9:20 am

Sub 2000' hills included on this walk: Norman's Law

Date walked: 31/03/2018

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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Mount

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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!
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nigheandonn
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