Craigowl Hill

[McMole]

Another fine day where I had time to squeeze in a visit to another nearby Marilyn. This was to the north instead of the south, so no delays circumnavigating Edinburgh this time. I did meet some congestion round Dundee, but only a for a few minutes.

I arrived at what I expected to be a deserted Balkello Woodland car park not long after 9am to find there were about ten vehicles in it. Obviously a popular place for folk to walk their dogs since most of the walkers I met that day were accompanied by one or more. I followed the WH route through the woodland and up Auchterhouse Hill.

Auchterhouse Hill summit

Craigowl HIll from Auchterhouse

Then it was onwards to Balkello HIll or is it Balluderon Hill?

Climbing Balkello HIll

The memorial cairn to Sydney Scroggie

The indicator on Sydney Scroggie's cairn

It is called that on the memorial cairn and indicator to Sydney Scroggie, an ex-pupil of my old school who had been a keen climber before he was blinded and lost part of a leg in the Second World War. Afterwards he continued to enjoy walking and climbing in the hills. From there a sometimes muddy path led to the fenced compounds and antennae at the top of Craigowl HIll where it is necessary to climb over a fence to reach the trig point inside the compound.

Craigowl Hill trig point

Low cloud hiding Auchterhouse Hill

A radio amateur had just finished contacting others from the summit, was dismantling his equipment and about to head down to drive to his next objective - Kings Seat.

A radio ham dismantling his transmitter antenna

I mentioned that some of the paths were muddy. I found the worst mud of the year on my descent.. I followed a downward traverse to hit the end of the farm track shown on the 1:25000 map. Not far along an old quarry on the left looked deep in mud and trying to walk along the downhill edge of track led to mud (with a good proportion of cow excrement from the smell) covering boots and the bottom few inches of my trousers. I walked on a bit then turned downhill towards the other track shown on the map. En route I found a stream to cross where I managed to wash off most of the brown sludge. There was a barbed wire fence between me and the next track so I turned left and followed it to where there was a gate as it turned south. Through the gate and onto the track led easily back to the car following the paths shown on the map. By now there were over a dozen vehicles and even more dogs.

The weather was fine with sunshine for quite a bit of the time, but with low cloud down below Craigowl's summit while I was there. Obviously a very popular area for walking and Dundee's equivalent of Edinburgh's Pentland Hills.