Benarty Hill and Bishop Hill, 2 sub2ks on the drive home

[gld73]

With my knee getting sore again recently, and knowing the current long stretch of dualling A9 roadworks at Luncarty was between me and the corbetts I'd intended to do, I decided to not get up early for my drive home to Inverness from Edinburgh, and just do a couple of smaller hills early on in the journey rather than being delayed at roadworks and cursing the few hours left for me to do a walk in daylight. Having done West Lomond on my last trip down to Edinburgh, I fancied doing some more in the Lomond Hills area, so settled on 2 separate short walks not far from the M90 to tick off a couple of sub2000 hills without too much of a detour from the drive home.

Benarty Hill near Ballingry - 3.5km, 188m ascent, 0.9hrs.
First up was the shorter walk, Benarty Hill, near Ballingry, just a few minutes from Junction 5 of the M90. There were no other cars parked at the walk start, so I parked at the bottom of the steps and just headed up. Both hills today had perfect walking conditions - cold and crisp, any short mud or boggy sections frozen solid. No snow on these hills, so no need for spikes or anything, just an easy walk. Think I followed the WH walk description, though the Stage 3 description was my best guess, as the trees had all been felled and though I followed what I think was the original path, there are 1 or 2 other paths or tracks through the felled trees that now seem to be the main ones.

The 3 Forth bridges zoomed from the ascent

Nice views back over the Firth of Forth on the way up, and then over Loch Leven and over to the next hill, Bishop Hill, at the summit trip point. Returned the same way, and didn't see anyone else on the walk, aside from a mountain biker lower down.

Benarty Hill trig, looking S to the Firth of Forth and Pentlands

Zoom of the next target, Bishop Hill, from Benarty Hill

(Left car 1142, summit at 1208, back at car 1235. Sub2k #31)

Bishop Hill from Scotlandwell (well, Orwell and Portmoak car park). 6.5km, 414m ascent, 1.6hrs
Jumped back in the car for coffee and sandwiches, then headed the few miles to the start point for the Bishop Hill walk from near Scotlandwell. parked at the church car park, then followed the ascent route as described on the WH route. Again, nice views. A high concentration of cow pats as I neared the plateau, couldn't understand where they'd all come from until I got on to the large plateau and saw the herd of cows scattered across it (fortunately very indifferent to walkers).

View back to Benarty Hill from the ascent route of Bishop Hill

Looking the length of the large summit plateau, summit at the other end

The summit was at the other end of the plateau, which was a nice easy walk and then the short bit of ascent up to the cairn. Views over to West Lomond, and in the distance lots of white munros. Hopefully I'll be getting some of them done this winter.

Bishop Hill summit cairn, looking down to Loch Leven

With the long drive ahead and work tomorrow, I just followed the same route back.

(Left car 1304, summit at 1354, back at car 1439. Sub2k #32)