doing this walk and with the amount of rain that had fell the previous nights I was fearing the worst once we reach the plateau.- Welcome to Glen Doll
- Chris admiring the scenery
- Jock's Road to the right
- Glen Doll with Jock's Road
- Glendoll Forest with Driesh in the distance
After reaching the shelter with a little red door it was time for a quick break after the long climb up Glen Doll. As we moved off I noticed a plaque on the side of a rock. "Universal Hiking Club, Glasgow. Erected to the memory of five members who died New Year 1959. R.I.P." I remembered reading about this when I Googled Jock's Road. It's a reminder at how the beauty of the Scottish hills can be so dangerous.
- The rock with the plaque
Tolmount could be seen in front of us with the side of Tom Buidhe to the west. The path which had been good all the way up Glen Doll had now turned boggy in places. Don't get me wrong though, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Sticking to Jock's Road help as I too thought about heading over to Tom Buidhe from Cairn Lunkard but Merry-walkers report helped to change my mind in that aspect. About 3 hours had past when we found our self at the top of Crow Craigies. It had rained slightly, nothing to complain about but looking over towards Tolmount and beyond it wasn't looking good. We could see the top of Tolmount but the summits of Carn an Tuirc and Cairn of Claise were in a blanket of cloud. As we made our slight descent from Crow Craigies coming off Jock's Road the bog had returned but it didn't seem to take long to trudge through it and start our ascent to Tolmount and its summit.
- Tom Buidhe and Tolmount
- Crow Craigies ahead
- Tolmount with the clag coming down
- Loch Callater from the side of Tolmount
- Tolmount, 958mts
- Looking back the way we came
We decided to give Tom Buidhe a miss and head back via Loch Esk taking the path running next to the River South Esk. As the wind had picked up and with no shelter on Tolmount we headed back to Crow Craigies were the small crags on its east side would provide some shelter from the wind. As we sat having our lunch at the "craigies" we could hear a helicopter in the distance. Looking over to Broad Cairn we could see a yellow RAF Sea King land between Cairn of Gowal and Broad Cairn itself.
I've got to admit that my first thoughts were of tragedy but after seeing two people getting out of the helicopter and start to ascend Broad Cairn as the copper flew off I began to wonder. This was repeated twice more to which it was now obviously a training exercise. - Broad Cairn
- Helicopter landing
After our sandwiches and helicopter show we headed off passing Loch Esk on our way. We lost the path a bit beside Craigs of Loch Esk but picked it back up again on our descent. The views down the glen were enjoyable as well as the walk back to Glen Doll Forest. It must be said though that we kept to the track rather than crossing the foot bridge at the foot of The Strone to take the path on the north side of the river. This meant wading the foot deep river at the ford crossing about a kilometre south of the foot bridge.
Lesson learnt!!! To read the map properly and don't presume every ford crossing is a simple one.
- Loch Esk
- Looking down the glen
- Its been a long day....
- The River South Esk
- The Strone
I will definitely be coming back to Glen Doll and Glen Clova as they have so much more to offer other than the Munro's.
