Another venture back down to the SW again this time for a bit of an adventurous plan - for me at least.
I looked at various options for tackling these 2 hills together, read a few walk reports and finally came up with a cunning plan. Linking these 2 hills together is not ideal as there is a glen between them which takes you down to 465m a drop of 350m off Cairnsmore which as it is quite steep doesn't take too long.
My original plan was to start from the usual start point on here, but the thought of having to ascend round Cairnsmore again was not very appealing. So the route from the SE was more appealing as it has over 200m of less ascent, which is good for me because that is where I am struggling.
We left Fife shortly before 8am and were walking 2 hours later.




George parked at the entrance and we opted to head up the newly created track - as it was featured on Locus (our navigation app)


Had we stopped to read all that blurb it would have been dark before we set off


We must have seen about 10 of these on our travels


Feeding point for animals, not sure if it is for farm animals or deer?


Salt block for animals. the only other time we have seen these was in the Fannichs


Excellent track with a gradual incline, the big drawback we would be descending soon


Storage area for machinery and other stuff, also has a portable CCTV system


Not the biggest windfarm


You can see the descent ahead, Moorbrock Hill in the distance would be our second hill


We tiptoed past the Moorbrock houses as the track takes you very close to the buildings. This building was being built on my last visit 5 years ago


We followed the track as far as the digger in the distance


Beautiful water feature, much better than the concrete ones you pay a fortune for at your local garden centre


Different angle, there are 3 ponds at different levels


Target practice?


Not a bad front drive, nice and colourful


The plan is to loosely follow the wall and burn through the gap in the trees


Another viewing platform


Looking back, the terrain wasn't ideal, undulating and a tad damp


George leading the way, we are aiming for half way up the ridge - then traverse round along the 600m contour line


Beninner


Moorbrock Hill in the background


The weather was pretty grotty now


If you zoom in you will see the cairn on Beninner


The final push to the summit of Cairnsmore of Carsphairn


A fair sized cairn on the summit


Summit trig and shelter


Weather was starting to improve for our descent of Cairnsmore


Something that is common in the Borders peeking out under the cloud


The descent was fairly steep but very doable


One of George's looking uphill


Looking northish


Moorbrock Hill, our original plan was to head straight up the front of it


Not much descending left, the ground was to get rather damp underfoot


New deer fence


Looking back up to Cairnsmore of Carsphairn, doesn't look steep from this angle


Parminder found a cane with a wee flag on it, he was planning to utilise on the summit of Moorbrock


We spotted this track earlier and amended our approach up Moorbrock to make the underfoot walking much easier, it did involve adding a bit of a detour but it was a much better option than a pathless slog


Another viewing platform


And another one, with Beninner in the background


The track is a bit overgrown, but still much better than tussocky grass


Interesting grassy plant formation, quite a few of these


Looking down towards Moorbrock House, this would be our descent route


The sun suddenly made an appearance and all the dampness on the ground was being drawn upwards


We are now on the summit plateau area of Moorbrock, the summit isn't what you could describe as pointy


Parminder carefully placing his recently acquired flag


The huge summit cairn and the modification with Windy Standard in the background


Final descent now, we are aiming for the track and then Moorbrock House area


Another platform


Very tidy area around Moorbrock House and the other buildings


The water feature again


And again

Despite the grotty weather at the start of the day, I really enjoyed myself, still struggling uphill but I think I am improving slightly. Our next outing will depend on where the weather is more favourable, we may even head north and tackle one of our outstanding Munro's.