Castle Law & Dumyat

Sun splitting the sky and it was the kind of day I couldn't stay in the house so after lunch I took a quick run to Bridge of Allan with the intention of climbing Castle Law and Dumyat. In all the times I have climbed Dumyat I have always kept to the path and never deviated to go up the smaller hill of Castle Law so didn't really know where it was. Initially I climbed the small hill which is on the Dumyat path from the university and this picture of Wallace Monument was taken from it                        

Continued up the path to Dumyat and at the top met an old worthy sitting in the shade who had already climbed all the Ochil hills. Because the weather was so clear he named the hills we could see including ( from left to right as I looked) Ben Lomond , The Cobbler , Ben Ledi , Ben Lawyers , Stuc a croine. I have climbed all of these hills but hadn't realised you could see them all from the top of Dumyat. The photo is not very clear and the hills actually look like clouds

At the top of Dumyat I got a clear picture of Castle Law and realised I had not actually climbed it so I headed over and did it on the way home.

Glenquey Hill/ Innerdownie / Bentie Knowe / Whitewisp Hill

After a week of horrendous weather I am joined by Ian and Jonathan on an absolutely picture perfect Saturday. Here they are at the base of Glenquey Hill after we had parked the car at the Tormaukin Hotel 

Once we got to the top of Glenquey Hill we got our first sight of Innerdownie stretching ahead of us and at this stage we were pretty clear of snow although wouldn't be long before that changed

On the way to the top we were able to follow in the tracks of what looked like a quad bike which had gone before us                                                                                      

The benefit of going with others is that you can compile photographic evidence so for the record this is me at the top of Innerdownie     

                                     

Having conquered Innerdownie the plan was to head on to Bentie Knowe to complete the hat-trick but to be fair it was hard to recognise when we had done it so this is us looking back with , I think , with Bentie Knowe in the background. By this time we were walking in in relatively deep snow but with the sun blazing overhead conditions were great. 

                           

As we walked along the ridge we had a clear view of Glenquey Reservoir down below and we would eventually walk back alongside it on the way back to the car      

We had made pretty good progress by this point so we pressed on towards Whitewisp Hill and here are Jonathon and Ian pictured at the top with Tarmangie Hill pictured in the background 

From the top we had a good view of King's Seat Hill which I had done last month and this is it

We walked down off Whitewisp without sticking to any real path (and the boys tracking overhead planes on their I phones) to join the Dollar to Glendevon path and walked the final 5 miles back to the Hotel where we stopped for an excellent bowl of soup. All in all a good wee walk which may even have inspired the boys to join me again

 A few days later Jonathan presented me with the challenge of uploading a couple of his photos on to the blog and to my surprise this was a lot easier than I thought. These are taken at the top of Innerdownie as we stopped to admire the view - blue sky was amazing