Badenoch - Abracadabra

Badenoch is a well known area for me so here were a few days wandering familiar trails, enjoying the place mostly to myself before the busy season begins at Easter. And a chance to grab the tail end of this winter.

The first day was grey, still and clagged in with low cloud. There was not a stitch of snow bar what was perhaps hiding in the clouds on the higher tops. Linked to the train station and encircling the village of Newtonmore, is a wonderful route called the Wildcat Trail. It was a day for walking that route which has great variety to keep your interest when the big hills are hidden. The path starts by following the banks of the Spey which is already a significant river here despite its source being only a little further west from Newtonmore. The path then turns north, away from the river, and wanders across the moors. My favourite section is where the route passes through old birch woods high above the village. On a grey, quiet day with nobody else around there’s a prehistroic atmosphere to the place such that you imagine a pterodactyl might come swooping through the trees.

A pleasant offshoot of the Wildcat Trail is the quiet road up Glen Banchor and I pitched my tent beyond the road end, by the river. A favourite spot. When I unzipped the tent next morning, it was as if some magician had waved a wand during the night and said “Abracadabra”. The place was transformed from spring to winter by a blanket of fresh snow. A westerly gale scoured the hills, shifting yesterday’s low cloud and revealing a stunning panorama of snow-covered peaks in the golden hour of morning sunshine.   

That gale put me off my chosen hill about two-thirds of the way up as I was almost knocked off my feet in the gusts. A lower top had to do this time. Even then, it was a struggle to stay upright in the icy blasts. But the views were superb of winter hills and weather fronts that brought in fresh blizzards of snow, moving over the hills and engulfing everything in their path, including me. 

The snow showers persisted until the evening when I met my friend off the late train. As the skies cleared, we walked out into the black night under a sky sparkling with stars and pitched the tents on a snow-covered meadow by a bend in the river.

The last day saw us set out from Newtonmore in heavy snow to walk over the moors to Kingussie. Big, wet flurries  were ever at our backs. With a blanket of fresh snow, the old woods were monochrome that morning. 

As the trail approached Loch Gynack, tucked away in the craggy hills above Kingussie, the snow underfoot ended and the world magically returned to the mossy greens and purple birch of the first day. An ice-covered path climbed up steeply through the birch then crossed open ground to deposit us on the top of Creag Bheag. It’s a favourite wee hill of mine with a great view. But not today as snow-laden clouds piled through the valley.

Oh for a bit of magic now to clear it away.

Fact File

Start: Newtonmore Train Station

Finish: Kingussie Train Station
Public transport: Edinburgh/Glasgow to Inverness trains stop at Newtonmore and Kingussie

My route: Out of the train station, walk up Station Road towards the village but after the row of cottages on the left, the link to the Wildcat Trail is signed to the left. Follow this across the railway and down to the river where it joins the Wildcat Trail proper. The Wildcat Trail is well signed and encircles the countryside around the village. At the northwest corner of the trail, it joins the road up Glen Banchor. The tarmac road in Glen Banchor ends at a parking place but a dirt track continues west and gives acces to the hills. I only climbed the tiny top of Creag nan Abhag that day in the winds but it afforded great views. I used a faint track initially that leaves to the right just after the copse of trees on a knoll just after the bridge below the road end. For the walk to Creag Bheag, we used the Wildcat Trail to Strone and then took the track signed for Kingussie which ascends to the forestry ahead on the hill before swinging east to Loch Gynack. In the trees at Loch Gynack, there is a signpost for Creag Bheag and trails down into Kingussie.

Tips: Sit-in fishers suppers, including gluten-free, at Joe's in Kingussie at the main crossroads. 

Inverclyde and Cumbrae - Who'd have thought

With a plan to get into some different outdoor areas of Scotland this year, I recently bought a batch of new OS maps to fill in some gaps in my collection. I even bought the Glasgow OS map. I did think I’d made a mistake when it arrived though, as there didn’t seem to be much outdoors on it. However, I did spot a dotted green line of cycle path heading off the southwest corner of the map which joined up with another on my new Inverclyde map. The green dotted line headed a long way south through Renfrewshire, quite close to the commuter belt and outlying towns around Glasgow. Despite that, it looked very inviting and therefore a plan was hatched with bike buddy Graham for our next cycle trip.

Our urban starting point was the train station at Port Glasgow. A fantastically steep climb here took us up to the cycle route along the Greenock and Johnstone Railway Path which passed high above the waters of the River Clyde. It was marvellous up here. In the February heatwave the views were a bit hazy but it must be great on a crisp, clear day when the view will extend to the Southern Highlands. The cycle route headed east towards Glasgow and then swung south for Kilbirnie passing along the pretty shores of Castle Semple Loch and all the while in a lovely traffic-free tunnel of trees.  We were never far from towns and the massive conurbation of Glasgow, so we were surprised how rural the route actually felt. 

The hazy sunshine gave way to spots of rain which soon organised themselves into a bit of a downpour as we approached Lochwinnoch. There was a great café here to sit out the rain and judging by the numbers of bikes propped against the wall outside, it’s a very popular spot with cyclists using this route. When the rain eventually went off late afternoon, we made the long climb above Lochwinnoch up into Muirshiel Country Park. There was a perfect wild camp spot by the river with a shelter and picnic tables, a few hundred yards away from the road end. I would never use a spot like this during summer but at the end of a wet, early dark day in February there was nobody else around. As we busied ourselves making temporary homes for the night, the gush of the river was a backdrop to the hooting of owls. After dark the view of the stars was superb. Again a surprise, given the nearby sources of light pollution.

Back on the bikes next morning, we cycled to the end of the path at Kilbirnie and made a mistake taking the A road over the hills to join the west coast at Largs. Given it was Sunday morning, we had thought it would be quiet but it was fast, quite busy and downright unpleasant. There is a longer quiet minor road as an alternative and I made a note to self to use that next time. There were two reasons for heading over to Largs. Firstly, from here the map showed a tiny, unclassified road though the hills back to our train at Port Glasgow. And secondly, it gave us the opportunity to take a short ferry ride to an island neither of us had visited, Cumbrae. 

I had always imagined Cumbrae and its main settlement, Millport, to be quite twee and genteel. And in some ways that was true. But what blew me away about the place was that it also has very rugged surroundings that imparted a whole different atmosphere to the island. All around was the rough, crenelated coastline of the land and a sparkling sea where other islands, such as Bute and Little Cumbrae, drifted offshore. And the stunning backdrop to all this was the jagged, mountain ridge of Goat Fell and Cir Mhor on the island of Arran. The other wonderful thing about Cumbrae is the lack of cars so you can really enjoy the circular cycle around the island, taking in all these stunning views and stopping for a picnic on one of the beaches.

After a dreamy few hours in the sunshine of Cumbrae, we took the ferry back to Largs to pick up the wee road through the hills. This was another wonderful route with only a few slow-moving cars. About halfway up the road, we found another great wild camp spot at a picnic area in the trees and enjoyed a relaxed evening sipping soup and cups of tea at the tents. 

It wasn’t far from our camp spot next morning to continue over the watershed of the hills and return to Port Glasgow. Our route took us along lovely quiet farm roads and forest tracks that hugged the shores of huge reservoirs and undulated over gentle, rolling hills. Snowdrops were everywhere in big clumps and yellow daffodils burst from the hedgerows. 

It had been a brilliant trip with great routes and surprisingly stunning views of coast, islands and mountains. Who’d have thought at first glance at the maps that would have been the case.

Fact File

Start/finish: Train station, Port Glasgow

Public Transport: Train from Glasgow Central Station

Route: Out of the station we turned left up the hill, took a right on Kinross Avenue then a left on Barr’s Brae which the cycle route crosses. This is National Cycle Route 75 which we followed to Kilbirnie. We used the A760 from Kilbirnie to Largs – not recommended. On Cumbrae a road encircles the island and another climbs across the middle. Took the C41 out of Largs to Loch Thom. Made a wee detour to Cornalees Bridge, a nice spot with a visitor centre for the Greenock Cut and a café. Cycled along east shore of Loch Thom then a forest track along the south shore of Gryfe Reservoirs which joined a lovely wee farm road that took us to the B788. We turned left then right to rejoin the cycle path back into Port Glasgow.

Info: Great coffee shops in Lochwinnoch (The Junction) and Quarriers Village (Three Sisters Bakery). Quarriers Village is well worth the detour. It’s a very pretty village founded in 1876 as The Orphan Homes of Scotland by shoemaker and philanthropist William Quarrier.

Garleton Hills - I've been there

Few little hills that I know of pack the punch of the Garleton Hills in East Lothian. These small pimples above Athelstaneford have a wonderfully isolated situation such that the 360 degree views are superb. At least they were on a crisp, clear February day when I jumped off the North Berwick train at Drem to tackle the hills. They were the last hills that I hadn’t climbed that I can see on my local horizon from Portobello. 

The folding bike transported me from Drem to Athelstaneford along a pleasant network of paths and farm tracks. They rose gently to the wooded ridge of Kilduff Hill before dropping down again into the village. Athelstaneford is the birthplace of the Scottish flag, the Saltire. The story goes that on the morning of a battle between the Scots and the English in 832AD, the Scots saw a white cross formed by clouds in the sky. Winning the battle, the Scottish forces attributed their victory to the blessing of Saint Andrew, adopted Saint Andrew's cross as their flag, and named him their patron saint. 

A footpath sneaked out the far side of the village and crossed a field before dropping to the pretty gorge of the Cogtail Burn. Morning light flooded the woods here and illuminated swathes of snowdrops. The path climbed again and it was beyond here that the views started to open up as a track ascended the spine of the hills beyond the farm at Barney Mains. Walking across the top here, there’s an incredible sense of openness, space and big skies. These hills are made of layered volcanic rock subsequently scoured by glaciers. The highest point is only 186m but the panorama took in the Lomond Hills across the Forth to the north, the Pentland Hills and Edinburgh to the west, the Lammermuirs to the south and to the east was North Berwick Law and the Bass Rock. I could even see the Isle of May. 

The most immediate view from here however is to the adjacent Byres Hill which hosts the impressive Hopetoun Monument. Returning to the village, I jumped back on the bike to cycle round there. Byres Hill was very different to Barney Mains. Its paths were wrapped up in a dense cloak of shady woods that stole the sense of space. But they were beautiful woods, dappled by sunshine, alive with birdsong and echoing with the shouts and giggles of children playing amongst the trees. A steep path that catches the breath pulled up through the trees to the base of the Monument. It was erected in 1824 in memory of John Hope, 4th Earl of Hopetoun, and is 29m high. If you bring a torch, you can go up inside. 

Back on the bike, I pedalled hard to make the early afternoon train home so I had time before the early dark of February to sit on the prom and look east to the Garleton Hills. Finally I’d come to know those little pimples on the horizon and say “I’ve been there”.

Fact File

More photos on Flickr
Start/finish: Drem train station

Public transport: Edinburgh to North Berwick train stops at Drem.

My route: Out of the station turned left then left again onto an unclassified back road which crosses the railway line. Where it crosses there is farm road straight ahead running south to Kilduff Hill. Kept left heading east when it reached the woods. 1km further on a junction is signed for Athelstaneford. Turned left when this path joined the road and cycled along the main street of the village. Up the east side of the school the path for the Garleton Hills is signed. Chained up the bike here. Path dropped to the Cogtail Burn and then climbed to join a farm track. Turned right on the track to the top of the hill, skirting the farm at Barney Mains to the left side and then picking up the track again. The route around the farm was signed and easy to follow. From Athelstaneford cycled west along the quiet B1343 and just before it joined the A6137, Byres Hill was signposted. Paths up the hill were obvious.