Snowy heights

When you think of an exciting winter day on the hills, you probably don't think of the Broughton Heights. These are the group of modestly sized hills above the village of Broughton in the Scottish borders. However a good fall of snow and an overnight freeze work wonders in making you feel you are somewhere much more adventurous.  As with my Ben Lomond trip, I am spoiled for good pictures, but here are some good ones.

A mixture of man-made and natural features from Penvalla:

 On top of Trahenna Hill with the wind stirring up the spindrift:

 Looking towards Culter Fell, with the sun beginning to set:

Some sheep caught in the sun, laying in their central heating:

The whole day was spent walking on snow, from roadside to roadside. It's a good while since I can remember that happening.

Ben Lomond

Winter days can often be rubbish: short, cold and cheerless. How lovely then to find that your plan to do a hill over the holidays lines up with some high pressure.

As with quite a few of my best walks, this one only took form on the day. To start with, there was quite a bit of impromptu photography, including the view from Tom Weir's favourite hill:

Coincidently, a statue of Tom was unveiled the next day.

By this point we had decided on Ben Lomond via the Ptarmigan ridge (to the right of the loch in the picture above). This is a somewhat more exclusive and interesting route than the tourist path. I also have a bit of a personal connection with it, as some time ago (20 years, gulp) I worked on the path.

At this point, I am a bit lost for how to continue, as I have almost an embarrassment of fine pictures taken in the winter sun. Let's just go through some nice images:

That classic down-the-loch view. The viewpoint of the first picture is on the far side of the loch. My companion of the day is trotting down the bump in the middle.

A panorama of the Southern Highlands from the base of the summit cone. I reckon there are at least 17 Munros in here. Distant smudges could take it higher.

  Our summit awaits.  This is why we do this.

On top with sunset approaching. Don't try this at home, kids. We are sensible really: we had headtorches and enough sense to get down safely via the tourist path.  Some refreshments and a read of the Sunday Post in Stirling completed a splendid day out.

Double walk

This can be a difficult time of year to get out for a walk. A combination of short days, poor weather and public holidays can make this frustrating, but this new year I had offers of walks on two days in a row.

First up was a trip to Ben Ledi with Dave. I took a train to Stirling to find him standing behind the ticket barrier, nursing his freedom from family for a day and the remains of a MacDonalds breakfast. Ben Ledi is a classic cobweb-blower, and we encountered as big a crowd of people as I've met on a winter hill. They displayed much resourcefulness in finding ways of not falling over on the ice.

I was in the mood for taking pictures of landscape fragments, such as the odd ice on this reservoir:
And these trees picked out by the snow:
Refreshments after at the Lade Inn.

The following day Craig suggested two interesting Corbetts, Faragon Hill and Meall Tairneachan. Interesting to me anyway, as I've attempted to get to this area before from Pitlochry, with little success. Ice was another theme of this day, encasing moss and grass like super-hard jelly.


Craig provided a nip of very good whisky to keep the cold out (don't try this at home kids). So that wasn't so bad. We warmed up further at the Taybank in Dunkeld.

A day on the Ochils

The weather again. Some of us were meant to go to a bothy for the weekend, but the exceptional cold and snow put a stop to that. Myself and a friend arranged to go a day walk in the Ochils instead.

On the way, both of us fessed up to an interest in photographing the oil refinery at Grangemouth. We found a snow-covered golf course to do this in. I'll spare you the pictures, but here is a nice one of my shadow in the snow.
We crossed the new Kincardine bridge, and drove through a foggy Clackmannanshire. All the glens on the south side of the Ochils are worth exploring, but we chose Alva Glen and followed it up to gain the open hillside. This wasn't easy, as the deep snow made crossing the burn and climbing the flank of The Nebit into a proper mountaineering exercise. When we reached more level ground, we found obvious traces of some recent avalanches.
With this in mind, we kept away from the slopes above the burn which seemed to be worst affected. The snow was deep and only just frozen on top, in some places giving about the most strenuous walking conditions you can get, where your front foot sinks in just a little, but then crashes through as you put your full weight on it. As we headed up Ben Ever we met some skiers, who were arguably having an easier time.

We were heading for Ben Cleuch (721m), which does not normally figure as a major peak. In these conditions though, it felt like quite an adventure. These rimed-up fence posts tell their own story.
There were fine views of the edge of the Highlands. Bens Lomond, Ledi, and Vorlich could be picked out among others, and the peaks on Arran just topped out the Campsies.

It was something of an impromptu day, and we had talked of descending to Castle Campbell and Dollar Glen, but time was passing and it seemed best to take the most direct way down over The Law. The light started to get even more extraordinary.
We were reminiscing on the way down about a similar winter day on Beinn Fhionnlaidh years ago where a late start also meant that we got a spectacular sunset on our way down. Sometimes things just work out.

And after descending Tillicoultry Glen, some nice people gave us a lift in their van back to the starting point.

For a parallel account of this walk, see Love of Scotland.

Back garden in the snow

I daresay a lot of snowy pictures will have been put in blogs recently. But why should I be different? Taken recently while working from home and wishing it would just stop.
I didn't open my bedroom curtains for a few days, but when I did I saw these icicles.
There was a LOT of ice around the downpipes and gutters. Thankfully it seems to have melted without any damage.

Impromptu walking

The walking group I go away with got caught out by the first of the snow this year. And it was snow of a level that we don't normally see in late November. What was supposed to be a trip to the Trossachs (I've not done Ben Venue in ages) had to be hastily rearranged. We are equal to this challenge though, and the coach took us to Hillend, from where we walked along the end of the Pentlands. Snow was still falling heavily, and our walk parallel to the Edinburgh bypass felt more like the Cairngorms. Somebody knew a way onto the Water of Leith at Colinton, so we continued into town. I've done most of this before, but it looked totally different in the snow. And I've not been since Anthony Gormley's sculptures were put in.

They look cool in the snow. I'm sure the intention was that the pieces would undergo various alterations. And they have inspired a number of other more jokey tributes.

More misery

What awful dreich weather. I had been meaning to blog about how the last trace of snow had just about disappeared from the Lammermuirs, making my view totally snow-free for the first time since about December. Then comes today's weather, taking us back to shivery midwinter. All day at work we looked out on to slanting lines of sleet. The bits of the Pentlands that were visible were blanketed with snow again. I actually find it worse than proper winter weather. I like it crisp and cold, but temperatures around freezing feel colder than those below.

We've had strong winds all evening and lots of sleet. A small drip has appeared in the corner of my living room. Argh! that's all I need. But now it has started snowing properly and the drip has stopped. So that's something.

Yet further snow

I reckon we've now had about a fortnight during which I could always see snow in the streets or on roofs. This will be deeply unimpressive to you if you live in Canada, but for Britain it's pretty rare. You have to go back to the early 80s, or maybe even late 70s to find a precedent. Yesterday I visited some friends nearby, and we went skiing on a golf course (best use for it that I've ever found). After lunch, we did a South Edinburgh haute route from Blackford hill onto the Braid Hills. Although we did this on foot, there was snow all the way, raising the possibility of Norwegian style ski tours. If we got this more often, would I ski to work though the snowy wastes of Midlothian?

Mair snow

First thing this morning, I had one of those half-awake thoughts. "Wouldn't it be funny if there had been a huge snowfall overnight, and the world is turned white?" Then I looked out and it had.

There had been remnants of snow the night before, but there was now a perfect, even covering. There was snow banked up at the base of my windows, and skeins of spindrift reached out between the rooftops.

As you can perhaps guess, I retain enough of a kid inside me to still enjoy some extreme weather, especially when I have nothing in particular to do at work. I'm certainly not alone in this. As I made my bus journey, the shared sense of adversity produced a kind of camaraderie with my fellow travelers. We offered personal experiences of our journeys so far, swapped stories about the stupid things we'd seen people doing, and shared plans for the rest of our day. I wonder if anybody has studied the positive effect of extreme weather?

I got to go home early too, and saw these tower blocks catching the afternoon sun.

Snow

My flat has a nice view, but I find it hard to photograph. You really have to see it. Here's quite a nice picture of Blackford Hill from this morning anyway.

In other news, snow and ice on Arthur's Seat reduced my time to 17 minutes. On the way down, a walker on his way up warned me of the ice. "I know!" I answered, and did a standing glissade down the path towards him. We did a short dance of awkward laughter and skidding feet until we were both stable again.