It’s turning into a pretty familiar script now: see weather forecast looking pretty good, dash away from work as quickly as possible, fling hopefully the right stuff in a rucksack, and hop in the car to a hill about an hour’s drive away. This time, I had a surprisingly quick exit from Glasgow and got heading towards the eastern end of the Ochil Hills to a wee one-pointer, GM/SS-190 Lendrick Hill.
As hills go, it’s almost certainly got to be one of the easier ones out there to get up in a hurry. The start point was just above 200m, and the summit itself is at 456m. Incidentally, the OS map shows a “car park” at the start point at NO 008 039, but it’s essentially just a glorified gate opening with room for about 5-6 cars - thankfully not much of a problem on a Monday evening though.
Through the gate, the track rose up very nice and gradually on what looked like a newly resurfaced forest road. As I ambled up, I heard the guttural wrenchings of a satanic beast in the trees and knew it could only be one thing - and sure enough, only moments later a couple of Jays jouked out of the tree cover and across the opening above the track only to disappear again.
After about a kilometre and a half, there’s a small wooden post that points you off the track and into the trees. From ambling up a beautifully smooth gravel track, it then changed very dramatically to sliding around in mossy mud. Thankfully, the gradient wasn’t too steep and it was only about 500m before I was out on open hillside for the short jaunt up to the summit.
Thankfully, the gradients remained mercifully gentle all the way up, with only a small stile to cross on the way to the top. The summit itself is another one of those slightly confusing twin summits, with the trig point sitting around 3 metres lower than the cairn at the “true” summit.
It wasn’t long before I got the 4m pole up with the Slim G, threw out a spot on Sotawatch via SOTL.as and got operating. I was able to make my first batch of four contacts nice and quickly, thanks to the ever reliable Peter @GM0VEK and every pushed activator’s favourite: a double from Ken & Christine @GM0AXY and @GM4YMM. I was suprised to round off the first four with a contact with @GM0GOV Fred down in Dunlop, I didn’t expect to get anything in that direction at all.
In true “fling hopefully the right stuff in a rucksack” fashion, there’s usually at least one casualty left sitting at home, and this time it was my rite-in-the rain logbook and pen. While I did have a trusty bic biro in the glovebox of the car, I was sadly without any kind of recording medium and figured the collection of various napkins also in the glovebox wouldn’t be of much use. Thankfully, I’d brought my successor to the Casio FX-870, and was able to log with my iphone, although it is frustrating how it thinks callsigns are ham-fisted attempts at English words.
Rather than just sweep up the bare minimum and run away, I decided it’d be a nice evening to hang about and enjoy a bit of pleasant time on the hill. The sun was out, and there was the perfect amount of breeze which was just enough to keep the beasties away without causing too many issues on the mic. In fact, the breeze seemed to be working out nicely for a Kestrel that I watched hover around by the summit for a wee while between QSOs. Some clouds and showers seemed to be forming over the Lomond Hills to the east, but thankfully didn’t materialise over my location.
With a slightly slower pace for the rest of my contacts, I was able to enjoy some very pleasant chats. However, after about an hour on the hill, I figured I’d better get moving - I was well ahead of any danger of getting caught in the dark, but I was starting to get hungry, and aiming to get home and eat rather than having to settle for a McDonald’s drive thru on the road home.
With the sun setting, I was treated to some nice views on the way back down, including a scene straight from a Jo Burt cartoon strip (any ex MBUK fans round here?), and views across to Ben Vorlich GM/SS-008 and Stuc a’ Chroin GM/SS-010.
I had also decided that I might try risking a wee shortcut on the way back down - rather than follow the marked path, there was an option to follow a fire break a bit more directly down the hill through the woods. The main path was slimy and muddy as it was, how much worse could this shortcut be? Well, I made it about ten or fifteen metres and started doing something a bit more like skiing than hillwalking, so decided to retrace my steps back up to the “real” path and carry on down the way I came up.
It was of course, only afterwards that I read Andy @GM4LLD’s report from back in 2014 when it sounded like this slimy firebreak was in fact the main ascent route - the horrors described within made me glad the route had been reconsidered since.
Anyway, a short bit of shuffling through some much more reasonably-gradiented slime and I was soon back on the big beautiful forestry road and cruising my way back down to the car, and home in time for a big bowl of pasta in the comfort of my own kitchen.