The ridge - in all its glory

Again, my plan for some Pentland tops came to naught, as I wasn't convinced that the weather was appropriate for me to do the ridge on my own, with Mr A amusing himself for about 3 hours at Flotterstone. But it will happen, I'm sure, my Nine Mile Burn to Flotterstone Walk (on which, more detail below).

Instead, we did a new walk, essentially of our own devising (we're a bit bad, normally, in that we rely on resources like Walk Highlands or various walk books, rather than devising our own walks). We struck out across the field opposite the Harlaw car park in the direction of Glencorse, and we could see a great inversion in the Glencorse valley in front of Carnethy, but it was far too far away for my camera with the 11-22 lens on, and it had disappeared by the time we got close enough for pictures. We saw a few runners, and one serious looking walker on the path, plus two cycle campers at the point where the path starts to drop down to Glencorse. We left the regular path there, and instantly regretted not wearing boots, as the sheep path we had to follow up onto Bell's Hill was a bit wet. But it wasn't too bad in the end. The top of Bell's Hill offered a great view even in quite murky weather, precisely of the ridge that I planned to walk. From the right to left, we have West Kip, East Kip and Scald Law, which we've done a couple of times before, as the so-called three peaks walk, and then continuing along you have Carnethy Hill and Turnhouse Hill, which we (well I, when it comes to Carnethy) did last Saturday. The idea is to combine them in a linear walk from Nine Mile Burn to Flotterstone, taking advantage of the fact that Nine Mile Burn is actually 100m higher than Flotterstone!

Anyway, the ascent of Bell's Hill, the excellent views, the descent to Den's Cleugh, and then the rejoining of the more established paths at Black Spring was a walk which delivered disproportionately to expectation.

We met a man as we descended to Den's Cleugh who had just come off Black Hill. His plan was to do all of the Pentland Tops, basically, circling round to Flotterstone, back along the tops (just described), before returning to the Threipmuir Car Park where he started. Not quite as mad as the man doing 10 ascents of Turnhouse Hill, whom we met last week. I eventually remembered to write about him on Tuesday.... At least this week's madness was a bit more purposeful.

A lazy day after that, but then we probably deserved some laziness after a decent walk. It was hot enough to sit out in the afternoon sun, but it has really clouded over again now.