A bit of a last minute inspiration hit upon hearing the Thursday wintervalers’ attempt the ’12 reps of Christmas’. How about 12 hills of Christmas in the Pentlands before some of us headed away for the holidays?
Soon realising that a ’12 hills’ route could quickly just become another Skyline, I turned my map-anorak’s eye to the lesser spotted hills, hillocks, knowes, cairns, and crags of the Northern Pentlands. The rule became that if it was named on the OS Explorer 1:25000 map, it counted as a hill. The stalwarts of the northern ridge were duly included (Allermuir et al.), interspersed with such lesser-trodden delights as Byerside Hill, Fala Knowe, Woodhouselee Hill, White Hill, and the final sloggy, boggy scramble up through the grassy gully onto Green Craig, just north of Allermuir, before descending back to Hillend.
Seven ‘swans-a-swimming’ Carnethies (and friends) turned up to Hillend on Saturday morning for an enjoyable tour of the Pentlands’ quieter slopes with refreshments en route. Rob and I discovered with empirical evidence that Morrisons ‘bog-standard’ mince pies were the more structurally stable shortcrust sweet, compared to their Tesco’s Finest counterpart, which tragically did not survive the high G-force descent of Castlelaw.
Declan Valters