The Glenshee hillSs have a certain reputation for being munros for lazy folk! The A93 climbs high through the landscape here leaving very little ascent from road to summit cairn on most of these hills. The hills themselves for the most part form a gentle, rolling upland landscape with few crags, no scrambles and easy options for ticking large numbers of munros off in day.
Yet, if the 'lazy-munroist' tag has something of a ring of truth to it, that makes it easier to forgive than the lazy-hill writers who dismiss this landscape as 'dull', 'unexciting' and lacking the thrills of the west coast peaks or the grandeur of the central Cairngorm massif.
The Glenshee hills have a charm all of their own, and it not just their accessibility and easy ascents that have made me climb them repeatedly. The broad rolling hills are captivating and delightful, and present vast open spaces which make the mind rest and the soul soar. Looking south, vast swathes of Perthshire are spread out like a tablecloth laid in front of the walker who takes the time to pause and gaze. The land flattens out as the Tay winds its way down towards Perth, and forestry and hunting forests give way to crops and pasture. To the west, the eyes are assaulted by uncountable numbers of hills. In fact, the levels of visibility and clarity could be classified by the number of peaks visible from the likes of Glas Maol, from which the views over the top of the Cairnwell and Carn Aosda into the tangle of hills behind the Dalmunzie House Hotel, and the lofty vastness of the Tarf and Tilt beyond. These are then drawfed by the most famous of the Cairngorms to the North. Beinn Avon's great granite tors, from Glenshee look like pimples on the skin of the plateau - but present like granite detached houses to the walker who wants to bog their eccentric summits. From there the eye is drawn westwards to the Lairig Ghru, to Beinn Macduibh, memories of decades of hillwalks, friends, companions, storms, adventures and scenes that surely belong more to Middle Earth than Aberdeenshire.
With a half-day free and my wife counting down to completing a hundred munros, and two of out three kids up for a walk, we drove North; through Balirgowrie, Bridge of Cally and up the long-familiar roads to the hills. Summer hillwalks, Winter ski trips, have begun for my family on these roads. The Spittal of Glenshee is a sorry eyesore still, years after the fire that destroyed the hotel there. My family recall drinks there in crowded bars after days on the snow, and I remember competing with bus-parties of older folks to get the last scones, on my way down from long hill days! Yet the tangled mess of dereliction left there now is awful, and surely a business opportunity for someone going begging too. Perhaps the lack of reliable snow these days makes investment too risky; the fact that the site has not been cleared and remains in its current state is all the more surprising in that it lies within a National Park in which such things are not supposed to happen. Or at least when they do, to get dealt with.
We drove up past the old devil's elbow, on the new road up to the ski centre, and dropped down the other side on the road towards Braemar. At the foot of the steep ascent a little car park allows access to two bridges by the bifurcation of the upper part of the Clunie Burn. The left hand bridge is an ancient structure, a stone pack horse bridge overlain with turf, a delightful little time-piece. It oeads to a path which leads all the way up Carn an Tuirc, not on the route on the OS Map, but striking directly up the face to the rocky summit.
Here in driving winds we grabbed for hats and jumpers and wolfed down handfuls of trail-mix, and wondered where all the chocolate minstrels had gone (my daughter had been selectively raiding them from the bag!) Turnign eastwards and marching across grass and heather we found the track up to Cairn of Claise, a strange summit with a cairn whichis also part of a dry stone wall. Possibly the finest part of the walk is the descent around the corrie and back over the Sron na Gaoithe (just ducking to the right of its bouldery top). Pausing for an emotional moment to remember a late-friend who just loved to ski down the Coir Fionn, and imagining her flying down those slopes; there was a wisfulness and sorrow to our descent. And soon we were back at the car, and home for tea. Hardly an olympiad, but what better what to spend an afternoon?
Two easier ticks in the Munro book there might never be (I have climbed these many times!), but away with the lazy writing that dismisses the beauty of this wonderful landscape.
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