Deuchary Hill

I've trekked a great number of the Scottish mountains and hills, mostly thanks to the brilliant organsing skills of my friend Pauline. These however all that is a thing of the distant past, and now it's up to me and fellow hillwalker Andrew to come up with routes. Needless to say we mostly consider those routes previously trekked, being that we are inherently lazy and badly organised.

However, last sunday we ventured out to a hill neither of us had ever walked before. A small hill, and only 12 miles circular route, but new to us both nonetheless. I even managed to book the right train tickets to Dunkeld.

The train station is a good 20-minute walk from the actual start point which is on the north side of Dunkeld next to a woodland car park. I had printed out a route description from the internet the previous day, but in actual fact it was fairly straightforward.

At one point we took a right fork and headed eastwards on the southern side of the hill, only for us to continually question each other whether we had missed the turn off to ascend the hill or not. Right on the cusp of retracing our steps we found the path and took a very steep ascent up to the trig point on the summit of Deuchary Hill.

There were great views to rural Perthshire all around, though there was an icy wind making it feel more like November than June. Taking shelter from the wind we gave ourselves our reward, and the focus of most of our days at home: food.

It was a quick descent back down the same way we had come up, then we circled round the hill, past a small body of water called Loch Ordie, then heading south back toward our starting point. I had a fair amount of pain from an old injury in my big toe of my right foot, and by the time we reached Dunkeld village it was driving me crazy.

There was just time to grab a quick refreshment before jumping on the train home, getting back to Edinburgh just in time to see the final of The Apprentice.

If only I could fire my big toe.