#ben cleuch

Sooooo, on 20th May, a nice sunny Sunday a couple of weeks ago, I ventured up Glen Devon for an upland stroll.......armed with my wallet for a drink at the inn afterwards.

There are three smaller glens branching south of the road you can walk up, each with a reservoir in it.  I chose the westernmost glen that contains the Upper and Lower Glendevon reservoirs, intending to head up to Ben Cleuch from the north.  Ben Cleuch is the highest point in the Ochils, but is normally ascended from the south by one of a number of paths starting in the string of towns at the bottom of the Ochil escarpment - Alva, Tillicoultry, Dollar.  'Is normally ascended from' is of course a euphemism for 'avoid at all costs if you like to have the hills to yourself' ;-)  Hence our route from the north......which was guaranteed to be quiet.

The track along the reservoirs is decent and in fact is tarmacked, so it makes for an easy and quick way to get up into the hills......though not the best surface for my poor ageing feet.  Perhaps I should have done what everyone else appeared to be doing and parking way up by the dams......but all my guide books were out of date and suggested you couldn't park up there.  Oh well.  You live & learn.

Flood of emotions

Lower Glendevon is certainly an attractive spot......although I couldn't help thinking about what it would have looked like before it was flooded.  Was there just a small burn?  A large burn?  A series of waterfalls?  A flood plain?  A village?

Actually I always do this when I see reservoirs, wondering what was lost when the glen was flooded.  That's not to say I think it *shouldn't* have been flooded or that we shouldn't be creating reservoirs in logical places to meet our water needs.....rather that I can't help having a lingering sense of sadness when walking alongside reservoirs.

It is of course a good thing that we have them and can sustain ourselves, but equally it's no bad thing to be aware of how the land has been managed and to mourn the loss of natural heritage where it has been sacrificed to meet our needs.

And naturally, once flooded the glen becomes new habitat in itself and new species will move in.  As I say, I'm not off on a rant here against reservoirs, I just like to pay my respects to what was there before.

The reservoir itself was apparently built by German POWs in the First World War.  Now it supplies water to Dunfermline and Rosyth, and is used as a trout fishery......hence the small flotilla of surly silhouettes sitting out on the water when we walked past.

Upper Glendevon reservoir was much quieter.  No fishing, just swallows swooping overhead.  The tarmac road goes all the way up to the farm at Blackhills.....which I assume was probably just a dirt road before the Burnfoot windfarm got approval.

Erm......do I LIKE wind farms!?

I had a vague inkling there was a windfarm up there somewhere but I wasn't sure where it was.  Driving along the Perth-Crieff road you see the Ochils in profile and there are a load of turbines quite close to the ridge line....but I hadn't realised how close to the summit of Ben Cleuch they were.  My OS map was quite new but still didn't have these turbines marked, so turning a corner and suddenly seeing them looming overhead came as quite a surprise.

I had planned on walking up the grassy flanks of Ben Buck and on to Ben Cleuch.....but that entire ridge was now a maze of white blades and towers, with a bulldozed track sat along the ridge line linking the turbines together.

By that point I'd had enough of walking on roads so was happy to take the sheep tracks on the opposite side of the glen instead, seeing as they were on grass.  But really, I hadn't come all this way to go walking through a windfarm on this sunny Sunday afternoon.

This side of the Ochils really is beautiful.  Like the Lomond Hills further east, the range is bordered by a dramatic and steep escarpment........which can be a real grind to ascend from the south, but which you can be completely unaware of if you approach from the north.  From this side, all you see are unending, gently rolling grassy hills and you have no sense of the steep drop-offs approaching.

Heading south, gaining height, I kept looking over at the 13-turbine windfarm just 1km away on the other side of the glen.  A couple of turbines were turning very slowly.  The others stood motionless.  I ignored the questions of efficiency and baseload and instead asked myself, from a purely aesthetic stand point, "are they *that* bad?"

This photo was taken much later in the day, when we were a few kilometres away from Ben Cleuch and the windfarm, so doesn't convey the impact accurately.  Truth be told I hadn't intended this piece to be about windfarms at all, it was supposed to be a brief account of a lovely walk......but as I've said before, I often start writing with one thing in mind and end up talking about something else entirely.  I've learned to just go with it.....although that does mean I often don't have photos to back up my points.  Oh well.  Rest assured that earlier on we'd been very close to the windfarm, almost walking through it.

These particular ones are 102m in height.  To put that into context, Nelson's column in London is 51m high.  These turbines are therefore twice that height.  Big, certainly.....but nowhere near the height of the latest generation of turbines currently springing up all over Scotland.  Those of the Clyde Windfarm along the M74, the largest onshore windfarm in Europe, are 142m high.  ENORMOUS bloody things.

But these particular ones, along with the 18 turbines on the other side of Glen Devon at Green Knowes, are slightly more modest and thus their impact on the landscape is slightly reduced.  Even so, it seems a bit much to plonk this development just short of the highest point in the Ochils, in an area of Central Scotland where you can still get a real sense of vastness and wildness (rather than wilderness) and which has views out into the Highlands.

The last time I was here, back in 2003, it was my first trip into the Ochils and I thought they were just a small collection of grassy lumps ringed by the industry of the Central Belt.  I was therefore surprised when I reached Ben Cleuch's summit to find the opposite to be the case.  Instead I distinctly remember being struck at how expansive, empty and untouched the landscape was.

That seemed the real loss, I suppose.  The fact that the view north is no longer an uninterrupted panorama of rolling hills, leading your eye to the loftier peaks to the north.  Your eye is no longer naturally pulled towards Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin, rather it is pulled by the spinning motion of Burnfoot's giant blades a little over a kilometre away.

And yet.......I didn't feel quite the same revulsion at their presence that I do in our truly wild places up north.  I don't know whether that's because the Central Belt of Scotland is so heavily populated and the land already bears considerable scars of human intervention. or because these particular turbines are smaller......or maybe because the windfarm itself is only 13 turbines.....but I was surprised that I didn't mind *that* much.

And I found I minded the Green Knowes wind turbines even less.  They're smaller still, at around 90m in height.  I'd prefer it if they weren't there at all, naturally.....but seeing as they're a modest height and in an area already defaced with conifer plantations and major routes.....well.....I *almost* found them attractive.  Arrrggh yes okay, I'll admit it.  I quite liked them......which I admit grudgingly:

So I don't know what to make of that really.  Whilst investigating the heights of the Glen Devon wind turbines I stumbled across an article about them and was pleased to find my own opinion mirrored almost exactly.  It was a piece in the Caledonian Mercury by Dave Hewitt called 'In-your-face windfarm that will dominate the Ochils'.  The author obviously enjoys his hills, and the Ochils especially, but is keen to stress that:

The situation is complex. Windfarm companies should not be seen as ill-intentioned, just as objectors should not be seen as Luddites or Nimbys. My own position is indicative of this ambivalence.

I must declare an interest, in that until a couple of years ago I was an active member – indeed for a while the chairman – of Friends of the Ochils, a group devoted to protecting these hills from excessive intrusion. Two subjects, windfarm development and the Beauly–Denny powerline (which is scheduled to cross the western shoulder of the Ochils), came to dominate every meeting.

I was probably the least anti-windfarm person on the committee – but that’s not to say I was pro. I could see the need for an increase in renewable energy sources. And I wasn’t opposed to all windfarms – those built on land already trashed by forestry or mining seem fine, for instance. I have even – and this can be a dangerous thing to say to a turbinophobe – come to rather like the aesthetics of the Green Knowes towers and their turning blades. I’d rather they weren’t there, but they can be pleasing in their own peculiar way.

But there have to be limits, and the in-your-face Burnfoot development is surely pushing the boundaries of appropriateness, given how much it will change the feel of a much-loved walking area

I'll leave the windfarm debate there though for another time ;-)

Views from the Ochils

Once up on the high Ochil ridge that stretches east to west for 10 miles or so (and provides a wonderful traverse along the escarpment), the views are stunning.  Again, like the Lomond Hills in Fife, they benefit from being the highest hills for any appreciable distance. 

You therefore get HUGE expansive views in every direction.  The first thing that strikes you however, is just how extensive the Ochils are.  Not being munros, they don't have a high profile nationally and aren't well-known for the quality of space and openness.  Looking out across softly undulating grassy hills, it comes as something as a surprise to see just how much wonderful walking is to be had out there.  It must be an absolute dream in deep snow if you're a ski tourer.

Above is the view north.  You can just make out Upper Glendevon reservoir, and that indicates our route up onto the high moorland.  You can't make it out from this wide-angled photo, but the view stretches out further north, to Crieff and on into the Highlands and the Cairngorms.

East, you can see the Lomond Hills and Fife sticking out into the North Sea.  West, you look over to the Trossachs and beyond to Arrochar and the west coast, and south........

....well, no photo can do it justice really.  The Ochils suddenly give way and plunge in a long line, miles in length, from an almost uniform 400m altitude practically down to  sea level below.  You therefore have enormous views stretching out across the Forth flood plain, with the Forth itself weaving its way eastward.  The whole of Central Scotland is laid out before you.  The Forth bridges and Edinburgh to the east, with North Berwick way beyond, the Pentland Hills in their entirety, Stirling and the beginnings of Glasgow more to the west.

We hadn't seen anybody since leaving the reservoirs but suddenly, once on the escarpment, there were a few people milling about.  The summit of Ben Cleuch was occupied so we sat just down the southern slope for 15 minutes or so.  It was the day before the 'heatwave' started so, whilst sunny, it was only around 8C on the tops and the cold soon made itself felt.

The Ochils rock!

We moved off......leaving the crowds behind and headed east to Andrew Gannel Hill, over Skythorn Hill and on to Scad Hill......where we found this curiosity:

In some parts of Scotland you'll see nothing BUT rocks.  I remember being in Torridon a few years back, on the northern slopes of Beinn Liath Mor desperately trying to find a small patch of land that WASN'T rock in order to pitch a tent:

It was almost impossible and required half an hour of roaming and ankle-spraining to find anything resembling flat ground or grass.  In the Ochils however, rocks are as rare as grass was on Beinn Liath Mor.....and they're all the more noticeable for it.

Presumably this one was a boulder dumped here from elsewhere by the glaciers that once covered this part of Scotland before retreating some 12,000 years ago.  An 'erratic' boulder, they're called.

Cathedrals and forests?

From there though it was pretty much all downhill.  The entire stretch from Cairnmorris Hill to Ben Shee has evidently been planted with juniper, birch and rowan in an effort to restore the native woodland cover in these parts.  There's been an impressive amount of planting, and though delighted to see it, I felt quite sad that I'd be unlikely to see it restored to its former glory.....seeing as it takes decades.

I remember reading an article last year about the forest restoration work being done in Glen Feshie, up in the Cairngorms.  The guy on the estate said something similar about how his generation and probably even the ones immediately after him, wouldn't get to see the end result of their labours.  He called it 'cathedral conservation' or 'cathedral planning' or something like that, suggesting that landscape restoration work rivals medieval cathedral construction for timescales.  Many workers never saw the end result because it took so long.  They died first! 

Still, it's good to be able to see a broadleaf forest taking shape on these high, treeless slopes....which were of course, like most of Scotland, completely or partially wooded in the not-so distant past.  That romantic ideal of Scotland with its bare, heather-clad hills towering above bare, tree-less glens is entirely man-made.  Nature, yes.  But not natural.  The hills and glens have been extensively deforested over the centuries.....for fuel, for farming, for ship-building, for smelting, even for driving out wolves and other unwanted creatures.

It's only in recent decades that attempts to restore our native forests have begun.  PROPERLY begun, mind.  Those dark, uninviting conifer plantations made up of fast-growing pines from abroad that you see everywhere weren't anything to do with restoring native forests.  They were purely economic ventures, and were initially planted post-1919, when the Forestry Commission was formed in a bid to provide the UK with a reliable wood supply following the First World War.

These days, those kinds of plantations are frowned upon and efforts are underway to diversify the forests for conservation and recreation, as well as returning a profit.  There are all kinds of grants for doing so too......which may explain why this shiny new sign was there.

I've never seen such a swanky, informative sign up on a hillside!

Buy a pint or a sandwich to save your country!

From there.....it was an easy descent back to Frandy Farm and the reservoir road.

And from the car it was just a five minute drive to a rare pleasure indeed, ending a walk with a pint.  In England and, to a lesser extent Wales, country pubs are a much more common feature of the landscape and you nearly always have one at the start or the end of walk.  Not so in Scotland unless you find an inn nearby or a small town or village.

Not my photo, by the way.  I was WAAAAY past caring about photos by that point ;-)

A nice place though, the Tormaukin Inn, with good friendly service and I'm pleased I've finally stopped there.  Too often we'll drive to some far off location, having bought our petrol at home, having bought or made our lunch at home......and then walk the hills and return home immediately without spending so much as a penny in the place we're visiting.  It's good to pause for a while and spend some money in rural communities....otherwise one day you'll find you drive past that familiar hotel or a pub and notice it has closed.  "Awww that's a shame" you think to yourself.  "I always wanted to stop there".  Yes but you didn't, did you!?  We're all guilty of it.

The Tormaukin seemed to be doing a roaring trade on this particular Sunday, I must say.....which is why we opted to sit in the quiet bar rather than the more formal (but I'm sure it's lovely) family dining area.  And I'm sure it must get some good trade from being so close to the golf at Gleneagles.  But not all pubs and hotels are so fortunate, so the next time you find yourself in that situation, take some time to stop, even if it's just a for a drink or a sandwich or whatever.  It could make all the difference to a rural business. 

To conclude, I'm sure you'll be delighted to know I had some very tasty chicken & black pudding thing, a couple of pints of Bitter & Twisted (from local Alva brewers Harviestoun), and a bread & butter pudding.  A perfect end to a walk in a beautiful corner of Central Scotland.  Does Central Scotland even have corners?  Answers on a postcard please :0)