#dumyat

Dumyat, a rocky knoll overlooking Stirling was my first serious linguistic obstacle and the hill that made me realise it would take a while to settle in to my new home. For the first few months I didn’t really know anyone locally, and certainly didn’t know any hillwalking type folk, so I merrily hiked my way around the munros in blissful ignorance of the correct way of saying things. But then one day I found myself in the company of an Edinburgh local who had been climbing hills all his life. 

‘Where are you off to this weekend’, he asked.

‘Ben Ledi I think’, which was said correctly as ‘Leddy’. There wasn’t really much room for error there. 

‘But’ I continued...’that probably won’t take all day though, so I think I’ll stop at Dum Yat on the way home’.

‘Where?’

‘Dum YAT. It’s a small hill near Stirling’.

Cue much laughter and ridicule.

‘It’s not Dum YAT, you arse, it’s ‘Dum-EYE-at’. 

‘Well how was I supposed to know!?’ I protested.

Bear in mind we didn’t have the wealth of easily accessible information back in those dusty olden days. There wasn’t YouTube. There was barely internet. I mostly relied on books, and they didn’t write hill names out phonetically because they were written for a local audience who already knew how to pronounce these things.

After that I think I pretty much shied away from pronouncing anything in public. Over time it got easier of course, not least because websites started springing up that actually spoke these names aloud to you. True, some contradicted one another, but at least it gave you something to work with. And so I continued my walking around Scotland, thereafter relishing rather than fearing place names as every new encounter only broadened my experience of the culture and the landscape.

But I never again returned to Dumyat. That wasn’t a conscious decision on my part, I just never thought about returning. Now though, it amuses me to think that I have perhaps had a subconscious coping mechanism that has steered me clear of that inoffensive wee lump, lest it dig up traumatic memories. Did I have  Dum Yat demons to banish? But then in mid January this year the weather gods heaped the lion’s share of limited snowfall onto Stirling and Dunblane. I of course am attracted to wherever the snow lies deepest and so at 8am, nearly 14 years after my first and only visit I found myself in Blairlogie, at the foot of Dumyat. 

Dumyat is small really. At a mere 418m it is even smaller than my local hill, East Lomond, and with a handy car park at around 200m altitude its modest summit can be attained relatively easily and in quick time. But approaching from that point, from the high road to the west, denies you the drama of the sheer escarpment to the south.....hence my approach from the Blairlogie car park just outside Menstrie.

I’d not taken this route before but I thought it would be a good choice to see the sunrise across the Forth Valley. And indeed it was!

I was gaining height quickly and was already high up on the hill before the first blinding rays of light heralded the dawn. As has been the case most of these past few months, it was clear that the best of the sunrise would pass very quickly owing to the small gap between the horizon and the low cloud hugging the landscape. But even though I was expecting it to be fleeting, the speed with which it passed caught me off guard. 

Glancing west, the hills were suddenly burning pink with the glorious alpenglow, but I wasn’t in a good vantage point to get the best view. A large crag was in my way. By the time I hurried 100m or so up the hill to get into a better position the pink was already fading. The below photo, showing the Wallace Monument and Stirling Castle behind it looks vivid but it’s nothing compared to what it was just 20 seconds earlier. It’s incredible how brief these spectacular moments can be.

Never the less, I was chuffed. It’s all very well forming a plan in your head about where you plan to be at a given time and imagining what you are going to see, but all manner of variables outwith your control can scupper your efforts. It’s immensely satisfying when it all works out, even if it is for only two minutes. But truth be told it’s difficult to be disappointed by the views on offer at Dumyat. Though small, its location at the end of the Ochils and immediately overlooking the remarkable Ochil fault that rises sheer from the flat plains below, means it has one of the finest views in all of Scotland. Industrial and urban perhaps, but given that most of the Scottish population lives in this narrow ribbon of land between the topographical highlands and the southern uplands, it’s a view most of us can relate to in some way.

Though the alpenglow had gone, the view out across the Forth Valley was spectacular. The outline of the Pentland Hills, on the other side of the Forth, was aflame.

Looking farther east the low light cast familiar landmarks in stark relief: Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh Castle and the cranes atop the new Queensferry Crossing. And in the foreground the landscape got progressively snowier to the west. 

While the view south is industrial, the views west and north are anything but. Capped with snow and the first to catch the morning light, the southern highlands, with Ben Lomond lording it over the flatter parts of Stirling:

By this point I’d veered away from joining the main path that runs east from the high road to the summit, instead relishing the snaking sheep tracks that wound their way under the imposing crags.

The snow was deeper here too, scoured from higher ground by the wind and deposited in deep but soft drifts. It took a while to negotiate my way past the crags but eventually I crested a rise and found myself at the summit of Castle Law - a 374m subsidiary top of Dumyat and which offers a more tantalising view of the Ochil fault. 

Away and to my left, I could make out the summit trig point on Dumyat, which presented a craggy aspect to be negotiated.

There was no sign of anyone. There were no footprints.

I headed north, away from Castle Law and waded through the intermittently deep snow that had accumulated on any southern aspects. 

An hour had passed since sunrise, and the sun was now starting to peek over the low cloud for the first time. Though it was early and cold, not far off the shortest day of the year, I could feel the sun’s warmth through my jacket.

Pressing on, I weaved my way up through the crags under steadily bluer skies:

A fell runner sauntered along the ridge line as I approached, but she was long gone by the time I reached the final approach to the summit:

And then there I was, atop this wee hill but with a view that was anything but!

I’d taken such a convoluted route to the summit and with so many stops for photographs that it had taken me well over two hours to get here from Blairlogie. But the journey itself was every bit the equal of the summit reward, although weirdly I had absolutely no recollection of the massive beacon full of stones that topped the summit. It made for a wonderfully photogenic subject though!

Away to the west, other outdoorsy folk were valiantly making their way up through the snow:

Back at the summit, with a keen wind it was savagely cold so I didn’t hang about, and instead started making my way down the sun-kissed slopes.

I chose a different descent route from the one I used to ascend, which took me east into Menstrie Glen:

It was an easy and quick descent in the snow, and before long I was on the high level path that skirts around the southern flanks of Dumyat and takes you back to Blairlogie. The contouring path offered great views back up the craggy summit:

And wonderful views across to the Wallace Monument:

Perhaps even more impressive, however, was the massive craggy face of Castle Law, the outlying notch on which I’d stood not 90 minutes earlier. In its winter garb and with little to judge scale, it looked positively highland in stature. 

Farther along the path and with little distance to go, the lower hillside was festooned with bright yellow gorse. It flowers all year if given the chance by a mild winter, and its gaudy colour made a nice contrast set against the monochrome winter world above. A confused image to reflect a confused winter, weather-wise.

I was back at the car before lunch. The snow in and around the car park at the lower levels had already melted, so it felt good to have made the best of the stable cold conditions. I made my way back to Fife but before I left I made a point of driving a little way south so that I could get a full view back at the hill I’d just climbed. You can see Castle Law on the left, Dumyat on the right, both rising sheer in improbably fashion from the pancake below. It made for a fitting final view of what is a very big wee hill indeed!

The walk actually put me on a high that lasted a good week or so, but I also resolved to return whenever the next lasting snowfall arrives in the lowlands and a clear morning is forecast. That view of Stirling with the alpenglow burning bright is one I definitely want to see again, and I think I can safely say that my new-found enthusiasm for big wee Dum-eye-at means that any subconscious coping mechanism I may have had is no longer needed. Demons banished, I think my smile says it all :)

If you’re interested in the insane time-consuming route I took, here it is: