Culblean Hill - day walk

Sunday 24th November 2024

Storm Bert was affecting many parts of the country with heavy rain and high winds, but luckily for us in the northeast, the weather was relatively good for our walk up Culblean Hill. The heavy snow that we had mid-week had melted away by the time that nine of us (Alan, Gillie, Sandy, Ken, Gail, Irene, Gordon, Alison and me) arrived at the Cambus O’May car park.

Once the very icy car park was negotiated, incident free, we set off in a north easterly direction on a good track for approx. 3km. From here we started to follow a burn, uphill through quite long heather, avoiding fallen trees (apologies to all) to reach the Culblean Hill plateau. The views from here are quite extensive with Loch Kinord, Morven, Lochnagar and many more hills looking rather radiant on a clear Sunday morning.

The Met Office wind forecast for our neighbouring hill Morven for the day was 30-35mph, gusting to 40+mph. As we were 270mts lower the wind didn’t cause much of an issue, apart from making it quite not a day for loitering on a hill plateau.

After reaching the small cairned true summit, we dropped off the northwest shoulder of the hill to join a good, but boggy in places track, for the 4.5km walk back to the carpark. From here it was then over to the Cambus O’May Cheese and Milk Hoose café for a refreshing hot drink.