A Comedy of Errors.
Start. Glen Sherup car park.
Route. Glen Sherup car park - Whitens - Glensherup Reservoir - Grid NN 974 041 - Glensherup Reservoir - Whitens - Glen Sherup car park.
Notes. Maybe this should be titled A Lesson Needed in Navigation, for this very short walk was a disaster from start to finish. The day started wet, we spent time exploring in the comfort of the car, this usually means stopping every now and again to explore various retail outlets. Late afternoon saw the sun break through the cloud cover, we took the opportunity to nip back to the Tormaukin Inn, our home for a few nights, grab some walking gear and head out into Glendevon. Upper and Lower Glendevon Reservoirs would be our destination, we never did get to lay eyes on them.
Late afternoon the sun was already low in the sky, in our haste we parked in the wrong car park, walked to the wrong reservoir, realising our mistake we opted to follow way-marked path into Glenquey, this winding path guided us into vast pine plantations where we completely lost our bearings. Sitting at the kitchen table with the map in front of me, I find it easy to trace our route, on the ground in fading light, surrounded by enormous pine trees, confined to a narrow forest track we knew we had to leave at some point, I understand our reluctance to carry on, and we had a table booked back at the Inn for dinner. A break in the forest allowed us to take bearings, using map and compass we decided our route was correct, then a finger-post invited us to leave the forest track, not a good idea when it's getting dark, out came the map, we had a meeting the two of us, in the absence of any other walkers to glean information from we abandoned. My advice to any walker, novice or well seasoned rambler, “never be ashamed to turn back”, and on this occasion we followed it.
Our tour round didn't just include retail outlets, it included this fine piece of engineering, The Forth Bridge, total length 8296ft, largest span 1710ft, opened on 4th March 1890.
We also have the Forth Road Bridge, total length 8241ft, longest span 3301ft, opened on 4th September 1964.
Glen Sherup car park looking to Ben Thrush.
A good track guides us across the lower slopes of Black Hill.
Glensherup Reservoir.
Sunlight dances across the surface of Glensherup Reservoir.
Looking back to Glensherup with the aforested slopes of Innerdownie to the left.
On the winding forest track we completely lost any sense of direction, a stolen view across tree tops encouraged us to carry on, the view, Long Craig and Green Knows across Glendevon.
At this point we hadn't got a bloody clue what we were looking at or where exactly we were, a little further up the track we turned tail and headed back.
I took this shot because I liked the colours.