Newtyle Hill

18 January.

Participants - Me and Ben
Where - Newtyle Hill, 317m/1,041', Sub-2,000 Marilyn, Map 52/52, NO 050419.

I had read a number of reports about Newtyle Hill, a Marilyn outside Dunkeld. They all spoke about a hill cloaked in thick bracken and heather and one to be avoided in the summer months. A day in January after one of the longest freezes for years and when the vegetation would be at its most benign seemed, therefore, to be the ideal time to tackle it. I parked in the Scottish Wildlife Trust car park at Loch of Lowes and walked along the loch side for a few hundred yards to the start of a track that went round the hill and apparently down to Dunkeld.....

Where the path split I took a left hand branch which wound its way round and up the hill ending at a telecommunications mast. There was a good view of the loch, still frozen, from here.....

It was a nice walk through mostly birch woodland.....

and there was a good view of Birnam and the bridge over the Tay from higher up.....

The track ended at the mast and it was then a case of continuing uphill behind the mast initially through rough grass and bracken. There were a number of tops ahead, all seemingly roughly the same height (the actual summit is the pointy one on the left).....

As I approached it, the grass and bracken was replaced by heather which even at this time of year was thigh deep in places. Goodness knows what it is like in August! Ben struggled gamely through it.....

and soon we were at the top, which surprisingly boasted a cairn.....

The views were of the distant variety; this is looking north towards Drumochter.....

So it turned out to be a much better hill than I had anticipated providing a good short days outing. It was not nearly as bad as others I have been on. It is also definitely worth following the track to the telecommunications mast as this leaves only a short section of bracken/heather to climb; the approach from any other direction looks as though it involves crossing rough ground all of the way.