Birnam Hill

14 May 2011

Participants - Neil and Ben
Where - Birnam Hill, 404m/1,324', Sub-2,000' Marilyn, Map 52, NO 032402

Made famous by Shakespeare in Macbeth, Birnam Hill is a pleasant short walk, best appreciated by doing the full circuit which is about 3 miles. I have climbed this one a few times, always in winter which I would say is the best season to do it as the views are a bit obscured by the foliage at other times of the year. I parked in the station car park and did an anti-clockwise circuit which meant that most of the steep stuff was on the ascent. There had been a lot of path reconstruction work since I was last here; in my view it is a bit excessive as the new paths are at least twice the width that they need to be and spoil the hill a bit. Still, they have eliminated all the boggy bits.

The walk is a bit shut in initially but there are breaks in the trees from time to time so there are some views down to Birnam and Dunkeld.....

The best of the views in this direction are from a large rock at the start of a flat area just before the final climb to the summit; the foliage obscured things a bit today so here are a couple of pictures taken from there on a previous early spring visit, firstly a zoom shot of Dunkeld and the river Tay and then a view to the Loch of the Lowes.....

There is a large cairn at the top and plenty of handy boulders for sitting on to admire the view.....

Schiehallion dominates the western horizon (zoom shot).....

There was a steep section not long after leaving the top but the path improver's have put in a wooden staircase here. This shot gives an indication of the type of path that they have built.....

I made a slight diversion to a viewpoint on an old bridge- the Stair bridge- so I could see the view to the south-east; I wonder why that particular bit of track was so important in years' gone by as to justify the building of a substantial stone bridge?

 Lower down still, the path swung east and we were facing the even more heavily wooded slopes of Newtyle Hill which we had climbed earlier in the year. The thick vegetation would have been a more daunting proposition today.....

Birnam Hill is handily placed for a stop if travelling on the A9 and is well worth the little effort required. A quick up and down the northern slopes from the station would take les than an hour.