Cademuir Hill.....Luck or what?

11 November 2012

Participants - Neil, Steven and Ben
Where - Cademuir Hill, 416m/1,365', Sub-2k Marilyn, Map 73, NT 242377

I had looked at Cademuir Hill in passing on a number of occasions and done just that, passed it. The few reports that I had read talked about huge problems in finding a route through the forest that covers the upper part of this hill; the most recent comments that I had come across were "not a nice hill" and "thoroughly unpleasant". Anyway, we were going to Peebles for a Sunday outing and the temptation to give the hill a go proved too strong. I expected that I would have no chance in finding the cairn, particularly as I don't have a gps and the few paths marked on the map apparently bore little resemblance to what is on the ground.

We parked in the Cademuir Forest car park on the south-west side of the hill. A rough path headed up towards the forest.....

This path reached a forestry road at a red marked waymark post. I reckoned that the top of the hill was roughly above us (obviously!) but slightly further to the north. So we turned left on to the track and followed it until it turned into a path which headed steeply uphill. After about 150 yards the path levelled out and I guessed that we must have come all the distance in a northerly direction that we needed. There seemed to be a break in the trees above us at this point - it was not obvious that it continued any distance but we decided to take it anyway so turned right. In fact, there were what looked like old vehicle tracks so the going was OK. Higher up, we appeared to arrive at a junction of similar forest breaks and solely on instinct, we turned right at this point and then almost immediately left. We were back following the vehicle tracks uphill. There was only one fallen tree that we had to get past and not long after that, the forest break that we were following flattened out and we were looking at glimpses of sky through the trees.....

The ground looked higher to our right so we went that way. It looked as though we had hit on the summit area so we scouted around a bit. And, miracle of miracles, after rounding another fallen tree we spotted the cairn.....

Here is the evidence to prove that we made it to the top.....

And here is a close up of one of the party, who was persuaded to sit still for a moment with a shout of "Ben.....num nums" which is dog speak for food in our house.....

There were, of course no views. I suspect that there are other breaks in the trees that lead to the cairn from the main track but we didn't bother to look. We just went back the same way. Going downhill, there was a view of the 407m top, which has no trees, to the west.....

So Cademuir Hill turned out to be not difficult at all; in fact it was easy peasy! Luck or what?