With friends Ele and Dave visiting Perthshire (from Yorkshire) for a holiday, I decided to make the drive south from my home near Inverness to go for a walk with them. I looked around for a suitable hill and discovered the ideal walking-and-talking route – a wide track with only a little need for navigation – on the Fiona, Meall Dearg.
The out-and-back walk totals around 12km with just over 500m of ascent. Ele and Dave are very fit but they had also had a busy week of Munro bagging, cycling and wild swimming, so we all thought that are fairly easy-going hike on a track would be perfect. This meant we could walk side-by-side and chat.
The forecast was not great and picking a Fiona with a height of 690m meant we had a good chance of remaining below the clouds. As it turned out, the conditions were quite good for the time of year (October) and we even enjoyed a little sunshine. We were delighted by some great views over the autumnal Perthshire landscape, too.
The route starts in a layby on the road south of Aberfeldy in Glen Cochill. Look for White Cairn on the OS Map around 12km along the road.
We had a short bit of tarmac to walk, further south, before turning on to the wide track. This is actually part of the old General Wade’s Military Road and heads, as you might imagine, straight uphill.
The walk is rarely steep and, mostly, it provided a pleasant incline. After a couple of kilometres on Wade’s road, we turned left (west) and then south-westerly to continue uphill.
Of course, we were chatting too hard and missed the turn off from the track to rough hillside that led towards the summit.
Tip: Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters is a good place for a coffee afterwards.
Checking our route later, we only walked a couple of hundred metres too far. When we returned to the point where we should have headed up the steeper and rougher higher slope, we could just make out a bit of a trod.
There was also a length of wood across a burn, on top of which was a somewhat alarming looking animal trap. I am still not sure what this was for, or if it is legal.
The final part of the walk followed bits and pieces of trod but, really, we simply headed uphill for the highest point. It wasn’t long before we spotted the trig pillar marking the summit.
After a few photos, we decided to return to a lower elevation to try to find a less windy spot for our picnic lunches.
The rest of the route followed the same wide track back downhill and then along the short stretch of road back to our vehicles.
This is a perfect walk if you only have a few hours and you do not want to be stressed by route finding and being off track for long.
It proved to be a brilliant way to catch up on lots of chat with my friends, who I only see every couple of years or so.
Our route: Strava and OS Map.