Culter Hills
25 November 2007
The start of this walk was the end of the public road just south of
Culter Allers Farm. This road was reached by driving south on a single
track road from Culter which is located on the A702 road between
Biggar and the Abington Service Station on the M74.
Just beyond the Farm there was a sign saying 'Private', whether or not
it is I don't know, but it welcomed walkers as long as there were no
more than four and that the owners aren't out shooting. I didn't
think the wording of the sign was that friendly but I wasn't there to
make friends with the owner or his staff. There was limited verge
parking just before the sign.
We set off along the 'private road' towards Coulter Reservoir but
after around 600 metres left this road and followed the vehicle track
up the side of the Kings Beck. The track later petered out and we
climbed fairly steeply onto the Tippet Knowe, a heathery ridge to the
north-west of Culter Fell. Here there were traces of a path which we
followed across some boggy ground passing a walker and a couple of
hill runners who were going in the opposite direction.
We climbed to the summit trig point of Culter Fell where, despite the
weather closing in, we had views across to Tinto Hill and south to our
next set of hills. The descent from Culter Fell was down its south
ridge following a line of fence posts, across some wet and boggy
ground, before climbing over two minor tops, Moss Law and Holm Nick.
By this time the summit of Culter Fell was cloud covered and it was
like this mainly for the rest of the day.
At this point we had a choice of climbing directly onto Gathersnow
Hill or firstly go out and climb the New Donald, Coomb Hill. We
decided on the latter and initially followed an old vehicle track
before it disappeared and we continued up the side of a fence. Higher
up we crossed the fence and aimed for the bealach between Gathersnow
Hill and Coomb Hill, before making the short ascent to Coomb Hill's
summit cairn.
We returned to the bealach followed by an easy ascent to the summit of
Gathersnow Hill, which was marked by a small cairn beside the boundary
fence. It was too windy to stop here for lunch and as we had already
planned to include Hudderstone on our round of Culter Glen we
descended to the head of the Back Burn where we found some shelter for
a late lunch.
The next section of the walk was over pathless terrain, including
heather, bog and some peat hags and involved crossing a couple of
fences as we sought the best and most direct route to Hudderstone.
Eventually we reached its south-east ridge and followed a fence over
Dod Hill and onto Hudderstone.
There was nothing marking Hudderstone's highest point and as light was
failing we descended north, steeply at times, towards the stream Lea
Gill. Animal tracks helped us to get through the heather and dead
bracken before a more obvious animal path lead to a large shed
containing sheep. Just beyond the shed a vehicle track led to the
tarred road on the east side of Culter Water and in the dark this road
was followed back to the start beside Culter Allers Farm.
Time taken - 6 hours.
Distance - 20 kilometres.
Height climbed - 1030 metres.
Photographs taken on this walk can be viewed at:
http://www.caledoniahilltreks.com/gallery07/culter_hills_nov07/index.htm
Lindsay
www.caledoniahilltreks.com