Tarriers Who Cite Reconnaissance as the Reason,
This week’s holiday hasn’t been great; it has been tragic, confusing, and irksome and characterised by listlessness. My philosophy is that when the weather is nice, do nothing and vice versa, thus I have done nothing with my days off work until today; the weather forecast was poor so I decided I would head out. This was, of course, a major effort, not least on the part of my dislike of driving. However, I decided that I should practice driving again before next week.
I headed west, where we were promised better weather. If I had been in one of my extravagant moods, I would have headed to Glasgow, or even Stirling, to purchase numerous duplicates of the possessions I already own. As it was, I didn’t fancy having to find space for any new stuff or worst still, answering comments like, “Where did you get that?”, yet I headed to the vicinity of Stirling, and to Dollar Glen. I’d heard about this place before and a walk was just what I needed to burn off the weight that I have acquired whilst eating bar after bar of chocolate in the laboratory over the last few weeks.
The road to car park is narrow but thankfully no cars came down the other way, I would have been rather rusty in pulling off some sort of manoeuvre. The trail starts at the first car park but it is possible to drive further up the hill to the car park of Castle Campbell. The first thing that strikes me about the place is a real sense of all three dimensions; walkers are encapsulated by sights and sounds above and below. The sky is barely visible from the path, the river gushes over waterfall after waterfall below and the trees go on and on up to the summits of the steep-sided glen, it must be like being in the rainforest. There were no other walkers at the time and it was nice just to be surrounded by nature for a while, of course, the paths and bridges were man-made but without them, there’d be no walk. I chose to walk the path in the anti-clockwise direction, up the east side of the glen first, this is quite fitting since I like loosening screws more than I like tightening them.
The trail leads past Castle Campbell, which had no visitors, but I was not interested in it. I have come to resent castles, I see them as a symbol of the aristocracy and monarchy, and from my lowly status, I cannot connect with those who have lived a privileged life. The castle only breaks through the tree line briefly, it is shrouded by the glen, the trees and the mountains, I’m sure it would be a lovely place to read a book in but for me, it was a sideshow. It was near the castle that I became lost, the path split in three, why I wondered towards the cows and was subsequently scared by them is a mystery, I should have studied the boards more carefully. Thankfully, I did not have to walk through the cows, should I have had to in order to complete the path, I think I’d have gone home. Cows remain a threat; we don’t know what they’re going to do next.
The walk took around 90 minutes; I followed all the detour paths as is typical explorative bogtrotting tradition before retreating to the main trail. One sidepath was signposted, “Route to viewpoint only, 120 mts”, this baffled me, my first conclusion was that it would take 2 hours to reach the viewpoint so I continued on the main trail, however, I soon backtracked when I worked out that the viewpoint through the a particularly spectacular narrow chasm was only 120 metres off the main path. Someone should fix this: “mts” means “mountains”, “m” is the abbreviation for metres.
I did not pay particular attention to wildlife; I concentrated too much on the scenery. Should I have stayed in a specific locale and studied all around me, I’d surely have come home more pleased than I was already having spotted a jay for the first time. I’ll be more observant next time, I imagine it would be nice to visit in the glen in the rain, although I would need better footwear than my sandshoes.
I headed west, where we were promised better weather. If I had been in one of my extravagant moods, I would have headed to Glasgow, or even Stirling, to purchase numerous duplicates of the possessions I already own. As it was, I didn’t fancy having to find space for any new stuff or worst still, answering comments like, “Where did you get that?”, yet I headed to the vicinity of Stirling, and to Dollar Glen. I’d heard about this place before and a walk was just what I needed to burn off the weight that I have acquired whilst eating bar after bar of chocolate in the laboratory over the last few weeks.
The road to car park is narrow but thankfully no cars came down the other way, I would have been rather rusty in pulling off some sort of manoeuvre. The trail starts at the first car park but it is possible to drive further up the hill to the car park of Castle Campbell. The first thing that strikes me about the place is a real sense of all three dimensions; walkers are encapsulated by sights and sounds above and below. The sky is barely visible from the path, the river gushes over waterfall after waterfall below and the trees go on and on up to the summits of the steep-sided glen, it must be like being in the rainforest. There were no other walkers at the time and it was nice just to be surrounded by nature for a while, of course, the paths and bridges were man-made but without them, there’d be no walk. I chose to walk the path in the anti-clockwise direction, up the east side of the glen first, this is quite fitting since I like loosening screws more than I like tightening them.
The trail leads past Castle Campbell, which had no visitors, but I was not interested in it. I have come to resent castles, I see them as a symbol of the aristocracy and monarchy, and from my lowly status, I cannot connect with those who have lived a privileged life. The castle only breaks through the tree line briefly, it is shrouded by the glen, the trees and the mountains, I’m sure it would be a lovely place to read a book in but for me, it was a sideshow. It was near the castle that I became lost, the path split in three, why I wondered towards the cows and was subsequently scared by them is a mystery, I should have studied the boards more carefully. Thankfully, I did not have to walk through the cows, should I have had to in order to complete the path, I think I’d have gone home. Cows remain a threat; we don’t know what they’re going to do next.
The walk took around 90 minutes; I followed all the detour paths as is typical explorative bogtrotting tradition before retreating to the main trail. One sidepath was signposted, “Route to viewpoint only, 120 mts”, this baffled me, my first conclusion was that it would take 2 hours to reach the viewpoint so I continued on the main trail, however, I soon backtracked when I worked out that the viewpoint through the a particularly spectacular narrow chasm was only 120 metres off the main path. Someone should fix this: “mts” means “mountains”, “m” is the abbreviation for metres.
I did not pay particular attention to wildlife; I concentrated too much on the scenery. Should I have stayed in a specific locale and studied all around me, I’d surely have come home more pleased than I was already having spotted a jay for the first time. I’ll be more observant next time, I imagine it would be nice to visit in the glen in the rain, although I would need better footwear than my sandshoes.
posted by Leif at 11:11 PM
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