Ben Gullipen

Ben Gullipen summit - radio masts and generators

Ben Gullipen     417m    52minutes

ascent:       249 metres
distance:    5 kilometres
time:          1 hour 21 minutes

I managed my first short walk up a hill in 2019 today. After moving into the new house in December I have spent most days lugging furniture and boxes of stuff from room to room, installing a wooden floor in the roof void of the garage, clearing builder's rubble off the site and shifting over 200 barrowloads of topsoil to prepare for sowing grass and creating the odd flower bed. As a result, my knees are aching for the first time in my life and previous back pain has flared up. I have only managed one run since Christmas. As I was about to set off hillwalking last week at 8am on a perfect winter's day, the joiner arrived to carry out snagging repairs so the walk had to be abandoned.

Today was dry and the light was good to the north so I drove half a dozen miles to climb Ben Gullipen, the second-highest point on the Menteith Hills overlooking Loch Venachar. I followed the track from the high point of the A81 at Cock Hill. The first kilometre is a steep climb through the forest and then after a gate, it is open hillside with highland cattle grazing and superb views to the north. It is an easy walk but just what I needed to get back into regular running and hill walking.

I met Alison near the summit, she is a local legend who runs every day and walks Ben Gullipen regularly. We blethered away for 15 minutes and even ventured into a discussion about Brexit. I guessed I was on safe ground as she has two daughters who live and work in Europe. I am surprised but pleased to say that I still have to meet anyone who thinks Brexit is good. Admittedly most of my acquaintances are in Scotland but even when visiting London to see our daughters and their friends I have yet to talk to anyone who believes in this crazy stunt and that includes a senior civil servant at the Treasury who tells me that virtually all other work has been abandoned to prepare for Brexit. Do I live in a parallel universe?

It was cold in the breeze as I continued to the clutter of radio masts and equipment that decorated the summit. Alison had advised me to go beyond the radio masts where there is a boggy path that takes you to a viewpoint overlooking Loch Venachar. I could spot Blairgarry where Aileen's parents had had a cottage for forty years and where we had spent holidays when our children were young and visited most weeks when we lived nearby. The cottage looked south over the loch to Ben Gullipen. It was said by locals that the forestry plantations on the northern slopes of Ben Gullipen had been laid out to replicate the British and French battalions during the Battle of Waterloo. If so, the Ben Gullipen viewpoint is located where Napoleon began the charge through Charleroi to humbug Wellington.

The views of Ben Ledi and Stuc Odhar to the north of Loch Venachar were perfect and in the northeast, Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin provided a familiar skyline. The clouds were closing in from the west as I began the descent but it had been the first of what will be many trips up this local landmark, it is about the same height as Lime Craig, the hill near our previous home that I have climbed over 400 times. Ben Gullipen will become a similar prop for exercise and I will be running it in the future.

Cattle on the ascent

Loch Venachar dam

Loch Venachar looking west

Callander from summit

Towards Stuc a' Chroin and Ben Vorlich