KYQ4: Mayar and Driesh

Tuesday 4 August 2020

Mayar and Driesh

The Scorrie, Driesh from Glen Doll

Monday, 3 August 2020

Ascent: 873 metres

Distance: 15 kilometres

Time: 3 hours 49 minutes

Mayar 928m 1hr 50mins

Driesh 948m 2hrs 36mins

I had not expected to get out in the hills so soon after Friday's walk. First, I was asked if I would like to join John and his family to climb Ben Lui but the forecast was not too good and I thought it was maybe too long a walk for my knee that was giving some twinges of pain after Stuc a' Chroin. Gregor had then suggested we climb Mayar and Driesh, his last remaining Munros in the East. The weather was more promising and it would be an easier walk so we headed off to Glen Clova just after 7:00am. The roads were fairly quiet but it is a long haul up to Glen Clova to the car park at Glen Doll where there were already a dozen cars. We had arrived at 9:30am and on a cool breezy morning began the walk to Mayar via the ever inspiring Corrie Fee.

There were quite a few other walkers setting off as we began and passed the new Blair House that is being built by a local builder using sustainable local materials, with high energy efficiency and a loft designed to attract swifts, swallows and bats. After a couple of kilometres Jock's Road path leaves the Corrie Fee track, which eventually downsizes to a path through the conifer forest until it emerges at the start of the remarkable Corrie Fee. It is a heather clad drumlin field with the purple mounds set in the bright green grasses and a burn meandering up to the back of the corrie where a waterfall provides some fine sound and vision effects as the climb begins.

Gregor agreed to take photos of a group of walkers and one of them shouted don't give him the camera, he looks like a runner and he might run off with it. If only they knew, and he is looking for a new camera! Gregor steamed ahead on the steeper slopes but took a diversion to see the waterfall close up. The path twists its way through the crags in the upper parts of the corrie and it is 800 metres before the gentler grassy slopes are reached that lead to the unspectacular summit of Mayar. Gregor had arrived 5 minutes before me and three other groups were there with the usual scattering of dogs.

It is an easy descent to the bealach between the two hills where the Kilbo path crosses from Glen Doll to Glen Prossen. The climb to Driesh is steeper at first with a gentler final kilometre to the large shelter at the summit. I had bivvied in the heather here on a fine June night in 2006, it had seemed idyllic and I had slept well. It was less appealing today as the rain clouds were gathering. We had a short shower during the return to the bealach from where we descended via the Kilbo path. It was the first time I had descended this way in seven visits to Driesh, I had normally continued down the Scorrie to Glen Doll, made long traverses over to Broad Cairn and Lochnagar or on one occasion returned to Glen Isla.

We were down in good time and considered dropping in at the Glen Clova hotel but even the garden was full of lunchtime drinkers and the car park was full so we drove home via Glamis and Coupar Angus. Perth was awash with traffic and strangled by road repairs. Scotland seems to have been fully unlocked in recent weeks as the end of the summer holidays, cabin fever and a yearning to get out have converged. The fact it was a bank hoiday was probably the least important factor.