KYQ4: Dumyat and the University

Dumyat across Airthrey Loch at Stirling University

Sunday 7 January, 2024

The New Year was getting old and I was stuck in a rut, the miserable weather was not helping. I had only made a couple of attempts to get any exercise all week. I noticed there was a Munro exhibition at the MacRobert Centre so decided to pay a visit and perhaps take a walk around the beautiful campus grounds of Stirling University. An overnight frost and blue skies hurried me on and I arrived before the exhibition hall opened. I decided to take a walk up Dumyat, the 419-metre hill that provides an excellent viewpoint of the Forth Valley and the Highlands to the northwest.

I had not been to the University Campus or the MacRobert for almost two years, and it was over ten years since I was last up Dumyat. Both places bring back strong memories. I first climbed Dumyat as a competitor in the annual hill race the year after I began hill running. It is a fairly steep ascent through a forest and then onto the open hillside, I was 12th out of about 100 competitors at the summit but descending was my weakness and I drifted backwards 10 or so places as I negotiated the rocky sections and the tree roots in the forest before gaining places on the road for the last kilometre to the finish. It took 41 minutes for the 6-mile route up and down the hill from the start by the Pathfinder Building. I was due to have an interview for a job in Stirling the following week so I was also checking out the local runs. I got the job and Dumyat became a lunchtime training run with a colleague who was also a keen hill runner, it took us about 1 hour and 15 minutes from the office. By this time I was more involved in Munro bashing so I never repeated the hill race.

In December 1996, a Social Work colleague who had had a breakdown following the Dunblane shootings was off work and he had not been out or seen anyone other than his family for several months. I was contacted by his brother, a Professor of Psychology, who explained that his brother would like to speak to me. I arranged to visit him but he wanted to go on a walk up Dumyat after dark, it was not a surprise, we were both keen hillwalkers and I presumed he wanted some privacy for a conversation. It was a cold December evening, I collected him from home and we climbed the hill. He was silent in the car and on the ascent, only his headtorch confirmed his presence as I related to him what had been happening at work during his absence. We reached the summit and as we started the descent he found his voice and opened up about his trauma. He invited me for tea with his family and it became a regular event every couple of weeks until he returned to work.

After retiring I made another late evening visit to the hill with an ex-work colleague who was about to move on and once again it was dark as we descended and retired to a local Indian restaurant. All of these events had been forgotten until I started the ascent today and they came alive as I rediscovered familiar routes that triggered evocative memories. The walk around Airthrey Loch and the start of the walk on the route of the hill race raised thoughts of how the hell did I ever manage to run this?

As I left the steep climb through the forest I could see lots of people walking from a car park on Sheriffmuir Road, they had 200 metres less to climb. The footpath through the forest was veneered with icy mud and then, after climbing a fence, there was a frozen grassy path across the open hillside until I joined the main path from the car park that had been gravelled and was smeared with dangerous ice in places. Being Sunday, there were lots of families trailing children and dogs on leads and, being Bridge of Allan, there were lots of university types in the mix.

It took longer than used to be the case to reach the summit where there must have been 30 or 40 people circling the large cairn, taking photos and admiring the exceptional views. I had always admired the cairn at the summit which is topped by a beacon that was used as a signalling point. It has been joined recently by a large pale blue monument for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, an incongruous addition to a fine summit. Along with the Staffordshire Bull Terrier that was roaming freely, the monument made me want to escape as quickly as possible.

The descent was reasonably quick and I was able to see the Munro exhibition which was a fairly limited affair, although I did learn about Professor Heddle who had made a list of 409 hills that were 3000-footers and climbed 350 of them by 1891. This was before Sir Hugh Munro, drawing on Heddle, produced his list and the credit for creating a sport that has mesmerised mountain lovers ever since. The MacRobert Centre also brought back another pile of memories: watching the Boys of the Loch in the 1970s, the Singing Kettle and Pantos when the children were young and dozens of films that Aileen had taken me along to see in the intimate small cinema.

I also walked around many of the buildings that had appeared on the campus. At work, I spent quite a lot of time working with three of the University Principals and staff as we successfully bid for the Scottish Institute of Sport to be based on the Stirling campus and secured funding for the Stirling Management Centre and the Innovation Park. As I left the campus I felt privileged to have been able to have been involved in so much work and enjoy leisure time on such a beautiful campus. I will be back again to renew my acquaintance with this place and its nearby hills