Mount Maw and the Cairns

I went back and did that west Pentland walk at Baddinsgill. A half circuit of the summits from the left of reservoir up Colin's Rig to Mount Maw, Carlops Hill, Gain Heads, The Mount, Wether Law and East Cairn and its three cairn summits. Then a steep descent to Cauldstane Slap and a long and weary trek back to the car on the old drover's road.

The view is from SE summit on East Cairn Hill, where Old Red Sandstone (400MYA) outcrops as wind-carved tors.

It was a mightily windy day on the exposed ridges and tops and very wet underfoot after the day before's downpours. A sorry field of hay already with that smell of fresh compost was a reminder of the vagaries of farming in these uplands. A hundred mixed swallows and martins were filling up the phone lines waiting on the iron timetable of their migratory departure.

By the end - a mere nine miles on the map - I was ready to drop. I saw not a soul until the dwellings at Baddinsgill. A couple of raven, a couple of kestrel or maybe maybe merlin, a mountain hare, a dead vole, a buzzard, meadow pippits and a solitary wheatear and the swallows and martins.

The weather held although the wind kept picking up so by the last summit  at the NW Cairn I was relieved to find shelter in the high-sided bowl of stone.

There were cloudberry patches, now all crinckly and russet red on the summits, along with patches of reindeer lichen. I had seen neither on my walk earlier up the Scald Law group. On the Drover's path I spotted clubmoss - see tomorrow's blip.

The bilberries were still plentiful on the stretch toward the first summit of East Cairn hill. Maybe because of the protection of a stone wall and the sough facing aspect on well drained soil. But strange the animals hadn't stripped them. I did my bit.