Five of us set off, Irene, Alison, Brian, Steve and myself to a new venue for the club who never usually take themselves to the east of the country on the reasonable grounds that there are no mountains over there. However, I didn't let a small thing like that stop me although we also noted that the forecast was better for the west.

We made good time and set off from Threipmuir Reservoir at 10am, weather very pleasant and lovely autumn walking. There are lots of trees in the lower areas of the park and the colours were great. The first ascent was West Kip, a short but quite strenuous one followed by a ridge then on to East Kip. From there we made a slight detour to South Black Hill and around this time the sun came out and the rest of the day was bright and sunny although breezy at times (note the ladies' windswept hairdos in the pics.) South Black Hill had a very elaborate cairn (a big circle of stones built up into a wall all around and here we had the first of many lunch breaks.

The next hill was Scald Law , the highest on the Pentland Ridge at 579M. Unfortunately it remained misty in spite of the sunshine and we were denied views of Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth. From here we carried on along the ridge onto Carnethy Hill and Turnhouse Hill from where we made our descent with the usual Craggy disdain for paths. The descent was great just the same nice and spongy underfoot and Alison fairly bounced down the hill - we agreed it would make a lovely winter walk.

At the bottom of the hill we crossed Logan burn and the return journey followed the burn and the reservoir - by now it was quite hot believe it or not and it was a lovely walk along the water's edge and past a nice wee waterfall, too.

We now completed the circle and returned to the car at 4 o'clock which would have been nice time to go to the pub but we didn't find one so just came home with everyone agreeing that it had been a lovely walk despite the absence of mountains.

Anne McGuire