The last few hikers passed us on their way down from Merrick, and we were now alone in the hills. Taking in the awesome scene across the valley to The Dungeon Hills and beyond had made it all worth it. But, the views along the way were spectacular. The weight of the bags we were carrying - four days’ worth of food, cooking equipment, sleeping bags, tent, clothes, a DSLR, and a tripod - had made the constant ascent from Loch Trool to the peak of Benyellary a very tiring walk indeed. By the time we were starting-off on the hiker’s trail, we had already wasted three hours! So, we stopped for lunch and headed back to the start point. We went with the option we knew we could achieve, that would rescue our first day and the success would boost our morale. We had wasted time and we didn’t know what lay ahead and we needed to reach our campsite before sundown. We decided that the best thing to do was to backtrack to the start (!) and go with the alternative route. It was fortunate that we had the back-up plan. What to do? We could carry on up the hill and over to reach Loch Valley and eventually meet back up with our trail we could backtrack to the point where we made a wrong turn.Īs part of our planning, we had allowed for an alternative, shorter route up the main hiker’s path to the peak of Merrick via Benyellary, just in case we arrived late, or weather was an issue on the first day.
During our ascent I managed to determine our location: we had missed our turn-off on the trail almost 2km back and had ended up in the adjacent valley. We started up the nearest hill, to gain some altitude and a better view of the landscape. This didn’t bode well for a four-day excursion into some of the wildest, most remote territory Little Britain has to offer. A bit more surveying the landscape and we realised the embarrassing truth: we were lost! After half an hour! As we continued, I was checking the map and taking bearings.
We checked the map and spotted a footbridge and figured we had strayed a little off-track. “This is easy!” However, when the path met a footbridge, I was a little confused: we weren’t due to cross a footbridge. We’d noticed that our route was even signposted at this point. We strode off confidently from the car, taking in the amazing views and trying to get some distance under our belts.
We would walk the long way around, via lochs between The Range of The Awful Hand and the southern end of The Dungeon Hills - they all sound very imposing, dont they? Finally, we would ascend Merrick via Redstone Rig and press on a short way to set up camp for the night between the peaks of Merrick and Kirrereoch Hill. For our first day, we planned a route to Merrick, the highest mountain in the Southern Uplands at 843m. I had another motivation for choosing Galloway: that it was a Dark Skies park and I wanted to attempt some startrail photography ( more on that in the next post!).Īfter weeks of planning and preparation, we set off into the hills of the Southern Uplands from the car park by Loch Trool. We decided there and then to take a trip to Galloway Forest Park, where we could hike across the remote wilderness and camp where we wanted thanks to Scotland’s access laws. One night, a friend (the guy pictured in the images) and I were in the local pub, several pints into the evening, and we started discussing a hypothetical wild-camping trip. So I decided to split the posts and do one dedicated to our wild-camping trip so that I could keep the photography post more focussed… I started writing this as a post about startrail photography, but my verbosity got the better of me and I ended up at about 2000 words - mostly describing the trip.
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