Blethering Ben - 95 - Tinto from the south
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- Опубликовано: 27 окт 2024
- When the nice deep snow falls in Scotland it's not often that I have to drive south of the Central Belt to find the best conditions, but Tinto in South Lanarkshire delivered the goods!
Thanks Ben, as usual thanks for talking us along 🇬🇧👍🏻
Great meeting you at the Linn o Dee car park before our hike yesterday! Keep posting the videos mate , great stuff ! 😎
Cheers Ross, good to meet you too. Thanks for saying hello, it's always nice to chat to folk :) How was your bivvy?
Benvironment Bivvy was good mate , long hike round Loch A'an and a sunburnt head but its all good..😁 Carried a large bag of rubbish back from the Shelterstone ..whisky bottles , tubs of mayonnaise ...you name it. Found my own wee howff though which was nice ! Cheers Ben.
Ugh, the rubbish under that stone is a disgrace.
Thank you Ben for sharing this lovely walk with us, the snow made the landscape look amazing. Can't believe you did not take your snowshoes with you !!!! You are so well known for them ;-}
Ha ha, I didn't actually need them on Tinto in the end. That deep stretch on the shoulder was only 50m or so and then it was back onto the thin powdery stuff. In the next blog, however......
Another great video, keep up the good work
Will do!
Ben, re the freeze-thaw rebound cycle, the same happens in eastern Europe (this year even in Moscow); last week we were able to walk across the stream-like open drain behind our house in Latvia, this week it's all rainy and everything is a sea of slush. Another big freeze is coming, though. And the Alps have been getting the same wobbles I have noticed.
Re Vitamin D, I was reading that the Northern Japanese and the Icelanders suffer abnormally low rates of depressive illness, even in winter, whereas other peoples at similar latitudes have much higher rates of depression. The conclusion of the research was that it was all attributable the high vitamin D content in their fish-based diets.
Re wind farms, I utterly despise the sight of them in the Highlands, but I don't mind them in more "vanilla" landscapes.
Re the road less travelled: I agree with you 100% on this one. I'm usually a solo hiker and get stressed when I see others on the hill, which inevitably means I end up overtaking them just to make sure they're behind me. Hence I sometimes prefer oddball routes where nobody else is likely to tread.
Now that is a view! I get something similar from Meikle Bin in the Campsie Fells, But not as great as this one.
Give it a go ;-)
Great video Ben.
Cheers.
I always thought the Southern Uplands, particularly the Galloway Hills, have been greatly underrated by hillwalkers. They're very much the road less travelled, at least I tend to think so. And they're particulalry visible from my native Northern Ireland on a sunny day if they have snow cover; I have seen them, unmistakable, across the sea from the Mourne Mountains in County Down in such conditions.
I have also visited Wanlockhead in those hills twice, (once in snow), just to say I was in Scotland's highest village. It's ear-poppingly high and looks like it might get snowed in quite a lot.
Privacy Matterson Galloway hills are fantastic. For me, that area feels almost as remote as anywhere I've been up in the highlands. I stress the word 'almost' haha
Yeah everyone scurries up the M74 and bypasses Galloway. The Rhinns of Kells are lovely, and of course the only real honeypot, Glen Trool. But as with Tinto, there's a lot of industrial development in the remote parts of D&G now and so I've not been walking there since....ooo.....crumbs, at least 2009! Keep meaning to get down to the Mull of Galloway but it's such a long way!
I did the Mull of Galloway once while killing time waiting for the ferry back to NI, just so that I could say I had been in Scotland's southernmost tip. The roads aren't the best as I recall, but are world class compared to what I have to put up with off the beaten track in Latvia. There's also a lovely atmospheric drive if you go from Newton Stewart to New Galloway and then on to Castle Douglas... I'm getting goosepimples thinking about it, my heart just longs to see Scotland again!!!
Anyway, others may disagree but I hope you do some more non-canonical vlogs soon, aka hikes in non-Highland parts of Scotland or even beyond, just for a bit of extra spice.
Well this is usually the time between contracts when I go exploring for a month, the 'not the usual places' .....but it's all a bit up in the air with work just now so I'm not sure I'll be able to do it this year. The trips usually give me 8 or so video blogs to work on for a few months, from the islands and wotnot. We'll see. I had a mind to head down to D&G but also Aberdeenshire.
How did you end up in Latvia btw, if you don't mind me asking?
Latvia... My wife is Russian (making our kids half Russian, funnily enough!) and like most Russians, she has a dim view of healthcare in the West, compounded by the fact that our kids ended up with urinary tract infections that we simply were unable to shift back west, so... we moved to Riga where everyone speaks Russian (although Latvian dominates) and where there are many clinics that you can get a same day appointment in without requiring GP referrals. So we're medical migrants, and I can say I now know Riga (and its clinics) better than Belfast, Glasgow or Edinburgh!
That said, a big draw for me was the cold winters; that made the whole crazy mission somewhat sugarcoated from my position. The downside is no mountains, although I can walk along the pristine Baltic coast at Jurmala which is literally a 5 minute drive from where we live. The Baltic has low salinity (they say you can drink it in a pinch) and is very shallow, making it like a hybrid sea-lake; up in the far north, where Finland and Sweden meet, they say it is 100% fresh water. Anyway, it freezes in the Gulf of Riga sometimes, although this year it's just been thick, slushy waves forming solid ridge structures on the frozen beach. The forests are a hiking no-no in all seasons bar winter due to the superabundance of disease-laden ticks, so that's another limitation; on the plus side, they shelter the country from the worst ravages of strong winds.
I'm hoping we can wrap our Latvian sojourn up soon as I miss my parents, hiking in the Mournes, my own language, Tesco, custard, salted butter, Cadbury's chocolate, sage stuffing, roast beef, Chinese takeaways, fish and chips, social graces and friendly service staff in shops and the general sense of community back home that simply doesn't exist in the more clannish / family-circle based society here.
Just for information purposes, the most scenic part of my route from NI to Latvia was Snowdonia in Wales; rural Wales in general, from the Brecons north, really impressed me. Beyond that, only the rolling hills near Hanover in Germany offer anything that garners a second glance, the whole way to Latvia. That's how flat and uninspiring the North European Plain is!
Anyway, I hope you get more days out while the winter remains wintry. I do keep an eye on the weather back in the UK, just to compare it with what's going on here. It looks not bad this year, from a snow lover's perspective; long may it continue! And do me a favour; next time you tuck into any of the foodstuffs listed above, please, think about me!
Ohg such nice views again. But well, I must say, I walked the southern upland way and to be honest, I didn't like it that much.. boggy, steep, pointlessly going up and down. Plantations. Very heavy not so rewarding walking.. but it was in the summer, maybe that's why..
I'd feel that way about any long distance walk ;-)
Hi mate great video. Ive just moved into Thankerton at the end of February and was looking forward to doing some hill walking in the area and then Lockdown struck! Anyway, i see in this video you've gone up Tinto from the South, ive been eyeing this up whilst driving past but cant see a way through unless i walk accross farmers fields from the road? Do you have directions? Also what's the farmers like in the area? Im from Kent (although originally born in Perth and lived in Inverness until aged 6) and the farmers in the South dont like you walking off the public footpaths down there, ive been chased by farmers at least three different times and i now have a bit of paranoia about it lol!! 😂
Hiya - thanks for the message. The route is listed on Walkhighlands so just follow that - www.walkhighlands.co.uk/glasgow/tinto-wiston.shtml.
With regard to access rights, you're best familiarising yourself with the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, which puts the legislation in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act into an easy reference, easy to read format with an index for pretty much anything you're thinking of doing. It's a PDF so you can save it locally somewhere - www.outdooraccess-scotland.scot/sites/default/files/2018-05/Publication%202005%20-%20Scottish%20Outdoor%20Access%20Code.pdf
Generally speaking you can cross farm fields and climb over gates & fences but only if you're responsible. There's a whole section in there about that. But if it's open pasture then there are no obvious restrictions.If it's crops then you should stick to the edges if crops have already been sown. And if there are animals then you should keep your distance or maybe not even go into the field at all if you've got a dog....depending on whether there are young animals etc.
And of course, access rights don't apply in the immediate vicinity of most properties cos folk are entitled to privacy. Again, the Code explains that very well. Good luck!
Lots of time for reading just now ;-)
@@BenvironmentBlog Many Thanks mate much appreciated!! 👍🙏😊
That's not a bad zoom at all, what camera are you running these days Ben?
One obvious advantage to traveling the route less traveled is we all have to answer the call of nature eventually :)
'Ere you go..... benvironment.org.uk/post/113155078112/hi-ben-what-makemodel-of-camcorder-are-you-using
Benvironment thanks Ben. Pretty much an entry level Sony then!
Yep, pounds shillings and pence 'n' all that ;-) Plus it was bought maybe three or four years ago.