Читать книгу Not the West Highland Way. Diversions over mountains, smaller hills or high passes for 8 of the WH Way's 9 stages онлайн

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At 1.2km from Strathblane, at the end of the wood on the left, go through a gate on the left and up onto open hill. Pass a fence corner on your right and slant up to the right to meet a grassy track. Follow this up left at first, then in zigzags.

After a gate, the track forks: take the right branch, soon forking right again on a faint path that joins the ridgeline fence that’s the boundary between Stirling and East Dunbartonshire Councils. The grassy path left of the fence leads to the trig point on Dumbreck. The path and fence continue north, through a damp col and then a rather peaty one, to the trig point on Earl’s Seat.

Take a path northwest, over a bent fence, to the top of the northern scarp. The path follows this edge southwest, as it rises to a viewpoint cairn, then dips and rises again to Garloch Hill. Then it wanders down to the col at the back of Dumgoyne.

The Campsies are made of volcanic basalt. It’s the flat-topped lava flows, one on top of the other, that give these hills their grassy tops and sudden small crags. But Dumgoyne is the actual vent of one of the volcanoes. It’s one of the most sudden and steep-sided hills in all Scotland. At the start I compared the Campsies somewhat mockingly with the Cuillin of Skye. Steep grass and a bit of basalt aren’t at all the same as black bare rock. But in terms of pointiness at the top, Dumgoyne is up there with Sgurr nan Gillean and Am Basteir.