Monday
The Dog Rambler E-diary
top 02
April 2012
Walk
Into the cloud on Harbour Hill and Bells Hill in The Pentlands
Length
6.2 miles
Dogs on walk
Dylan, Finlay, Jolie, Lucas, Maggie, Otis, Tim
The weather has finally broken and a grey sky and damp ground greeted us after a weekend of good weather. Driving around collecting the dogs the windscreen slowly filled with small droplets of rain. A pull on the lever and the wipers whisked them away. They slowly built again only to be wiped again in about a minutes time. We arrived at Dreghorn and listened to the cars on the nearby city by-pass slicing through the rain their wheels almost whistling or even singing in the rain. It was more dampness in the air than easily perceptible rain as we set off. Clear at this level but looking up I could see the hills shrouded in low cloud. We would soon be in it. And sooner that I expected as it drifted down the hillside ever lower like the falling curtain on a theatre production. We had some clear views across the fields as the dogs geared up with great gusto for their day. Perhaps it was the lower temperature or just a post weekend madness but they made them so up for it today. Jolie, Lucas and Tim only stopped occasionally to get their breath back before running on again on yet another chase. Dylan, Maggie and Otis getting pulled
in from time to time. Only Finlay escaped preferring to wallow in any mud he could find. And there was plenty. Tim looked at us all a little taken aback. He knows this route. So why had I gone through a gate we have never used before. After some consideration and weighing up the options he followed. The rest area already exploring this new and lush track climbing through gorse and into to some dense trees. I was not sure if was a short cut or not. Not as it turned out. I also thought in may present less of a gradient than the usual track. It did not do this either. Still the dogs enjoyed the detour and the new experience. Even Tim once he had accepted it. We came out onto the track leading steeply up toward the hills across the lower lying moorland of thick wet grass. The cloud already descending and suddenly revealing the ghost like figures of some walkers ahead of us. We were closing in on them. They had a small dog with them so we walked to heel until we reached them. A group of teenage boys heading for a foray into the hills. Possibly a little underdressed for the worsening weather we were all heading into. Then in was through a gate and a walk along the base of Capelaw Hill toward Harbour Hill. The cloud now thick around us. Shapes looming out of the hazy gloom like giants only to reveal themselves as tussocks of grass. The dogs were enveloped in a miasma with a hole punched in it, like a half turned halo through which they were walking. To our right a high towered wall rose out of the soft white glow. It was a line of pine trees dark and imposing their high wall finished by the spiky tops of the trees like the crenulations and turrets atop a castles barricades. The dogs raced their way into the thickening cloud and its cloying wetness up and over Harbour Hill and onto Bells Hill. And managed to maintain the energy to race back again. By now the camera was in my pocket as all it could produce were blurry rain spotted photos. The cloud had descended further during the walk and was now almost touching the by-pass. Wet and slightly bedraggled we arrived back at the car. The dogs looking as though they had had a good if wet and filthy day. They had. Nick
Photo slideshow from the walk
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