Shalloch, Tarfessock & Kirriereoch - Photo Gallery

I parked the car at a picnic spot, complete with tables, near Kirriereoch about 5 miles north of Glentrool village in Glentrool Forest in Galloway. It wasn't raining but the hill tops were covered in thick mist, I was hoping for good visibility on what might be a navigational challenge. I walked up the good track towards the Kirriereoch farm buildings, the chimney smoke suggested that it was one of the still-inhabited farms. The forest road turned right just before the farm gate into the forest, or what was left of it after being harvested and partially replanted.

There was a view of hills ahead - I could see fragments of snow cornices and the summits still covered by mist. It wasn't long before I came to a left turn at a junction of tgracks where the one going into the trees had a signpost with the name “Tarfessock”; I decided that was the direction in which I should go. I was beginning to suspect I was going in the wrong direction because I could see cars driving past in the distance and I shouldn't have been close enough to the road to see them. I knew I had taken the wrong decision to turn left when I reached the abandoned Tarfessock Farm buildings.

I now had a choice, I could walk back for a mile to try and find the path I was looking for or carry on along one of two tracks marked on the map that seemed to end in the middle of the forestry. I chose to carry on along the path that offered the least amount of forest to have to get through. I expected to have a short distance of forest to get through to Shalloch on Minnoch farm but the whole area has been harvested; as the track went off to the left a faint path carried on ahead.

This was a newly replanted area and would have been very difficult to get through without the faint quad-bike path. The Shalloch on Minnoch farm was also abandoned, I didn't want to struggle through the new plantings to get to it so I carried on along the path as it seemed to be going in the right direction for me anyway. Unfortunately the path ended, or I lost it, so I had to make that struggle through young trees planted amongst the debris of harvested ones; plenty of holes, boulders and dead branches to help you trip or slip.

The closer I got to Shalloch Burn the rougher and boggier the ground became until I thankfully got to the stream bank. My guide book mentioned crossing Shalloch Burn to walk on the left hand bank of Knochlach Burn but after the junction of the two I was on the right bank of Knochlach Burn. The burn was too wide, too rocky and too full of water to cross it so I carried on between the bank and the edge of the harvested area. There is a neglected fence running parallel to the burn and I tried to follow the vague path by the side of it but it became too boggy in places so I walked close to the burn.

Unfortunately there were large trees close to the burn and I had to fight my way under and between the branches bristling with fresh pine needles. Having struggled upwards through bog and forest the ground became flatter and much boggier. I had to make a wide detour and use an old branch as a walking pole to help keep my balance walking over the slippery tree debris and deep wet vegetation. Eventually I was back on the bank of the burn that was still too wide to cross comfortably and too deep to wade through, but I knew I had to get to the other side. I finally crossed over where the rocks in the stream bed were dry and close enough to step across to the other bank where I found a good constructed footpath.

The footpath took me beyond the forestry in a couple of minutes, after all that effort I was faced with a long slog up a big grassy hill. At first having left the path there was rough grass with dips and boulders but soon afterwards there was just plain grass. There was a faint path that seemed to be going to miss the highest point so I headed upwards to the ridge. The ridge was wide and long, not that steep but a slog up towards a cairn on the skyline. My optimism about how close the summit was disappeared when I reached the cairn, there was still a longer slog still to go.

Once I got to the summit plateau of Shalloch on Minnoch there was still some distance to walk to the shelter and trig point. It seemed strange that the obviously higher summit was so far away from the trig point but by the time I walked over to the small summit cairn it then seemed obvious that the trig point was on the higher ground. The day had been fairly pleasant and it had become very warm on the walk upwards beside the burn but on the summit the strong wind was bitterly cold.

The descent from the summit began easily enough with a few large erratic boulders breaking the monotony of the grass. As I descended southwards the ground became steeper and covered in a rash of boulders that extended over to Tarfessock. The easy slog on the other side of Shalloch on Minnoch was in complete contrast to the steep, interesting descent and the bouldery ascent of Tarfessock. The cold and grey walk had good views of the sunlit lochs in the east and the summit had good views of the previous and next hills.

The descent from Tarfessock was just as steep and rough as the descent from Shalloch on Minnoch and became increasingly wet underfoot. To my surprise I came across another couple of walkers on their way up, they had decided against climbing Kirriereoch Hill in this wind. The walk to Kirriereoch Hill is more of a mile long ridge than a col, it undulates and contains several lochans with wet ground in between the water. As the ground started to rise I met another couple of walkers who also set out in warm weather and were not expecting a freezing cold wind.

I came across a fence that was easy to step over, the stile described in the guide book has long since disappeared. Kirriereoch Hill directly ahead intimidates you rather than looks down on you, I could understand why the other walkers decided to not go this way but I was committed to getting back to the car. The weather came in too, it was going to be an interesting ascent up a very steep slope. I found a sheltered spot where I could put my waterproofs on but it seemed that the shower had passed.

There seemed to be a grassy way uphill in between the rough scree, it was all-fours steep in places with a couple of large steps over wet rocks but the steepness was the only difficulty. I had no idea if this was the right way up this hill, there were fragments of snow cornices on either side of me and large scree boulders either side of the grass. As the gradient eased I came across a small cairn, I had actually found the right way uphill. There was another large summit plateau with another small cairn at the highest point, the larger cairn and shelter was slightly lower at the best viewpoint for Merrick, the highest of the Galloway hills.

All I had to do now was follow the wall downhill, a very long downhill, until the wall turned left and the line of it was continued as a faint path following a line of old iron fenceposts. After a while the fenceposts go off to the right at a prominent boulder named the Carnirock Stone on the map. The fenceposts go down and down, the dull brown coloured ground gets wetter until you reach really soggy ground where you have to cross over a fence at a stile.

There is a vague path through long wet grass until you reach Cross Burn at a water gate, there is no obvious way to cross the stream with that amount of water in it. I walked upstream for a short distance to the site of the demolished Cross Burn bothy but the promised crossing place wasn't obvious. I walked back downstream to the water gate but it obviously won't hold my weight. I crossed over a fence where the top barbed wire had been removed by somebody else looking for a place to cross the burn. I found a place to cross where there was enough dry rock to stand on and scramble over to the rocks on the other side.

I crossed back over the fence where the barbed wire had also been removed, the guide book's directions didn't match what I could see so I had some map and compass work to do. I walked by the side of a fence between it and the forestry at right angles to the burn until I reached the end of the trees. I was hoping I was where I thought I was and set off across very wet ground at the edge of the trees and I did come across the forest road I was hoping to find. It was the best part of two miles with no reference points along a good road through a desert of harvested and replanted forest before I got back to Kirriereoch.

Andy Wallace 16th April 2006