Balmashanner Hill

My girlfriend and I like to go on walks together. For her Christmas, I bought her a couple of walking books for the areas near where we live: Angus and Dundee: 40 Coast and Country Walks and Perthshire: 40 Town and Country Walks. These are published by Pocket Mountains.

My girlfriend suggested that we could aim to one day complete all 80 of these walks. I decided I would like to write briefly about each of them as well.

The first of our walks was on Balmashanner Hill in Forfar.

This was our first time trying out a walk from the book, so we were not sure how to read the book in terms of timings and difficulty. The estimated time given by the book is two hours, but it took us little over an hour, even though we had pottered around a bit. We also now know what counts as ‘steep’ in this book.

The walk begins at Reid Park. It is a small and unremarkable, but nice enough, park. From the back of the park you take a relatively steep path up towards Balmashanner Hill itself.

The views are fairly impressive, with the hill being around 170 metres tall. Even more impressive is the war memorial that stands on the top of the hill.

We continued on the walk, which apparently runs alongside a former quarry. I noticed a stone that appeared to mark an alternative route.

We investigated, and found an enclosed area containing this odd maze-like path made of stones. The stones look like they have been there for quite a while, and we are not really sure what it’s all about.

The path then continues on until you reach a rather unattractive residential estate. You must walk through some streets before reaching Newmonthill Cemetery, the final landmark during the walk.

Overall, it was a pleasant enough walk. But it was shorter than we were expecting, and after you leave the wooded areas it becomes a great deal less attractive.