Glen Tilt Circuit
Finally being home this summer means I can …um… profit of the great Scottish Weather.
This means that I can actually do something which my friend Arun and I had been discussing last year – Hillwalking.
We started easy – the Glen Tilt Circuit near Blair Atholl.
This is a 9.25 mile mostly flat walk up the glen (for those not in the know a Glen is Scottish for Valley, and as it is a word specifically for Scottish valleys this means steep sided long valleys. However there is the option to cut the walk in half by turning back at Gilbert’s Bridge. I will give links to the walk at the end of this post.
Parking is available for free at the Old Bridge of Tilt in a smallish car park very close to a track which could be used to set off. This place looked very familiar to me and rightly so as it had been the starting point of one of my Duke of Edinburgh Awards Expeditions. I was all set to go up the track which I could vaguely remember. However we were using Arun’s AA 50 Walks in Scottish Highlands and Islands
along with our second wee problem : you have to pay to enter the grounds at the usual extortionate castle rates. We confidently ignored the pay signs and walked on as we were not interested in the castle or its grounds and simply wanted past it to our next checkpoint at Old Blair. I was pretty confident we would have no problems as the Land Reform (Scotland) Act grants access to the countryside and the tiny road to Old Blair goes through the castle grounds. Unfortunately we did not get far as we were immediately approached by an official the moment we passed the entrance point.
Having explained our intentions and looking the part of hill walkers with my OS map and other gear we were allowed through without paying. My advise here to anybody considering this walk is to use the track at the Old Bridge of Tilt Car Park and avoid the castle and Old Blair. We did however get a nice wee walk through the castle grounds.
Old Blair is tiny but the steep road we had to climb immediately after it was not. However we made good time and now that we had got started properly I was beginning to enjoy myself. Having left the road after Old Blair we followed a pleasant track through Blairuachdar Wood which is a managed wood:
Immediately after the first part of the wood there is a Rifle Range which was in use as denoted by the vivid red flag. The warning sign indicates that it is dangerous to travel through the range when it is in use but the track through the range is only closed when long range ammunitions is being used. We were therefore able to walk through without any trouble.
In fact the track is far enough from the rifle range for the danger to be minimal, there were plenty of signs to keep us right:
The views from the glen are not the best but great enough:
Notice the jacket and the hat and my half open bag. There was a chill wind and several rain showers that morning and the zip gave way on my bag, glad to see Arun did not warn me about my open bad after he’d taken that picture. I lost an apple due to that 
Shortly after the rifle range we reach Gilbert’s Bridge where you have the option to turn back or go through the diamond shaped gate and continue the walk:
The walk is quite clearly marked where it matters but I could not go walking in the highlands without my map and compass.
Further along there is a sort of viewpoint which you can climb up to, this is also well marked with some building remains.
There is a collapsed section on the way up and if raining the path could be quite slippery as confirmed by a dead dear we say near the river bank which looked like it had slipped while running from something.
As you can see by the pictures the weather was not great going up the glen but this cleared up coming back down from Marble Lodge. We did rush back a bit and there are no pictures of the return leg apart from sheep and who want to see those (I personally think they have an evil look about them).
We used the AA book as a guide but I would recommend http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/
The Glen Tilt Walk can be found here.
I like this site because it has printable maps, clear guides and even pictures.
More walks and pictures will be forthcoming, we have already done Bealach na Searmoin and Killicrankie, Pitlochry from which we unfortunately have no pictures and Aberfeldy & Kenmore hill circuit which included the Birks of Aberfeldy which is really picturesque.
