Last Thursday was a beautiful day, such a treat after the twelve hour long thunder and lightning storm of a few days previously, so we grabbed the day and drove to Kinnoull Hill in Perthshire. For decades we’ve driven past the rocky outcrop which towers above the M 90 motorway that takes you into the city of Perth and had just never got around to actually visiting the place, despite it being a really popular beauty spot.
The hill is covered with trees and the path is fairly steep but it only took us about 15 minutes to reach the top, we really needed the exercise anyway after being cooped up in the house hiding from the torrential rain of earlier in the week.
There’s a wood carving of an owl in flight on the way up, but the woodland itself was bereft of birdlife. I’ve often been puzzled by this when walking in woods. Even when there’s nobody else around and it’s very quiet the woods never seem to have any wildlife in them. There are far more birds around my garden.
Through a gap in the trees you can get quite a decent view of the historic village of Scone which is close to Perth.
From the top of Kinnoull Hill you get a great view east to the Carse of Gowrie and over to Errol, even on what was a fairly hazy day. You can see why the River Tay is called the silvery Tay. Over the river are the hills of Fife.
The photo below is a stitch of three photos that I took looking over to the south side of the river and Fife beyond. The yellowy-gold coloured fields had just been harvested.
The stitch below is from the top of what was a very blustery Kinnoull Hill, looking down towards the bend in the River Tay. It felt quite dangerous, in fact there are plenty of warning signs to tell you not to go too close to the edge as it just falls away and it would be easy to walk over by accident.
The one below is looking northwards towards Dunkeld and Birnam Wood of Macbeth fame.
Below is an information plaque which tells of all the instances of historical interest around this area.
After we walked back down the hill we had another look at the information board at the car park and realised that we had somehow missed a tower which has been built on the hill, so one day we’ll have to go back again and take a close look at it. Obviously we missed a path which leads over to that side of the hill. You can see images of it here.
We should have done our homework before setting out, such as visiting this Visit Scotland site.
I’m so envious of the gorgeous walks you have reasonably close to you. These photos are beautiful.
Joan,
We are lucky, this is just about a 30 minute drive from us and there are plenty of other scenic places to visit on the way.
That all looks very lovely. Definitely worth the trip to check it out. It really is a pleasure to explore places you haven’t explored before.
I would happily take one of those 12-hour storm days. After having an unusual Summer where rain came on fairly regular intervals and prolonged all the lovely green color everywhere, we are on a long, couple week jag of no rain and things are drying up. The predicted rain for this weekend has all but blown away as the forecast looks to be sunny.
But, the temperatures are going to dip back into low 80’s for highs and very cool nights and mornings, so I am so looking forward to that.
Carl,
There are plenty of places nearby that we haven’t visited but I think that happens to everyone, we tend to think we can visit nearby places any time and don’t get around to doing it.
We had a decent June but paid for it with July and August being a wash out most of the time. We live in hope of a decent September, but it’s feeling distinctly autumnal already we’ll be lucky if we reach 60 F over the weekend and with the rain it feels colder. Overnight it should be around 45 F. It must be global warming. The farmers are all having very poor crops – as you would expect.