Blair Atholl - Glen Tilt

Friday 23rd May

Although we were on a sleeper; we didn't have a berth but instead were in the airline type seats.  These seats were reasonably comfortable and Keith got his head down down fairly early, I was quite happy to watch the stations flashing by.

At Preston; I decided to try and get some sleep as it was about 23:45. From the time of leaving Euston, we were facing towards the direction of travel.  When I awoke at Edinburgh we were travelling backwards, when you've just woken up this can be very disconcerting.

I dozed off again and woke at Perth, which meant we were getting closer to our destination.

The train finally arrived at out starting point; Blair Atholl at 6:30 and after sorting out out packs we were off and walking by 7:00.

As we had everything we needed for the trip we didn't go into the centre of the village but made our way straight out to Glen Tilt.

Some of things I was hoping to see on this trip were; Red squirrels, Red deer, Highland coo's and maybe find some stag antlers.

The early part of the walk through Glen Tilt is in woods, and this gave us a chance to see some red squirrels; although they are a lot more nervous than they grey cousins and don't hang about to long.

Glen Tilt slowly climb up and way from Blair Atholl and eventually opens out from woods to open fellside.  This part of the walk felt like walking in the Howgills.

 

Glen Tilt

About 11:00 we stopped for breakfast, we found a nice spot down by the river just South of Clachghlas.

Most of the tracks were either Land rover tracks or good defined paths, so the walking was pretty easy.

Although it was overcast we had good views up & down the Glen and also on to the tops of Carn Torcaidh, Meall Gharren and Dun Beag.

By about 15:00 we arrived at the Falls of Tarf, this was one of the places I had earmarked as a possible wild camp but the areawasn't as flat as we hoped.  We decided to have luch there and then move further up the Glen to find a pitch.

Falls of Tarf

As we left the Falls of Tarf, we started to climb again and also left the River Tilt behind, we then picked up the Allt Garbh Buidhe.

We finally camped about halfway along the Allt Garbh Buidhe after covering about 14 miles.