Hill walking route over Cairnsmore of Fleet from Clints of Dromore

Hill walk routes to climb in SW Scotland - also coastal paths and National Scenic Areas with maps, pictures and other useful information based on extensive local knowledge
Cairnsmore of Fleet from Clints of Dromore
Cairnsmore of Fleet - Tourist Route - Murray's Monument Route - Site Homepage Other Galloway Walks - Map of Galloway
	The map below shows 2 routes from the Clints of Dromore onto Cairnsmore of Fleet. The Yellow route is circular and goes by Loch Grannoch, Craigronald and Meilke Mulltaggart. The Blue and yellow route is linear and comes back by the same route as it went up over the Knees of Cairnsmore. The yellow route comes back off Cairnsmore by the blue route. To get there, come off the A75 and go into Gatehouse of Fleet. Take the B796 from the centre of Gatehouse and follow this for around 5 miles till you come to a T-junction. Turn right there and you soon come to a small museum at Dromore where you can park (OS ref. NX555638)

The 2 pictures below are taken from roughly the same point. In the first picture we are looking NE towards the old railway viaduct (just right of centre), and the building housing the museum is in the foreground just right of that. The white building is Dromore farmhouse. Our route takes us along a forest track under the viaduct and up through the forest until we get to the foot of Loch Grannoch at Loch Grannoch Lodge. In the second picture we are looking NW towards the Clints of Dromore, which though not all that high make a dramatic start to our day. If you are taking the linear route (blue) up and back you will make your way westward along the Clints until you find a reasonably easy way up onto the top. There are several places where this can be done. The Yellow and blue routes overlap, of course from Cairnsmore back to the Clints


The picture below shows Loch Grannoch Lodge, which is an outdoor centre. From here you leave the forest track and head up into the trees behind the Lodge. As you can see in the second picture below, the wood is not so thick as to make this difficult.


		We have only been on this route once - on the 25th September 2000. By the time we got to the lodge it was already raining heavily and the visibility became steadily worse for most of the rest of the day until we were back down off Cairnsmore, so the quality of the pictures is not of the best. In the picture below we have started onto the ascent of Craigronald. The lodge lies behind the trees at the end of the loch and you can see the track coming over to it from the viaduct.


			The picture below is taken from much the same position as the one above and shows the view looking NE over Loch Grannoch


			The picture below shows the conditions we were going into as we continued our climb onto Craigronald

			There was no visibility when we were at the top of Craigronald. The picture below was taken on quite a differentt day (16th November 2005 when we walked in from Murray's Monument to Cairnsmore of Fleet). We went over to Craigronald to get some picture on our way.

			But we did get brief breaks in the cloud as in the picture below where we look over Meilke Mulltaggart onto Cairnsmore. For pictures from the top of Cairnsmore see Cairnsmore by the Tourist Route

By the time we had come down the Doors of Cairnsmore it was turning into a fine evening and we were able to see where we had been. That's the Doors of Cairnsmore in the picture below and the profile of Craigronald can be seen in the second picture, again both pictures taken from roughly the same point.


Instead of going along the top of the Clints on the way back we came along the front of them as you can see below. This was probably easier terrain than going along the top, which is a bit up and down, though of course you get better views from the top. We took 8 hours to go round the full circle - roughly 23 kilometers.


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