Auchterarder Walks - Blackford to Tillicoultry

Scottish

Towns

Blackford to Tillicoultry

Length: 10 miles
Height climbed: 1,370ft./420m
Grade: A
Parking: Blackford or Tillicoulty
Toilet facilities: Blackford or Tillicoultry

This is a lengthy walk, steep in places and offering the opportunity to become lost, so be ready to use your map and compass.
The route starts from Blackford, a village once burned by the Earl of Mar after the Battle of Sheriffmuir (1715), but now gaining a reputation as the source of Scotland's best-selling mineral water.
Leave Blackford by the south-west end, walking with care across the busy A9 road and head for the small road directly opposite. Turn left for a short way until you see the sign for Kinpauch Farm. Turn right, up the drive, being sure to close the gate behind you.
At the top of the drive you can pick up a forestry track on the left which leads round the shoulder of Kinpauch Hill - directly before you - and on top the Glen of Kinpauch. The track stops here but a footpath continues; across a watershed and down Glen Bee towards the Upper Glendevon Reservoir. Turn right and follow the path along the hillside above the loch, until you reach the bridge across the River Devon - which enters the loch here.
Turn left, skirting around Burnfoot Hill, which slopes steeply into the water, until you pass the cottage of Blackhills at the foot of the Broich Glen. Cross the bridge here and walk to the head of the glen up its easterly (left-hand) side. The path is very vague at this point so it is important NOT to cross the burn by mistake and follow either of the tributary glens which enter it from the west (the hill you see above them is Ben Cleuch 2363ft/721m, the highest peak in the Ochil range) but keep to the left hand side of the glen.
Once you have reached the watershed at the head of Glen Broich you are at the highest point on the route, on a wide saddle between two low hills. Immediately before you (to the south-west) is King's Seat Hill and to its left is a deep glen. This glen is cut by the Burn of Sorrows which runs down into Dollar. You ignore this and skirt around the low hill to your right until you can see the narrow glen of the Gannel Burn, leading down to Tillicoultry.
The path is still vague here but keep to the easterly (left-hand) side of the glen as it will gradually become clearer as it passes the deep-set Mill Glen, to your right: a rocky gorge which used to supply power to the mills of Tillicoultry. The large river on the plain before you is the River Forth, with the town of Alloa on its near bank.