ARDC. Beneraird and Smyrton Hills, Glenapp. January 2012

Walkers at the start.

Lots of fences and walls to be crossed today.

Elevenses in the lea of a hill.

The group at the summit of Beneraird.(424M)

The only ones who made it to the top of Smyrton (340M)

First of all may I apologise to everyone for being a wee bit late with the postings of Saturday and Sundays walks this was due to a technical hitch either with my computer or the blog settings. Not sure what was wrong so I must make contact with the Newton Stewart blogger to seek out his professional opinion.
  Anyway onto yesterdays walk 21 of us met at the crossroads on the A77 in Glenapp to climb Beneraid and Smyrton Hills. These are hills I have climbed in the past but todays route was a wee bit different from our normal one. We followed a line of pylons which led us to the track that comes up from Ballantrae. Once we were on the top of Beneraid I took over for the next part of the walk to go and see the remains of a Liberator aircraft which crashed on Pildinny Hill in 1945. 17 American service personell lost their lifes in the accident with only 3 surviving. We now followed a track through some heather and tussocks to get to the Leana Burn where we had our lunch stop.Afterwards to avoid some cattle we took a detour along the burn before climbing up onto Smytron  which due to the angle we approched we finished up on Benawhirn. 8 hardy souls decided as we were so close we would carry onto Smyrton and rejoin the group as they made their way back to the start. A very windy day with one small hail shower made this an excellent walk considering the weather some parts of the country were experiencing. Thanks to our leader for working out a new route to a favourite walk of mine , my apologies sir that I omitted to take your photo for the purposes of this blog but  am sure to correct this error on your next fine walk as leader.