Carrick Hills circular . March 2012

Just a wee blog today to say 4 of us did a 10 mile circular fron Doonfoot to the Carrick Hills one we all had done before but  did a couple of variations from the normal route to add a bit of interest. The four were myself plus The Right Honourable Secretary of ADRC fame, our group colour co-ordinator plus the teacher.Setting off on the usual route along the shore to Bracken Bay we then climbed Brown Carrick by the fields until we reached the trig point. Crossed over to the aerials and the view point (saw a couple here in the back seat of their car but were not sure what they were doing several suggestions were made but as this is a family blog no further imfo is available)   we then kept our height to head over to Newark Castle where we found a sheep in distress as it had got caught on a small branch of a tree. I tried to cut the wool  that was preventing it from freeing itself which was not much use with a fairly blunt knife. RHS then tried to cut the branch from the tree and after a lot of sawing with said blunt knife he succeeded where other had failed and off trotted the sheep with a branch attached to its a*se. We agreed to report the incident at the next farm we passed but before we reached it we met the gamekeeper who was appreciative of our assistance and said he would check it out once he was on the hill.Passing the castle we then went onto the old railway line at Alloway village to take us back to Doonfoot  to end a pleasant 10 mile walk in cloudy mild calm conditions finishing just before 2.00PM to enable me to watch the Cheletenham Festival on the telly.