Recce in the Campsies that covered Holehead and Dungoil

My friend, Elizabeth Adams, and I did a wee loop in the Campsies that covered Holehead and Dungoil. It was a section of the route that had bail out spots and also options to extend as I was under time pressure and knew there was a distinct chance of getting lost. However, owing to such a useful navigation session last week I could pinpoint exactly where we were on the map for the whole outing!The cloud was low and visibility was really poor when we started so it was hard to look for landmarks to walk on a bearing to. I was checking the compass every few hundred metres. I had guesstimated the time it would take us to get to the top; I really need to get into the habit of this to help improve my navigation. Remarkably I was almost spot on which was very satisfying.
As Stuart and I had experienced before, the area we were running in through the Campsies is quite featureless and very difficult to navigate with poor visibility. Keeping on top of bearings and what distance we had travelled was particularly important on this run. I tried to use contours to indicate where we were and this worked well as we used a 1:250000 map. Contours are less useful over a small area on a 1:50000 map. I was also careful to note where we could hear streams and see fences and really tried to collect clues as Gary Tompsett had suggested.

I was a little annoyed to cross a stream at one point, running the Watershed should mean going between streams and rivers, not over! Under the circumstances I was very pleased with our accuracy however. We had to run into a forest after Holehead. This can often cause problems as paths seem to change frequently through forests and crawling under an coniferous canopy does not strike me as fun or efficient. I've also come to realise that forest boundaries are very unreliable to navigate by, if I'd learnt that years ago it would have saved me a lot of grief on many occasions! The obvious place into the forest was following a stream, there was a good clearing surrounding it and according to the map it should lead to a fire track within 100 metres. It did indeed and there was more back patting. There was also a red herring in the form of a disused sheepfold. There is one marked on the map but it is marked at 622 842 and I thought we were at 624 838. So, either we had entered the forest by an unmarked stream and had navigated off the hill not as well as I had thought, or there was a second sheepfold. This is usually the moment that I toss the map away and admit defeat. 'How can we not be where I thought when I'd been so careful!! I must be wrong because there's a sheepfold right here!!' At Elizabeth's calm suggestion we followed the path anyway and made note that it was heading northwest. This would have been feasible from the sheepfold marked on the map or from where I had thought we were. By doing this we collected more clues and happily were able to conclude that navigation had been spot on and the map was missing a minor feature. Don't rely on man made features!! Lesson learnt.
For the rest of our outing the map did exactly what I hoped it would although we still had some difficulties because of the forest. There is a small path marked on the map through the forest from the fire track to Dumgoil. Had I not made careful note that we had to look for it 100m after a bend we would have run past it as it's very discreet and there are a lot of young trees hiding it. After this we got to the top of the hill easily enough. I had to check we were at the summit with my watch as it the whole hill top is quite lumpy ground so I wanted to check the mist wasn't covering the main lump!
Getting off the hill and going the direction we needed turned out to impossible because of the density of the trees when we reached the forest again. We spent a short while looking for options before deciding that it was only a short detour round the top of the tree line back to the path we had come up and that this was the safest bet. Back on the fire track we knew we still didn't have a good escape route as on the map the track fizzles out and of course it fizzles out on a different place in reality than it does on the map. Because there were a lot of fallen trees it was impossible to follow a bearing straight out the forest but luckily we found a stream to help us. I can see how easy it could be to get spectacularly lost in a forest. Elizabeth had suggested that we took a bearing so we made sure that we cut through the forest to the edge but if we hadn't done that it would have been easy to assume we were going to come out the forest at some point while in fact, we could be following the perimeter of the forest and going in the opposite direction. Thank goodness for streams, even if it does mean that we might have been a little off the true watershed!
We joined back up to the road shortly after this and as we still had time and energy we trotted up another major track unrelated to the watershed but easy to negotiate so we could guarantee no hold ups and me getting back home in time for work!
We covered 9 miles and it took us 2 hours 40. I think we were pretty efficient. The ascent we made was pretty small at 449m Compared to some of the days the watershed entails. It was a very useful exercise and I was so pleased to be sure of our location all the time! Using my watch for timing and elevation was helpful but in retrospect I don't know why I didn't use it for an accurate measure of the distance to hill tops and paths! It was good to be testing my own estimations I suppose.
I was pleased that I had a really good blether with Elizabeth and I still managed to keep my brain working on distances and timings. This is a bit of a breakthrough for me, it's usually the blether or the map reading!
As for kit, I tried light Innovates trainers and waterproof socks. The socks were really comfortable and I was dry for the first hour. I don't know if I need to replace them but they certainly didn't keep water out for the whole run. I was pleased to be in my long running tights and I felt bad for not suggesting to Elizabeth that she should wear long tights too as her legs were covered in scratches by the end.