In front of me lay a gently rolling landscape, a great patchwork quilt of green and golden fields, dotted with patches of woodland, the colours intensified by the bright autumn sunshine. It looked for all the world like a Scottish version of Middle Earth – even the tiny village below me, Logie Coldstone, had a Tolkienesque ring to it.

To further the analogy, the land behind me, a desolation of high, rounded hills, broad ridges and deep glens, was in the black grip of a sudden hail storm. The scene would have been completely set by a sudden eruption of volcanic fire and flame …

The Corbett of Morven, 2860ft/872m, is one of those fringe hills that lies on the margin of low and high land, in this case swelling to its bulky form beyond the Howe of Cromar on Deeside. No doubt it was the inhabitants of lower Deeside who first named it Mor-bheinn – the big hill, even though it’s fairly insignificant compared with the big Cairngorm giants that rise further to the west.

Morven’s a rounded, grassy hill, it’s eastern ridge and summit plateau crested by an array of rocky teeth.

The greenness of the hill’s slopes, compared to the brown heather slopes that surround it, apparently, has its origins in a long fertile strip of epidiorite rock that runs between Portsoy on the coast, down through the Coyles of Muick beyond Ballater

and into Perthshire, a geologic feature that sets Morven apart from its neighbours.

Lord Byron, who spent many boyhood holidays at Ballaterach, opposite Cambus o’May on the River Dee, wrote of the hill as “Morven of snow”, although it’s unlikely much snow would have lingered into the summer in recent years.

An early guidebook, published in 1931, boasts that, in 1923, a motor car was driven from Morven Lodge to the summit of Morven and back. I’ve no doubt this was seen as a considerable achievement in those early days of the combustion engine.

However, I suspect the guidebook writer would be horrified to discover that just over 80 years later the hills around Morven would be gouged and scarred by a network of bulldozed tracks, built to give those so-called sportsmen who can’t, or won’t, walk easier access to their prey. There’s even a motorable track all the way to Morven’s summit.

I’d left my own combustion engine polluter down below and used my own twin-leg power to ease my way up on to the bealach between Morven and its southerly neighbour, Culblean. It was here I came across the latest manifestation of the bulldozing frenzy that has blighted these Deeside hills.

A 12-foot wide track, gouged out of the hillside, ran north towards the main Morven ridge and while it would have made my ascent a bit easier it’s crude manufacture was simply an act of vandalism.

I wouldn’t even walk on it. Instead, I took to the grass and heather of the hill’s southern slopes and traversed my way to the summit.

A windbreak next to the cairn gave me some shelter while I took in the view, eastwards across the sun dappled Howe of Cromar towards the Howe of Alford and Bennachie and, further north, past the Tap o’ Noth to distant Strathbogie. As I’ve mentioned, there wasn’t much to see westwards, other than the green oasis around Morven Lodge away below.

I promised myself that my next visit to this hill would be a complete traverse from Logie Coldstone to Morven Lodge, then down Glen Gairn to Ballater. For the time being I had to content myself with a straightforward descent down the hill’s east ridge back to the Middle Earth of Cromar.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Bookmark this

---