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The walk Morven
Location: Aberdeenshire Map: OS Landranger 37 Distance: 5 miles (9km) Time: 3-5 hours Grade: Moderate mountain walk FROM my elevated eyrie by the summit of Morven the world lay in two distinct halves – one in glorious light and the other in abject blackness. In front of me was a gently rolling landscape, a great patchwork quilt of green and golden fields, dotted with patches of woodland. 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 anology, the land behind me, a desolation of high, rounded hills, broad ridges and deep glens, was in the black grip of a sudden hailstorm. The scene would have been nicely completed by a sudden eruption of volcanic fire and flame.
The Corbett of Morven (872m/2860ft) 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.
Morven’s a rounded, grassy hill, its 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 geological feature that sets Morven apart from its neighbours.
An early guidebook, published in 1931, boasts that in 1923 a motor car was driven from Morven Lodge to the summit and back. I’ve no doubt this was seen as a considerable achievement in those early days of the combustion engine but I suspect the guidebook writer would be horrified to discover that 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 down below and used 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 fourmetre-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 its crude manufacture was simply an act of vandalism. I couldn’t bear to 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 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.
CAMERON McNEISH Route: Start and finish at GR NO410044 on minor road between Logie Coldstone and Groddie. Follow the minor road that runs W from the A97 just S of Logie Coldstone. Close to the end of the tarmac there is a parking place by a gate below some pines. Go through the gate and follow the track that winds round some fields and goes through another gate. Continue on the grassy track to another gate that leads to the deserted farmhouse of Balhennie. Turn left, cross a stile beside another gate, climb to the final gate and once through follow the sketchy path to the left towards the line of the Coinlach Burn that runs down between Morven and Culblean Hill. This path eventually runs into a new stretch of bulldozed track that runs N towards the main Morven ridge. Follow it, or the line of it if you’d rather it didn’t exist, for a distance before traversing the S slopes of Morven to gain the summit ridge just E of the cairn. Descend by the hill’s E ridge. A footpath runs downhill back to Balhennie.