A round of Glen Sherup in the eastern Ochils is becoming quite a regular feature in our walking programmes, and quite rightly so, the rolling grassy hills are a fine walk with extensive views especially east towards the distant Lomond Hills. Leaving the A9 at the Gleneagles slip road the drive through Glen Eagles gives a fine preview of the day ahead and as Glen Eagles morphs into Glen Devon there is ample parking in the Woodlands Trust car park at the head of Glen Sherup, the start point for our days walk.

The initial 3kms of the walk is a fairly easy, but steady climb on a broad forest track towards Glen Sherup reservoir and onwards as it winds its way uphill and finally a short burst along a firebreak to reach the forest boundary and open hillside on Glenquey Hill. Here you are spoilt for choice for that early pause for a short break, the boundary wall provides plenty of spots to sit and take in the emerging views, or a little further along the wall there is an old log bench with equally fine views over Glen Quey and the reservoir.

The open hillside is now with us for the remainder of the walk as we continued to climb towards the first of the four tops that make up this fine round, Innerdownie, at 611m and topped with the largest cairn of the day. As we swarmed around the cairn it was obvious that we were high, and exposed as the wind which until now we had been somewhat sheltered from began to make it's presence felt, cool and blustery. Although not the highest point of the day, on reaching Innerdownie the main prolonged climbing for the day is done, with the 2km transit from Innerdownie to Whitewisp Hill being no more than a short descent followed by a steady climb of less than 100m to the even more exposed 643m summit of Whitewisp Hill.

Whitewisp Hill and Tarmangie Hill sit at either end of an east-west broad flat grassy plateau over which the wind was now blowing at strength, strong enough to catch you off balance on the odd occasion, and cool enough to warrant gloves and hats. Tarmangie Hill is the highest by a mere 2 metres, at 645m, however, it seemed to us that it made a big difference in the wind strength as we all encountered some level of difficulty in walking at some point along the grassy top of Tarmangie Hill, a fairly accurate estimate of the actual wind speed at this point would be in the high 30 mph, possibly even reaching the 40 mph mark. Not the type of wind in which to sit and have a hilltop lunch break, and so we descended slightly and found ourselves a couple of nice dips in the ground on the leeward side of the hill and settled down for a mid-day break.

The weather forecast had been for some wintery showers and a brisk wind. We had the wind but until stopping there had been little sign of any rain or wintery showers. That was until we stopped, when quite suddenly one of the forecast wintery showers passed through, brief but squally enough to make us pack up and start moving once again.

Located at the high point of Glen Sherup, Tarmangie Hill sees the completion of the outward leg of the round of Glen Sherup reservoir, with the return now ahead as we made the short descent east to the watershed between Tarmangie Hill and Cairnmorris Hill where the infant Glensherup Burn begins its short journey to the reservoir below.

From the watershed a grassy track stretches across the 3kms of open hillside to the ever visible Ben Shee, an easily recognisable cone of a hill, at 516m high the lowest of the four tops on this round. With the wind now predominantly behind us it was a fairly quick pace towards Ben Shee, at which point a few chose to pop up onto the summit top while others decided to stay out of the wind and take the slightly lower path circling around the summit and onwards downhill to the fields around Wester Glensherup and finally crossing the dam that holds back the waters of Glensherup Reservoir to rejoin our outward route for a very short stroll back to the car park.

Another brilliant day on these wonderful grassy hills around Glen Sherup. Thanks Bernadette and everyone for your fine company.