Knowles Top

Sunday 28 July 2019

Seven at Cranford St became eight at Belfast, then nine at Oxford. Parking near the Diamond Way Buddhist retreat centre, we headed up a long driveway, which became a farm track. Reaching beech forest we skirted it, crossed a fence and found a short forest track, leading to sunny north-facing tussock, which let us climb to 835m Knowles Top.

After a catch-up and group photo we moved on. Our first attempts to find a way into the forest to the west of Knowles Top were barred by bush lawyer but a bit down from the ridge- line we connected to a good track. We headed towards point 768 but stopped for lunch at the first clearing we came to. Nearby was a large stone cairn which seemed to be marking nothing in particular. 30m away was a waratah with an upside- down teapot on it which seemed to be achieving nothing in particular.

We decided the view from 768 wouldn’t be that much better than our lunch-time view so we headed back to the Glentui Bush Road and were back in town by 5pm. We’d had a nice, mild spring-like day.

We were: Danny Lee, Diane Dixon, Kim Ashmore, Norman Burdon, Ilaria Carbellotti, Evangeline Basher, Chris Chang, Liam Carroll and Kerry Moore