Brown Carrick Hill....The hill of cattle!!

I wanted to walk a small hill today and for it to be close to home. Brown Carrick Hill was on my to-do list for a winter walk but today would do for my first climb of it. At just under 300 metres it is classed as a Marilyn. Perfect for today I reckoned a maximum of an hour up and the same back depending how much plodding about I did at the top.

There are some cheat versions of this walk including driving up the Carrick hills road and parking beside the masts but what's the point of trivial ticking a list and not enjoying a walk?
As such my intention was to begin the walk sea level from Dunure harbour but roadworks were going on today and there is very limited other parking so I drove back up the hill and parked beside Fisherton primary. I have walked up from the harbour before and you don't miss anything as it is tarmac all the way to the school. The attraction of parking down at the harbour is a longer walk and there is a cafe plus pub/restaurant at the harbour for refreshments when you return.

The path through the cow field I came up the one on the right

The walk starts with the hill crossing to Maybole. The route goes up past the primary school and up towards a farm, the route then turns left heading upwards through fields. I can see the track but there are a herd of cows in the field, most of them lying on the track I had to walk. Readers will know I have had previous with cattle, not a good experience, and now give them a very wide detour. The field next to it also contained cattle but they were at the far side so over that gate I went and followed the fence up to the top of the field. Trying to get back on track was fun as the only route to the gate was a bog of mud where the cattle had congregated. The other option to climb the fence further down, barbed wire and a plain wire, was it electrified? A touch revealed it was electrified and the current was on. So through the mud I went, goo up to my ankles then climbed over the rather old and broken wooden gate.

Typical moorland, private run down fishing water on the left

A stile indicated a track which I followed as it led up onto open moorland towards a wood. There were signs of recent cattle droppings and the feeding stance was full of hay so a very wary eye was kept, the ground was good camouflage for cattle. Although I spotted a few more recent droppings I made the forest cover without seeing any cows.

Nice view of South Ayrshire coast

Now a poser, the stile indicated the track would go to the right along the forest edge (Maybole) but I reckoned I wanted to go through to the other side. I had not brought a map as I was so close to home and no phone signal so no Google maps to check either. Luckily the tree planting was not deep and when I got through these the hills looked more like where I wanted to be. 
The terrain was still moorland but not bad walking. A few sheep droppings, fine, but some recent cow pats meant full alert again. I headed for the highest point and from the top I could see the trig. Another five minutes and I was there. Roughly about 45 minutes after leaving the car.

Trig in the distance

Although the wind was blowing a hoolie the views were good particularly over the Ayrshire coast. The haze meant Arran was not as clear as I hoped, better for eyesight than photos and no sign of Northern Ireland. In the other direction the Ayrshire countryside around Maybole, Straiton etc stood out but again hazy. A few attempts at getting a trig selfie using the timer eventually resulted in this pathetic effort. The problem was there was nowhere to balance the camera except my rucksack, thus this pathetic effort.

I decided to walk along the ridge to the masts still wary as fresh cow pats with flies buzzing on them were around. When there you go, I almost walked right into them. Over a hillock a herd of hill cattle all chewing the cud and the first one looking my way had huge horns like a steer you see in cowboy films. 
No way past that lot so I went back to the trig and could see no other obvious route down so I decided to just descend the same way I came up. 

All was fine until I reached the boggy fence and the cattle on one side were almost all on the path I had to descend. Even worse the cattle in the other field were now spread right across the field with a couple in my direct line. I decided I would just have to go for it so started off down the hill. At that point a bull appeared and went right to the spot I would have to cross and started bellowing to the cattle in the next field, that field was my only other option. As I pondered this dilemma a dog walker appeared along the track at the bottom. He had the dog on the lead but the heifers were now well worked up running alongside the fence leaping up and down. No way I was going to risk going through them in that excited state.
I decided to walk a parallel course along the fence at the top. The moorland here contained ferns and bushes ideal places for cattle to be, fresh pats did not help. I got so far along when I came across an empty field to my left and the one further down likewise, my escape route?
Across the first field fine, over the fence and into the second. It looked empty but fresh cowpats still meant red alert but I reached the next fence okay. There was a small sub station about 100 yards away which must mean a track. Down I went and as I went past the sub station 3 bullocks were standing in the way at a feeding station. Fifty yards from safety!! One was spooked by me and jumped which made the other two do the same but in the process they battered their heads off the metal top of the feeding station, now well excited all 3 ran away to their peers. Let's get out of hear fast. As I made my last turn a full sized black female cow stood there looking right at me, then looked at the three scampering away, then back to me, bollocks or a lot worse was uttered. No choice I marched on and was relieved to clamber over the fence onto the path with blackie still staring.
So a 2 hour adventure after all. I was going to takes Mrs B another day and I will but we will wait until winter and the cows have all retired from the fields to their snug barns.