Hill Walking Day

Hello everyone! Today was our hill climbing day.  As I said yesterday, there is a hill that overlooks the Stirling area that I have been wanted to climb all semester, so today Grace, Kristy and I went off to conquer Dumyat (see it has a name and everything.  Also, I should mention that Grace has done the climb 2 or 3 times and Kristy has done it 4 or 5 times.  And, I'm going to make you wait until the end of the post to see if I actually made it or not).  As previously mentioned, I am the least outdoors-y so we knew going into this that it was going to be interesting (the climb is mainly up steep hills), but I was determined to make it.  So, we left campus around noon in hopes of making it to the summit.  (Just as a side note, this is how I knew it was going to be a serious hike.  Grace told me yesterday "Jennifer, no messing around with this.  You need to wear your hiking shoes.  Don't wear your flats".  I think that really sums everything up perfectly.)

First of all, I made a montage here of pictures of Dumyat so you can see exactly what it is that I was attempting to climb.

This is from the bridge on Campus.  

Another campus picture.

This is from the Castle (it's the highest point behind the William Wallace).

This is from the top of the William Wallace monument.  (Again, it's the highest point).

So, we began our hike up a paved road behind campus that leads to a path into the hills.

Here is said paved road...it was real pretty, just not real fun to walk.

The view at this point was already starting to be worth it.

The road was not super fun.  There were some very cute sheep and lambs in the general area.  But anyways, the paved road was not so much a good time.  I kept taking progress pictures of how far away we were from the Dumyat.

Like this one.

But anyways, we eventually (I say eventually because Pocahontas here stopped about every 5 feet to either take a picture, catch her breath, or rest...like I said, the road was steep) we reached a fence that led to a path to the hills.  At this point, it was all through sheep grazing land.  It was pretty cool.  There were lots of little lambs everywhere (which means I took lots of lamb pictures that will be in this post).

Aren't they cute?

Just in case you weren't convinced.

We took a path that led past some ruins that were interesting.  

You could see that they were a house once-upon-a-time.

At this point, we stopped at a cool little bench and ate lunch.  The view at this point was already amazing.

This is what we looked at while we ate lunch.

After lunch, we continued on our hike.

We saw more lambs.

There were lots of lambs.

The path continued to be pretty steep and I continued to take frequent breaks.  But the view kept getting better and better.

See; better...

and better.

Eventually we came to the final push-ish.  (I saw ish, because I thought it would be right around the corner and it wasn't.)

See, it's deceptive.

But then, we finally reached the top! (See, I did make it to everyone who was doubting me.  It was definitely interesting at points (as in I had many times that a sank into some mud and tripped around), but the view from the top was absolutely worth it.

Overlooking the Firth of Forth.

The Ochil Hills.

Stirling itself.

There is a monument at the summit (it's a war memorial.  Honestly, what else would it be).

I took a lot of pictures at this point.

We could see a far way away.

And, I took a video.

After resting at the top for a while, we eventually made our way back down.  The walk down was a lot easier than the walk up.

Here are those ruins from a better angle.  You can see them a lot more clearly.

Here is campus.  There was a really good view from where we were walking.

One last Stirling picture, I promise.

Dumyat from the road back down. I feel like I really accomplished something.

Upon getting back to campus, I promptly collapsed on my bed until I could motivate myself to do anything else.  Then, everyone came over for our last family dinner.  And I must say, it was pretty awesome. It was a great day.  I'm very happy to be able to say that I conquered Dumyat!