Introduction
This is the third in a series of posts, where I record my visits to the classic ‘Seven Hills of Edinburgh’. Please use the tag ‘Edinburgh’s 7 Hills’ to pull these posts together as a group, as they are not being created consecutively. Today’s objective is so-called ‘Craiglockhart Hill’, which is actually a collective name for Easter Craiglockhart Hill and Wester Craiglockhart Hill, separated by Glenlockhart. What is one to do when faced with the task of climbing a hill that is actually two hills? Climb both, of course! Better still, climb the smaller, followed by the larger, on the same day.
Easter Craiglockhart Hill
I started my ascent of Easter Craiglockhart Hill at the Craighouse development, which I visited in April 2021. The centrepiece of this development is the former Craig House Hospital. Enter the site from the gatehouse, and the path for the summit goes off to the left (south) and curves round to the right (west) as the ascent gets underway in earnest.
Before too long, the path opens out into a gently undulating grassy area with plenty of benches. Easter Craiglockhart Hill has no trig point, for the simple reason that its taller twin is just alongside, but this grassy area is recognised as the summit.
Using a combination of occasional signposts and my sense of direction, I descended by a necessarily different route to Glenlockhart Road. Simply by walking 100m along this road and crossing to the other side, I was ready to start again, this time on:
Wester Craiglockhart Hill
The ascent of Wester Craiglockhart Hill was a little more arduous and noticeably steeper. When I emerged from the tree cover, I was already close to the summit height, with clues both near and far to help me get my bearings. Clearly the obligatory photos at the trig point had to be taken, but other points of interest included Greenbank Village (another part of the south side that I had visited that day in April) and the Craiglockhart campus of Edinburgh Napier University (which was the remaining item on my ‘to do’ list for today).
