I sat with my back against the gable wall of a ruined farmhouse looking across the blue waters of Loch Errochty to the nearby hills of the Dalnacardoch Forest in highland Perthshire.

Curlews were warbling from the mud flats at the end of the loch and on the water a great raft of black-headed gulls screeched incessantly. Beyond the old lazybeds below the farmhouse peewits dived and fluttered in that mad, acrobatic way of theirs.

I had walked over the hill on a fine old track from the Trinafour road, my only company the odd scraggly looking blackface – for this was sheep country. Indeed, the building that sheltered me from the breeze was once probably a sheep farm and as I walked along the south shore of Loch Errochty earlier in the day I passed a number of sheep pens, all in various stages of disintegration.

I wondered how many farmsteads and shielings were now hidden from sight, below the blue waters of the loch that looks so natural in its fold in the hills between Beinn a’ Chuallaich and Sron Chon, for Loch Errochty is a man-made reservoir, created in 1957 as part of phase two of the Tummel hydro-electric power scheme.

A dam was built at the head of Glen Errochty to capture the waters of Allt Sléibh and the Allt Ruighe nan Saorach, which both rise in the high ground to the west of the head of the loch. Other small streams flow directly off Beinn na Cuallaich which rises just to the south.

It was hard to believe that I was looking at an industrial landscape, and I wondered if I’d feel so sanguine about gazing across at a forest of wind turbines. I don’t think so. Here at the western end of the loch, far removed from its concrete dam above Trinafour, there was still a great sense of wildness and the loch appears as an integral, and natural part of this mountainous landscape that rises between Loch Ericht and Glen Garry.

The hill that rose behind me was another clue to the legacy of sheep farming in the area. Beinn a’ Chuallaich is the hill of herding, and is a Corbett. It had been my intention to simply climb the hill from Drumglas on Dunalastair Water but I had noticed on the map a hill track that ran over the hill’s Meall na Moine outlier and down to Loch Errochty. From the old farmstead at Ruighe nan Saorach, on the shores of the loch, another track ran over the hill and back to Drumglas offering a fine hill circuit of 11 or 12 miles or so, just the job for a fine early summer’s Sunday.

Beinn a’ Chuallaich, which rises above the Perthshire village of Kinloch Rannoch, falls just short of the three thousand foot marker, and lacks any real individual feature that would make it special. As part of a longer circuit it would offer a fine vantage point for Schiehallion in the south, and out along Loch Rannoch, the old road to the isles, to the hills of the west.

I had left the car by the roadside above the forest and found the track that eased its way north over the Meall na Moine and then down to Loch Errochty’s shoreline. It was like stepping back in time. A vintage tractor-of-sorts stood by the old sheep pens, its tyres embedded in the earth, the grass and bracken fronds growing into its engine. I’ve no doubt it has stood there since the late fifties when these sheep farms were abandoned in favour of flooding the glen.

All the way along the shoreline track the signs of man’s past occupation was evident – the old bridges across the streams; the ruckles of stones that betrayed the whereabouts of the old shielings; the lichen-tinged drystone walls that still tilted uphill from the shore; the ruined farmsteads. It was only when I climbed high above the old buildings at Ruighe nan Saorach that I could escape the feeling that this was a landscape that had been emptied and abandoned in our incessant need for energy. I wonder what the next chapter holds for areas like this?

It didn’t take long to climb south to Beinn a’Chullaich and from its tall summit cairn I returned to the broad footpath that offered an easy descent route, down to Drumglass by the twinkling music of the burns running down to Dunalastair Water. Only a couple of miles on the quiet road were left to complete a grand hill circuit that gave me a little glimpse of times gone by.

Photo: Approaching Loch Errochty with a red deer antler in my pack. My collection is gradually growing…

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