Auchnafree Hill

I climbed this Corbett in June 2025. I'd already experienced the first part of the walk when I climbed the Munro Ben Chonzie in May 2010 but at the time I was definitely into Munro bagging and paid little attention to the slightly lower Corbettts.

In 2025 I decided to base myself in Stirling and take buses to either Crieff (for Auchnafree Hill) or Callander (for Benvane). There's a reasonably frequent service from Stirling to Crieff and to my delight, when I arrived in Crieff I was just in time to catch another bus bound for Comrie. This saved about 30 minutes walking along the main road to the cross roads at Dalvreck where the minor road up to Glen Turret starts..

Leaving Dalvreck  the minor road heads through woods.....

.....to pass the Glen Turret (Famous Grouse) distillery and warehouses.

A little further on at Hosh the lane up Glen Turret starts ...

...and after passing through farmland and woods starts to climb up the glen.

There are views back towards the Ochill Hills.

There's a small HEP power station which is being replaced by a larger one. This of course meant some construction traffic on the lane.

Eventually the road climbs out of the farmland, past an enormous hi-tech water treatment plant and the first view of the hills appears. On a hot June day I was continually buzzed by swarms of small black flies, but fortunately no midges appeared. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience and one that I've been lucky to avoid before in Scotland.

The Glen Turret dam was built in 1963 replacing an older smaller dam.

There's a car park at the end of the road whilst the route to the hills goes off to the right through the barriers.....

...to give the first view of the loch which is nearly two and a quarter miles long. There was a natural loch here before the dam was built and was about half the length of the reservoir.

This 1923 quarter inch to the mile map shows the original loch complete with the Glenturret Lodge which has disappeared under the water of the reservoir.

The track along the loch side rises and falls throughout its length and in some places is nearly 70m above the water.

At the head of the glen the hill on the left is Ben Chonzie whilst Auchnafree Hill is on the right.

There are several streams that cross the track - I suspect these could be a problem in really wet weather when in spate.

The end of the loch is now in sight.....

.

.....and there's another stream to cross.

The track climbs well above the end of the loch .....

.....working its way uphill...

....giving a superb view of a remarkably large number of drumlins deposited at the end of the last ice age. There are well over twenty to be seen here.

At grid reference NN 797 301 the main lochside track meets one that comes down the side valley of Gilbert's Burn.

It immediately starts to climb diagonally up the hillside climbing about 250 metres in a distance of 1550 metres so about 1 in 6 overall. It feels unremittingly steep!

It's a bit of a drag but eventually the track levels out.....

...and at NN 812 300 meets another track that will go most of the way to the summit of Auchanfree Hill.

Looking down over 1000 feet to the Loch Turret.

Somewhere about NN 808 300 the OS 1:25000 map shows the track coming to an end but in actual fact it bends through about 90 degrees and heads across the flat top of the hill.

Over to the north west are the series of Munros in the Ben Lawers group.

Across the grassy moorland one of the cairns on the summit comes into view as the now slightly fainter track heads in that direction.

There is a small section with peat hags to cross first....

....before reaching the first cairn.

The actual summit is a little further on at 789 metres. It had taken me four hours for the eight miles from leaving the bus at Dalvreck - exactly what I had expected.

There's an unusual memorial bearing the inscription "Saoirse 2008-2020". I believe it is for a dog of one of the estate workers. A report on one website suggests that the dog is buried under the cairn.

Looking south west the hill in the far distance is Ben Ledi near Callander and on the right are Stuc a'Chroin and Ben Vorlich near Lochearnhead.

Another view of the Ben Lawers group of hills.

On the descent from the hill there was the possibility of extending the walk to remain high above Loch Turret by using the track that can be seen curving across the head of the burn but I had a bus to catch in Crieff so decided that I'd follow my outward route by the loch.

Descending the steep track down into Glen Turret Ben Chonzie is directly ahead.

I arrived back in Crieff before five o'clock in plenty of time for the bus back to Stirling at 17.25.

It is interesting to compare the colours in the mountains in the different seasons so to see what the area looks like at the end of winter click on the link below:

https://www.steverabone.com/MunroWalker/ben_chonzie.htm