Weather/Conditions: First day of the winter - snow on Dumgoyne but generally quite nice conditions all round.
Distance/Ascent/Time: 3.6km / 400m / 1h 10m
Accompanying: Rosie (the dog)

The first hill of winter. It's amazing how an unacclimatised mind responds to the first brush of snow of the season.

I took Rosie, a friends dog, up because I finally realised that taking a dog on a lead would be no problem. This had the added advantage of being pulled uphill by an overenthusiastic ball of energy - for which I wasn't complaining. We walked up the fields prior to the hill as a heavy snow shower moved in. Dumgoyne was already coated in a dusting (which is always more substantial close up) and I got this feeling that I was looking at a completely different hill to the summer one I'd got used to. And if I felt that way about this little hill, the hinterlands of the Highlands of my mind's eye seemed impossibly wild.



The sun had just about set by the time we were at the top, and I got some funny shots of an over excited dog, more than happy to play in snow. Taking Rosie up hills is quite funny because her sheer enthusiasm raises spirits. And that became a problem on descent!

I had her on a lead, and she was trying to run down at her own pace. Multiple times she literally pulled my feet from under me and I went sliding down the hill, my backside colliding with the pebbles. In retrospect, I might have been able to take her off the lead, but I didn't think so at the time. And I wouldn't want Rosie to bound off in the direction of sheep either, so I put up with it and I managed a speed more comparable to her's on the trek down the fields to the distillery.