Dumyat

Dumyat is a hill at the western end of the Ochil Hills in central Scotland. Its name comes from the Gaelic for ‘hill fort of the Maeatae’. The hill stands near Stirling, often seen with the Abbey Craig in photographs. It rises to 418 metres and has two main tops: Castle Law in the west and Dumyat itself in the east. An old hill fort from the Iron Age still shows on Castle Law’s summit. Archaeologists Dr Murray Cook and Professor Gordon Noble have studied the site, finding it was used around 500 BC and again in the 5th to 7th centuries AD. The climb offers several routes up the southern face. The main gulley follows a fault line where soft rock meets harder andesite and basalt. Raeburn’s Gulley is steep and risky, while Siart Gulley is safer for average walkers. A gentler path starts from Sheriffmuir to the north, and Menstrie Glen provides a longer but satisfying ascent from the east. The hillside holds sheep folds and the remains of a shepherd’s house, once used for small copper and barytes mines. At the top stands a memorial to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and a bench for Mr Michael Simpson. A trig point marks the summit alongside a cairn topped by a Jubilee beacon from 1977. The beacon is filled with stones, each one a wish left by visitors. The scree slopes yield agates and occasional quartz, smoky quartz, and citrine. Sheep graze the exposed terrain, and the ruins of mining workings remain on the hill.