Given the forecast I could not just sit at home today. So I took the day off and headed into the Ochils. Over the years I have spent huge amounts of time walking, running, cycling and skiing in these rolling hills at the back of Stirling, but it’s been a while since my last visit.

When walking, my favourite way up is over Wood Hill, up on the Ben Ever ridge. There are some nice woods at the bottom, above some old Caledonian pines on the shoulder of hill (alas, on borrowed time), some interesting geology along the way. It’s a steep way up, for sure, but that’s the way with the Ochils. And so the Buffalo came off pretty quickly, the old smelly helly just warm enough for the climb up in winter sunshine.

In the shade on the way down Ben Ever I contemplate putting it back on, or at least a hat, but with the next steep climb just ahead I decide to man up. A brief conversation with another chap plodding up, the usual hill talk, happiness shared.

(I recall an Icelander once telling me how the hot pools are great levellers, obliterating the things that set people apart in ‘real’ life; there is not much of a difference between a banker and a hill farmer when stripped down to swimwear, neck deep in water. The Scottish hills are just like that, up here we are all just hill folk, and conversations come easy.)

The sun comes and goes, but there is virtually no breeze today, and as I survey the horizon from the summit of the Cleuch, most of the tens of windmills surrounding me are not moving, or moving very, very slowly. That is the biggest change in the quarter of a century I have been coming here. I recall when the first few of them appeared, on the north side of the hills, somewhat surreal, Quixotic sight, that has since become the new normal.

I don’t really mind them down here in the densely populated Central Belt, but nevertheless their unrelenting march leaves me with a profound sense of unease, for to me they are symbolic of yet another technological ‘solution’ to a problem that is not even remotely technological. Part of the Great Delusion that nothing much needs to change about the way we live.

Some tea, a bite to eat, time to move on.

I was originally thinking of coming down the Law, but decide to head on for Andrew Gunnel, and then down the old path from Maddy Moss marked on my 2016 map edition that has long fallen into disuse. Once upon a time, this was a particularly fun descent on a bike, a (mostly) gently sloping narrow groove, too deep and too narrow to pedal along much of it, with a consequentially steep drop on the right hand side; a particularly good laugh after dark.

By the time I am back at the car I have a blister from my new boots, and I am pleasantly tired. Over the last six months I have been struggling with bouts of odd fatigue, and lost most of my fitness. But I am hoping I have turned a corner on it. I expect I’ll know in a day or two, the difference between pleasantly tired and just tired is clear enough. (And the blister, that was well worth it.)