An Aborted Walk to Minska Wind Farm

Tom decided last night that today's walk would be to the Minska Wind Farm as he has never been to it despite passing it many times. We took the Lockerbie road and parked the car at the gated entrance to the service road at Paddockhole. We climbed the gate and walked steadily up the hill for about a mile when a farmer a few hundred yards away working in a field cutting hay started shouting at us. The gist of his conversation was that he would not allow us to walk any further. There was cattle on the road but we intended to give them a wide berth. We decided to avoid conflict and return down the road to access the wind farm from the other side of the hill. 

What a glorious day but our problems were about to start

The wind farm on the skyline and the angry farmer in the field to the left. The cattle would not have been a problem as we would have given them a wide berth. I wanted to continue but agreed eventually that it was better to return to the car and access the hilltop from the other side. 

We headed over to Minska farm and parked up at the entrance to the farm road leaving the car in what we thought was a very safe parking place. 

The entrance to the farm is very nice with these Eagle statues at the road end.

Tom was very confident that we would soon make it to the top of the hill. Prior to this we had a very close call on a single track road with another car coming the opposite way too fast. Tom almost ended up in the ditch and stalled the car in the process. It would not start but lucky for us we were on a downhill bit of the road so we managed a jumpstart and got going again. Life is never dull with Tom taking us in his car.

This is a close as we got to the wind farm as we were stopped by a very abusive farmer.

This is the farmer in question and I know his name but wont publish it until I have checked if some of his statements have been checked out with the Dumfries & Galloway Council Access Officer. He was very abusive and told us if we continued up the road he could not guarantee the safety of our car as there were loads of vandals in the area and it would certainly be damaged when we returned. This was a definite threat to us and rather than cause further conflict we decided to turn back. He offered us an alternative walk but we decided to head to Winterhope for a cup of tea with Wattie Rutherford.