8 Top Trig Views In Scotland
Celebrate over 80 years of the trig pillar in Britain!
We reveal eight great trig point summits in Scotland that should be on your walking list and a few facts you might not know about the hundreds of trigs dotted around the countryside!
1. Benarty Trig - At 1,168ft, it is found in the Lomond Hills, Fife. It will be Rob Woodall’s final trig pillar after 14 years of walking to and discovering trigs in Britain. He has bagged 6,189 so far and says: "My final one is Benarty, which I think is a great place to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the first ever trig pillar in Britain." See trigpointing.uk for more.
2. Duncryne Hill - Known locally as the "Dumpling", it sits at 465ft above sea level with views over Loch Lomond and its many islands, as well as the wider southern Highlands. See Walk Duncryne for more.
3. Dumyat - Just a four-mile walk to the trig pillar, at 1,371ft, Dumyat sits in the Ochils; revealing lovely views over the city of Stirling and the Stirlingshire landscape.
4. Ben Ledi - A popular mountain hike near Callander and Strilingshire, it claims the title as the highest mountain in the Trossachs area of Loch Lomond National Park. The trig pillar is located at 2,884ft. See Walk Ben Ledi for more.
5. Cairn Table - Situated at Kames, Muirkirk, Cairn Table is a fairly easy-going hill climb in Ayrshire. It can stretch to more than five miles in total, if you follow a circular route. The views from the trig pillar at 1,945ft, on a clear day, are spectacular and can reach as far as the Isle of Arran to the West and Ben Lomond to the North.
6. An Teallach - Near Dundonell, An Teallach ridge offers a challenging hike with the most breathtaking rewards of views over the surrounding Scottish Highlands. There are two Munros on the ridge, Sgurr Fiona and Bidein a Ghlas Thuill, with the trig pillar located on the latter.
7. Ben Lomond - The most Southerly of Scotland’s 282 Munros, Ben Lomond sits on the shores of Loch Lomond in the Southern Highlands. It is a popular walk with the trig pillar offering fantastic views over a rolling landscape in fine weather. There are two routes to the top, via the “tourist trail” and ptarmigan ridge.
8. Ben Tainavaig - A lovely coastal walk from Portree on the Isle of Skye heads to a trig, Ben Tianavaig, at 1354ft. The book "Trig Point Walks on the Isle of Skye and Raasay" by Ian Stewart and Alistair Christie suggests 56 walks, including this one, with trig viewpoints.
Here are some things you might not know about the humble trig pillar...
- Trig pillars were used as the basis for a method of measuring the shape of the landscape so that maps could be created. The maps that were created with the trig pillars in the UK are the ones many of us know and use, OS Landranger and Explorer maps.
- It was on April 18th, 1936, that the first trig pillar was installed in a field in Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire. This was the start of the "retriangulation of Great Britain".
- Triangulation is a mathematical process that makes accurate map-making possible. It works by determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline and, in this case, the many thousands of trig pillars.
- Between 1936 and 1962, around 7,000 trig pillars were built across Britain, including thousands in Scotland, as OS surveyors took on the huge task of mapping the entire country.
- There are still thousands of trig pillars left in Britain although many have been lost to building developments, farming, erosion and other causes. No one is sure of the exact figure although it’s thought to be around 6,190.
- The highest trig pillar sits on the top of the UK’s tallest mountain, Ben Nevis, Scotland, at 1,344m and the lowest is at Little Ouse at -1m in Cambridgeshire, England.
- Trig pillars have been out-dated by more modern measuring technologies, including GPS. However, the pillars still offer a beacon for walkers, especially when looking for a hill summit.
- Trig pillars have become the focus of “collectors”. This hobby is known as trig-bagging or trig-pointing, where people travel across the countryside spotting and recording as many as they can. Rob Woodall is a prime example of this, having completed his 13-year mission to bag all of Britain’s trig pillars.
