Qualla: Ochil Hills

Ochil Hills: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Campbell (Tiger99 at English Wikipedia), CC BY-SA 2.5. Stand at Stirling Castle and look north, and the Ochil Hills rear up across the Forth valley like a wall. The escarpment is sudden, almost theatrical, four hundred metres of green and grey rising directly out of farmland with no foothills to soften the approach. That cliff face is the work of the Ochil Fault, one of the cleanest geological lines in Britain, where 400-million-year-old Devonian lavas were tilted up and the softer Old Red Sandstone to the south was dropped down. The Ochils are not high by Scottish standards. Ben Cleuch tops out at 721 metres. But they punch above their weight because they punch so suddenly, marking the edge of the Highlands almost as crisply as a drawn line.

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Image: Alan Campbell (Tiger99 at English Wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Ochil Hills: An Ancient Volcano

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. The hills are made of basaltic andesite and trachyandesite lavas erupted during the Early Devonian, when this part of what would become Scotland was a series of volcanoes. The Ochil Volcanic Formation, a sub-unit of the Arbuthnott-Garvock Group, piled up thick layers of lava and ...

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Image: Andrew Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ochil Hills: Pictish Ghosts

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Ochils were once Pictish country. Castle Craig, a hill fort above Mill Glen, was described by local historian William Gibson in 1883 as a round Pictish fortress whose traces could still be distinctly seen. Industrial quarrying has since erased it. Local lore claimed that some...

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Image: Richard Webb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ochil Hills: Walking the Plateau

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Bruce, CC BY-SA 2.0. From the top, the Ochils feel less like a range than a great undulating tableland. Ben Cleuch at 721 metres is the highest point, but the plateau rolls on with no commanding summit, just a long series of rounded tops separated by peaty hollows. Ben Buck reaches 679 metres, Andrew...

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Image: Ian Bruce | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ochil Hills: Wind on the Ridge

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Calum McRoberts, CC BY-SA 2.0. Twenty-first century use of the Ochils has added a new layer to the older economy of sheep and hill walking. An 18-turbine wind farm was approved in June 2006 at Green Knowes, south of Auchterarder, just north of the Ben Thrush summit. A second wind farm at Burnfoot Hill, north o...

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Image: Calum McRoberts | CC BY-SA 2.0