The Grey Mare's Tail

View From The Hill Path

The Grey Mare’s Tail is a 60 meter waterfall in the Moffat hills, situated about 10 miles north east of Moffat town centre. The falls are created by the water from Loch Skeen winding its way through the hillside via some smaller falls and over the 60 meter drop on its way to Moffat Water which runs along the side of the road through the valley.

You can reach the Grey Mares Tail (Nature Reserve) by heading along the A708 from the town of Moffat - the road takes you into the valley between the Moffat Hills, so it’s a pleasant, picturesque view. There are two car parks and we stayed the night in one of them. The car park location is Moffat DG10 9LH. GPS coordinates are 55.417987, -3.287556 (according to Google Maps). If you are going for the day it is advisable to get there before noon – even though it was a cold day, it was quite busy and the car park got full just before mid-day. There are a number of wildlife attractions such as peregrine falcons and wild goats. We weren’t looking, so we didn’t see any, but there were plenty of wild life lovers with binoculars and stuff so we possibly missed out on that side of things. It’s definitely a place that we will go back to and the intent is to see more. The purpose of this visit though was to walk up to Loch Skeen and enjoy the scenery (including the falls) en route.

The upkeep of the Grey Mare's Tail is overseen by The National Trust for Scotland and in the car park there is a donation box in lieu of an actual parking charge.

Loch Skeen is listed in The Daily Telegraph as one of Britain's finest one day and half day walks. You can see the White Coomb hill from the east side of the loch itself.

The Grey Mare's Tail

White Coomb is the highest of the Moffat hills at 821m at its highest point. There is a circular walk following the path past Grey Mare's Tail or the most direct route sees you crossing the Tail Burn.There are stepping stones to allow crossing but it can be tricky following any heavy rain, which in Scotland is mostly a given! There are also 18 subsidiary summits of White Coomb so plenty of choice as to which route you want to take.

We arrived on the Friday night to a) Ensure a good parking spot and b) have our weekly party!

We had a look around during the short daylight hours left on the Friday and as an inexperienced hill-walker I will confess to nothing short of a feeling of dread looking up at the path we would be taking.

The Saturday morning dawned with some passable attempts at sunlight, however starting up the cliff path the weather changed every 5 minutes. Glorious sunshine giving way to driving rain, snow and hail returning to more glorious sunshine - all within a 5 minute span.

The path itself was mainly stairs for the first part, which is apparently a good workout for your calves but it's a lot harder going than it actually looks. After the stairs the path itself would be easy to see and follow when not covered in snow. There are also a few places where you have to use stepping stones to cross wee streams. It can be a strenuous walk but manageable for all ages and fitness levels.

The path at times was quite narrow and the howling gale was forcing me to have to hold my hat in place before it blew away for the sheep to eat! However holding a hat with one hand and trying to keep my balance when the wind was doing its upmost to blow me off the path was at times a bit scary. I was really envious of those sheep wandering unconcernedly about the steep slopes doing sheep things.

We did stop a lot to take photographs, particularly when jumping over small streams where we could see icicles, where the dripping water had frozen solidly.

Frozen Loch Skeen

As hubby will testify, I can be a bit of a drama queen at times especially when it began snowing on our climb up. I did tend to decide that we were going to die in a big frozen drift, however, that didn't happen and when we got to Loch Skeen the view was nothing short of incredible. Looking at a frozen loch and being the only people there in all the silence was actually way more dramatic than I could even imagine.

The weather started to close in whilst we were admiring the dramatic scenery so we started retracing our steps. Again, the weather gods couldn't quite make their minds up and at one point, looking back, the hills were bathed in glorious sunshine and I even took my hat off, but looking forward we walked straight into another snow squall.

As is our wont, we got back to Mowgli (our motor home) for dinner and a rest - and as darkness fell, we realised that there was still one car in the car park, the couple having set off just as we were coming back down.

View Coming Down the Hill Path

The snow started to fall in earnest and darkness had really set in and still no sign of them. In my dramatic moments I decided that they had strayed too far from the path and fallen to their deaths, or they were suffering from hypothermia and had got hopelessly lost, when in actual fact they were clearly experienced walkers and came bobbing back down a few hours later with their head torches happily showing them the way.

A Gatecrasher

I was so relieved as it had started to snow quite heavily at this point (in March!) so in celebration we threw our own welcome back party, to which they weren't invited......some gatecrashing sheep did turn up though and just pottered around doing sheep things and trying to shelter from the snow.

All in it is well worth a visit regardless of the weather as the scenery itself is fantastic.