The car park at the foot of Dumyat fills up quickly on a Thursday morning. By nine o'clock there are eight people standing next to a green minibus, adjusting gaiters, checking boot laces, and arguing in the most companionable way possible about whether the cloud will lift before they reach the top. This is the Ochils Thursday Group, and they have been meeting like this, more or less every week, for nearly three years.
The group began as a pilot programme Cairnvost Howe ran in partnership with a Clackmannanshire community development trust. The original idea was simple: offer regular guided walks to adults who wanted to get into the hills but did not feel confident going alone. A few people showed up. Then a few more. Then someone's neighbour came. Then that neighbour's sister. What started as eight participants is now a rotating community of around thirty regulars, with a core Thursday group of ten to fifteen who rarely miss a week.
Volunteer walk leader Fiona, who retired from nursing four years ago, has led the Thursday group since its second month. She came along as a participant first, she is quick to point out. "I'd been walking on my own for years but I didn't know how to navigate properly," she says, pulling on a pair of gloves as the group begins to move off. "I did the navigation training with Cairnvost Howe, got my Mountain Leader assessment done, and then they asked if I wanted to lead. I thought why not."
The routes vary by season and by the group's collective mood. In winter they stay lower, working on skills — reading ground, pacing distances, using a compass when the visibility drops. In summer they push higher, sometimes reaching the plateau above the Ochils where on a clear day you can see the Wallace Monument, the Forth bridges and, if you are lucky, the first suggestion of the Highland line to the north.
What strikes a visitor to the group is the quality of the conversation. Walking, it turns out, is excellent for talking. The rhythm of movement, the absence of screens, the shared effort of a slope — something opens up. Members of the Thursday group have supported each other through bereavements, job losses, health scares. One man who joined after a period of long-term unemployment described it as the thing that got him back to feeling like himself.
Cairnvost Howe provides the training, insurance, equipment loans and route planning support that makes groups like this possible. But the character of the Thursday group belongs entirely to the people who turn up for it, week after week, rain or otherwise.