Free entry for everyone; no membership card is needed.
The Trust's page does not say how parking is charged.
Historic Scotland names no parking; its directions place the fort on Castle Knowe about a mile north-west of Glencorse, or 2.5 miles south-west of the Lothianburn junction on the city bypass. The small unpaved car park at the end of the farm road below the fort is the one visitors use and reviewers call free, but no official tariff or free statement was found, so the status is recorded as unknown; it fills on fine days. Pentland Hills Regional Park's main car parks, including Flotterstone about 1.5 km away by path, have had pay machines since 2025.
Driving pin: the Castlelaw car park, 159 m south-east of Historic Scotland's own pin on the fort. Buses 101 and 102 along the A702 stop at Flotterstone; there is no railway station near the park.
Castlelaw Hill Fort crowns Castle Knowe, a low foothill of the Pentland Hills just outside Edinburgh, with spectacular views over Midlothian from three concentric rings of grassy ramparts and ditches. Excavations in the 1930s and 1940s found farmhouses of the first millennium BC inside a timber fence, later ringed by the ramparts. The main attraction is the souterrain or earth house, a stone-lined passage about 20 metres long sunk into the middle ditch late in the fort's life; a bronze brooch, glass and pottery of the AD 100s found inside show contact with the Romans. Visitors go down steps and walk under the hill, lit only by openings in the roof, so a torch helps. Reviewers warn that the small car park fills on fine days and the ground gets muddy, and keep dogs on leads for the sheep; the Army's rifle range lies beside the fort, so stay outside the red-and-white poles when red flags fly.
Free entry
1 April to 30 September daily 9.30am to 5.30pm; 1 October to 31 March daily 10am to 4pm; last entry 30 minutes before closing; no closures listed. The hours apply to the gated souterrain; the ramparts are open hillside. The fort lies just outside the fence of the Army's Castlelaw live-firing range, which has standard firing times of 9am to 11.59pm Monday to Saturday and 9am to 12.30pm on Sunday: when red flags fly by day or red lamps at night, do not cross the red-and-white boundary poles, and expect bangs and blank firing without warning on the training area.
Steps lead down into the souterrain, a passage about 20 m long with a small side chamber lit through openings in the roof; the entrance has a metal gate. Grass ramparts on a hillside grazed by sheep, muddy in wet weather; no toilets, cafe or shop (the Regional Park's Flotterstone visitor point and cafe is the nearest).
Dogs: Pentland Hills Regional Park asks walkers to keep dogs on a lead because most of the park is sheep farmland with deer and other wildlife.
Photo: The grassy concentric ramparts of Castlelaw Hill Fort on Castle Knowe, looking out over Midlothian under summer cloud. Helspence, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castlelaw01.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.
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Dogs, with restrictions
2.7 miles (4.5 km), moderate: from Flotterstone Information Centre follow the heron waymarkers through the woodland and along the burn to Glencorse Reservoir, then the path by the tree line to Castlelaw and back to Flotterstone; paired with a children's Mystery Trail. Flotterstone's car park is charged; buses 101 and 102 stop there.
