2025-03-08 55 -4
| Sat 8 Mar 2025 in 55,-4: 55.9998085, -4.3465904 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
In a woods just upvalley from the village of Blanefield, unclear from sattelite whether the tracks passing nearby are public access or private driveways connected to the nearby castle and farmhouses
Participants
Plans
I was reminded to check the day's hashes by reading discussion in the discord over a late brunch, and I judge that there's just enough time for me to bus down to Buchannan Street Bus Station and then take the Stirling bus back North and out of the city, hopefully stepping off at Blanefield with enough time to reach the hashpoint, and maybe make it up to the Dumgoyach standing stones across the river before the light goes.
Expedition
I got out in pretty good time once I'd resolved to go, and made my way up to the top of my street, from whence there's a very good view of the Fells and out to my destination. My first view of the Fells today was through a dim blue haze, but the clouds rapidly broke up as I rode the bus down into town. I was worried about making my connection as the bus pulled up by a tour group of more than a hundred people, and about 70 of them got aboard one by one. I made the connection fine, though, and enjoyed the slow hour's ride up through the sunny city, with the first blossoms showing on the trees. IDK whether it'll ultimately be spring or false spring but I found myself getting my hopes up.
We passed the Antonine Wall and the observatory domes of the science park and rolled out beyond the edge of the city. I get outside of Glasgow's limits rarely enough at the moment that the sudden transition from city and park trees to stands of beeches and scots pine on the borders of the farms really jumps out at me. I did my best to get some snaps of the Fells through the window but the multiple reflections of the sun were too bright in the glass.
The driver was startled and maybe a little concerned for my health when I rang the bell to be let off at Blanefield's West Lodge stop, a long way from much of anything but a few farmhouses. From the sattelite map I'd hazarded a guess that this stop would either let me use Duntreath Castle's driveway to access the hash or else be my best bet for cutting directly into the woods from the A-Road. Neither plan really bore out, the driveway was private and in too clear sight of the castle gatehouse, and the drop into the woods from the retaining wall of the A-road too steep for me until the woods became the backyards of some houses. I walked back along the roadside for half a mile or so, stopping frequently to take photos of the gorgeous mosses, lichens and ferns for my botanist partner.
I cut across a sheepfield and down to the lower single-track road I'd spotted on the sattelite map, running along the southern edge of the woods - it proved to be a public drive right up until the forest border, which was screened in by a 6 foot electric fence, more than I felt up to finding my way over. I got a closest-approach photo through the wire and turned back to see if I could reach my secondary objective.
I followed the river downstream, again stopping frequently to document the mossy trunks and a sudden burst of purple crocuses. I found myself laughing for joy a lot - it's been a long week, and I haven't been out on a really stupid walk like this in too long. The beech trees and rich moss reminded me so much of similar cross-country wanders in Northumberland, more than ten years ago now.
Eventually I reached an old footbridge, the sort whose damp and ageing timbers have sprouted enough grass and moss and accumulated enough leaf-litter as to be indistinguishable from the forest floor on either side. It led across to a steep uphill path that seemed to double as a seasonal streambed. This took me up to another single-track road, running alongside a thick buried pipeline beneath a long row of beech trees.
I followed it back north for half a mile and more, across a fascinating footbridge/pipeline combo over a deep road cut through the ridge, until I was at the foot of a large, steeply sloping cattle pasture. My map told me this was the right field for the stones, and I picked my way along the fence until I found a decent gap in the barbed wire - there was always going to be one, with a monument like that fenced off in a field so close to the West Highland Way. The higher cirrus clouds were beginning to redden overhead, and I knew I didn't have much light left, so I began a hard, muddy uphill ascent through tough grass churned up with hoofprints. Three or four highland cows with gorgeous horns were grazing a little ways around the slope, and each of them raised her head in turn to take a look at me and decided I wasn't their problem.
When I reached the stones, heart hammering, glasses steamed up and sweat soaking the wool lining of my jacket, I was startled by how small and tumbledown a cluster of standing stones they were. No cup and ring petroglyphs that I could see, just several irregular slabs leaning on each other at the highest point of the field. I admired the lichens living in their cracks and shadowed undersides, ran my fingers over the intrusions in the rocks and wondered what they had been made to signify by the people who raised them up - then I set about getting as many photos as I could of the surrounding hills.
As with many Neolithic monuments, the stones themselves are less impressive than their situation. The wooded peak of Dumgoyach just to the west and the crags of Dumgoyne and Dumfoyne across the valley loom around the site, and you can see down into the valleys on either side of the ridge. An archaeology blog I read in the aftermath of the expedition described a visitor spontaneously exclaiming "it's Caros Gladhon in Lothlorien!"
I see Dumgoyne, Dumfoyne and Slackdhu as the peaks on the horizon from the top of my street every day, but I've yet to climb them, and getting this view of their saddles and crags has me wanting to do so as soon as possible.
As the horizon shaded to purple-pink, a large, noisy flock of Canada geese flew right between me and the bright point of Venus in the southwest sky.
I decided to try and find a way out of the field that wouldn't involve too much backtracking, and ultimately had to hoist myself over the six-foot wire fence (blessedly not electrified this time) with the help of a partially collapsed drystone wall and an overhanging birch tree. Once out of the field, it was just a few dozen feet to the West Highland way, which I walked through the deepening dark, admiring the silhouettes of the pines on the ridges, and the conjunction of the moon and Mars. I stopped at the West Highland Way lodge and spent too much money on a plate of mince and tatties to give me the energy to get home. Then I walked the darkened road down to Strathblane under a starry sky, and caught a lucky bus back to Glasgow
Photos
First view of the Fells and my destination from the top of my street, the blue haze seemed to promise a strange day but burned off quickly
Yellow crocuses pushing up through the stick litter left behind by Storm Éowyn the other month
The (to my eyes weirdly aggressive) signage of the Antonine Garden, planted in the ruins of a Roman baths that once stood along the Antonine Wall
Dropped off about here
Lichens everywhere, says good things for the air quality
Dog's mercury! Maybe it really is spring
Slowing myself down, there's just so many good mosses and lichens
the Devonian feldspar lava flows of Slackdhu
Unwisely stopped to admire a discarded horn whilst cutting through a field
The Blane Water providing an added challenge to reaching the secondary objective
purple crocuses bursting up from the bank
Just a really good scots pine
Finally a bridge!
Lower clouds shading from yellow to pink, telling me I've not much time
Curious pipeline/bridge combo over a very deep cuthrough
Good bracket fungi on a fallen log
Some heilan coos mostly ignoring me as I puffed my way up their pasture
Made it to the standing stones!
Conjunction of the Moon and Mars overhead as I walked back
