2025-03-25 55 -4

Location

Off of a path through the Campsie Fells.

Participants

KerrMcF
Alex

Plans

KerrMcF

After university and volunteering, I'll pick Alex up and drive us both to Clachan of Campsie. From there, we'll walk along a path towards the point. Alex is excited to get to use her camera, and the weather looks pretty good for it.

Expedition

KerrMcF

We ended up leaving for the geohash later than expected, but this wasn't really going to be an issue for us. The drive to Clachan of Campsie was simple enough, and there was plenty of space for parking. We began the walk uphill towards the geohash, occasionally stopping to look back at where we'd come from and for Alex to take photos of the area. At one point, we found a waterfall in a really nice enclosed space, which we stopped at for a bit.

Reaching the section where we had to leave the path was not difficult, but it was becoming increasingly less promising as we got closer that we would actually be able to reach the geohash. The hill to the left of the path looked fairly steep, and I wasn't confident that we would be able to safely make it down and back. We decided to see how far down we could get, just in case it was easier than it looked, but Alex stopped fairly early on. I didn't go much further before deciding that it was probably not the best idea. This didn't matter much though, as the view was stunning and the area itself was incredibly peaceful. We had probably passed about four people in total on our expedition so far, and the area was completely silent.

We decided it would be best to head back down towards the car, but considered the journey itself to be successful. Whilst we might not have reached the geohash, neither of us would have been in that area without the prompt of geohashing, and both of us greatly appreciated spending time there. On the way back to the car, we passed several sheep, cows, and a cat, all of which were happy to say hello to us from a distance.

Reaching the end of the road and almost back to the car park, I pointed out what looked like old ruins. Alex really liked the look of them and wanted to see if it was accessible, so we looked a little further into the area. I'd recognised the name - Schoenstatt - from previously researching the local area, and was fairly certain that it was open to the public. Additionally, we spotted some signposts pointing in the direction of the property for the "Woodland Walk", which made it pretty clear that we would be able to access the land. Unfortunately, it seemed that the ruins we had noticed were rather underutilised, so we didn't really stay for long. We decided to follow the Woodland Walk path, despite it leading us in the opposite direction from the car, and realised that the property seemed to be fairly religious in nature. From looking online, it appears to be some kind of centre for religious retreats.

We left the property from the other side and walked the length of it back along the road to reach the car. The drive back was equally as simple as the drive there, and we hoped to do another geohash soon, this time with better luck on the location. Alex plans to send the photos that she took to me, and I'll add some of those to the report after she does so.