Expedition 309 - The Rocking Stone, 3/5/14

 

Another nice day and the ground fairly dry, but we had a big hill to climb. We had seven explorers: Daibhidh, Isabella, Jamie, JJ, Parker, Roscoe and Stuart, with Adam, Alasdair, John, and Liz as helpers plus Bramble leading the way.

We parked the cars at Dalnabreac and walked carefully down to ‘the triangle’, where the tinkers used to camp. We had a bit of a struggle to get the gate open but soon we were walking across the old rabbit warren towards the hill. We climbed over the first ridge and found a nice sheep track which took us down the other side and across the first wet patch.

We were then at the bottom of the ridge, on its west side and we slowly climbed up, passing an old walled croft, stopping to examine the lookout among the tumbled rocks. I didn’t feel confident about climbing the rocks but the young explorers soon scrambled energetically all over them and into the cave. However, this was only an interlude and we were soon ascending again towards a big rock at the top of the hill. However, this was not the rocking stone and we still had a long way to go, but once we reached the top and had flat ground to cross, the pace picked up again.

We reached the second gate, which some climbed over and some squeezed through and the explorers, seeing the stone at the top of the slope, took off at a great pace to the top, a pace which, I regret to say, the Leader could not match. When I finally made it I found all the explorers sitting round the stone waiting for their Tunnock’s wafers. Several of them climbed onto the stone but found the boom rather disappointing, I had a look and I think I can still tune it up a bit – a job for a sunny day later.

The breeze was quite strong at the top so I set off down again in case anyone got too cold and we were soon back to the first gate. We could see the lochan from there and I told them about two boys of their own age who had to come up to collect leeches to treat a man with a poisoned hand, I have seen leeches in a burn nearby.

Going back down the hill was a bit easier, but the explorers found the last ridge quite hard and they were jolly pleased when they reached to top to see the cars not too far away.

This was another occasion when there were things going on in the afternoon and I didn’t get any drawings, but I did get photographs.

John Dye

 







Contact the site by email