The robbed out gap in Windy Edge Long Cairn according to Canmore ID 67899.
Image credit: Mark Johnstone
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Windy Edge Long Cairn viewed along WNW-ESE Axis.
Image credit: Mark Johnstone
Passage on W end of Windy Edge Long Cairn
Image credit: Mark Johnstone
Image credit: © Brian Kerr 2007
The cairn has an unusual W orientation. 75m long. Three-compartment chamber. Straight facade.
This view looking E over the chamber.
The line of the chamber can be seen on the right.
Inside the chamber.
One of the two remaining stone circle stones. 1.7m high.
Six stones existed at the end of the 18th C.
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Heavy going – he’s not joking!
We took the path up from the gate at the eastern end of the plantation. It’s a slog of about 1.5 miles uphill, but decent underfoot. Until you get to the top!
The area at the top of Windy Edge is boggy and (as you would expect) covered with hidden treestumps and branches. Normal instincts to use the hillocks as dry stepping stones became scuppered when in fact they were rotten chunks of wood!
That said, there was some lovely moss and lichen action, if that’s your thing.
The cairns were very, very interesting. We thought at first they were one rediculously long Long Cairn, as the piles of stones were close together to a length of about 100 metres!
An ok chambered cairn and a ruined stone circle once surrounded by forest but now cleared on two sides.
The cairn, which sits on the 300m contour, has the distinction of being the highest in S Scotland – possibly in all of Scotland.
Rather than follow the complex and uphill forest road approach from the S, I decided to go in from the minor road on the N where the altitude is about the same as the cairn.
Park at the cattle grid at the regional boundary then follow the boundary line down to the forest. (Not as daft as it sounds – it’s marked by a fence.)
Head E to where the forest has been cleared then SE to the corner of the remaining plantation. Heavy going.
Visited 20 May 2004
Visited 26.05.12
Pebblesfromheaven impression of a long long cairn turns out to be true!
According to survey work carried out in 1993 by RCAHMS (see details in Canmore ID 67899 in Links) the two separate cairns at Windy Edge should be regarded as one long cairn measuring c. 75m on a WNW-ESE axis. They found an underlying stone layer in the gap between the cairns by probing the ground. The missing centre of the long cairn may be explained by traces of peat cutting in this area.
Windy Edge Long Cairn on Canmore.
Sites within 20km of Windy Edge
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Windy Edge
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Tinnis Hill Summit
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Hollows Tower
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Long Knowe
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The Currick
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Buck Stone
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Ninestane Rigg
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Bailiehill Fort
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Gillalees
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Gillalees 4
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Gillalees 2
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Gillalees 3
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Gillalees 5
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King Schaw’s Grave
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