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It was my OH who picked this summer's Arran holiday cottage deep in the heart of the Merkland Wood. My preliminary researches confirmed my suspicions - the cist I had unsuccessfully sought in previous years lay somewhere within the cottage's grounds. Last July I had spent a frustrating couple of hours getting eaten alive by midges and cut and scratched by bracken and rhododendron as I tried to find the cist said by the antiquarians to be "situated on a small eminence" above a burn and described by the OS to be "poorly preserved".
I parked in the small tarmacked boat ramp and crossed the road to the trackway leading up to 2 cottages at Maol Don. Do not go up this track, instead enter the rhododendron jungle to the left of the cottage track but to the right of the roadside stone wall.
I found a vestigal path which sort of becomes a burn. To the left rises the "small eminence". This "small eminence" turns out to be a thirty foot cliff whose top is swathed in head-high bracken and rampant rhododendron. As I clambered up the steep crumbling bank I found myself gazing into a dark hole surrounded by mossy stones. I knew I was right on the money. Badger activity six feet below this cist has left it in a bit of a precarious position. This cist is not poorly preserved - indeed it is in great nick - and sits jutting out of the sloping bank above the burn just just below the flat top of the "eminence". In previous attempts to find this cist I'd been stumbling around on the eminence's "summit top" among the tick-laden, midge-ridden ferns and shrubs.The landowner's attempts to hack back the invasive rhododendron has left many ankle breakers and stumps which are real trip hazards in the deep undergrowth. But you don't need to go there & if you find yourself up there amongst the bracken you have passed the cist.
The cist is complete, the mossed-over capstone is in place, the four side slabs sit vertical and in position. This cist's dimensions are a bit larger than those described on Canmore, so a part of me wonders if this is the same cist. There are no photographs or sketches of the Merkland cist described on Canmore (or in Balfour's Book of Arran Vol 1)) to work from, but I am presuming it has to be the same one. This is a very quiet, deep woodland setting for a cist in a fine state of preservation. I stood brushing off midges with the slanting bars of evening sun transforming the wood into a tropical rainforest of rhododendron blooms, green ferns and deep moss with tall natural Scots Pines forming a scented canopy. I got the impression that no-one had visited in a very long time. A very cool resting place.
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After a Sea-Trout commando expedition myself and Sam Spade dropped in on Gatehouse of Fleet en route home. We parked outside the house which posed as "The Green Man" pub in The Wicker Man and strolled out through the town to the Borland Hills. Some very perky stirks just out into pasture from the long delayed Spring meant an abrupt retreat from the area of Rutherford's Witnesses before we could locate the Rock Feature.
Time was pressing upon us to return home but we figured we had half an hour left so I suggested we have a wee search for some of the Lagganmullan panels. We drove quickly out towards Skyreburn and parked at a little pull in on the Glenquickan Road. The fields were full of Ewes and lambs and our presence soon had literally hundreds of the things scuttling away through the connecting field gates, baaahing and bleating as they rushed up towards the farthest field at Lagganmullan Wood.
The field I wanted to check out for rock art was mercifully free of livestock (I am continually beset by livestock issues on my stone forays) and after wandering hoplessly up to the top field wall, I could see no slabs or rocks protruding from the surface of the smooth turf. In desperation I grabbed a handful of turf and tried to peel it back - it came away and revealed a beautiful pair of cups and rings. Sam Spade nearly fell over in surprise and amazement. I was pretty gobsmacked to have fluked it in such a random way too! We found another part of the panel by peeling some more easy turf back. A good soaking with some water & some photos before replacing the turf then we headed up to the top field where I wanted to check out a group of stones on a small hillock which had caught my eye on visits to the area last Autumn and at Easter this year. See if you can spot them here (a few of the blobs are trees).
http://goo.gl/maps/19N5
The Ewes and lambs which had fled from us when we entered the first field were now crowded around the stones on the hillock. I didn't want to further disturb the livestock and incur the wrath of the farmer who was now approaching on his quad, so we just photographed them from a few hundred yards away. From the air, the stones form a rough triangle. Field clearance? Modern/ Victorian Folly? Messed up ancient site? Who knows... its not on Canmore and I'll have to wait for another few weeks till I'm back in the area to get a proper look at the arrangement. Failing that... I'm back down for another week at Borland in October.... The lambs will have gone off to market and the Ewes will be off the hills by then...
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May 2012 dig at Trusty's Hillfort.
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