spencer

Shamefaced erratum: I have replaced all my fieldnotes for this site as I’ve belatedly realised that I’ve mistaken it for another visited further up the coast. Memo to self: check map references. Right, try again.... I drove down the minor road to the beach, Broadsea Bay – there’s only one gate to open and shut – and parked near the base of the fort, access to which on the seaward side is unfenced. I cast my eyes upward.. how to climb up there? There is a conical outlier on the forts northeast side, which looked to have a path up that was clamberable. This soon petered out though, so I had to zigzag upwards, with a bit of heaving and pulling on bracken and heather. Yes, it was steep. The gradient directly beneath the fort looked even steeper. After cresting the outlier the downslope on its landward side and the final climb up to the fort weren’t too bad. As I attained the latter two curlew flew off, calling. They were not the only occupants. There were cattle. Fortunately these were docile and without calves, and vacated the place for pasture inland. What a fine place. The top is of some size and almost bowling green flat, and the seaward side looks like it has been considerably landscaped by the forts builders – it has been squared off. The fort’s northern side ends in a drop which, though not sheer, is pretty intimidating. The only raised earthworks on the site were where this northern side of the promotory met the coastline proper, where there are three pronounced but fairly short raised banks with two ditches between, on a roughly NE/SW axis, with what I believe was the entrance to the fort adjacent to the latter. Access to this entrance could have been both by a pretty level path from inland or by a narrow valley which curves clockwise down to sea level and the beach beyond. This looked like it had been considerably landscaped. The entire site on a large scale map would, in a way, look like an elongated comma, the point of which being the approach from the beach. To the south of the entrance commenced a single flat terrace or incision into the hillside which curved round on a level contour about six feet below the site till it ended abruptly on the fort’s seaward side. From the beach it looks like a notch on the southern side of the fort’s skyline silhouette. The path along the incision is clear, about ten feet wide, with dense gorse on its steep, downhill side. Careful, though, that you don’t encounter a tardy cow or two coming round the corner like I did. It was on this path that I found something that made me connect with those that had built and lived here.. stock activity had exposed an distict occupation layer of fine material. I stopped and communed. There was no stone of any description on the site at all, as far as could be seen. All earthworks were just that, earth. Any additional defence would have been probably wooden pallisade. I descended the curved valley from the entrance to find my way blocked at the road by a barbed wire fence, which I climbed, not realising it was open ended at the beach, where I then saw that there was a cattle track climbing it seemed to the fort’s summit from by the cattle grid. I wouldn’t have wanted to meet its users en route though. Stand on the great beach at low tide, look south towards Killantringan Bay with its dun and Black Head beyond. A fine place. Look up at the imposing fort with that intiguing conical outlier – is that really all natural? Very well worth a visit.. but if you want majestic settings viewed from seaward still a poor second to Dunman.. Dunman’s beyond compare on this coast.

I had set myself a target for my holiday of a minimum of three site visits per day. On my first day, having only done two – the forts at Corsewall and Portobello – on returning at dusk to my campsite, the excellent North Rhinns Camping near Leswalt, my eyes lighted on this nearby site on the map. The stone looked to be near the road, and I read Broch’s notes. ‘Dammit, it’s going to be dark but there’s a full moon..I’ll give it a go and get my third’. I parked up the side road by the gate, a short distance after the road left that for Portpatrick. In the field I saw some poles for electric cables in the gloaming, then, by the nearest, a smallish dark lump. It didn’t move. Not a cow...or bull. Could it be...? Broch had done well to keep that pole and its pals out of his shots, as it is only about ten feet or so from the stone. I got my camera and hopped over the gate, got to the stone and got some flash shots with my camera and smartphone. The full moon was rising and casting some atmospheric shadows. The stone’s faring well enough..packing stones exposed by livestock wear, but it’s stocky sturdy and still well set. After ten minutes I heard a farm dog bark, not excitedly but.. mission accomplished, time to go. Pat. You’ve got to pat. See you again in daylight.. Number three.

Reiterating Broch, if you don’t fancy making the descent from the escarpment behind, a visit to this site is tide dependent. On the evening I visited the tide only receded sufficiently as light was fading. The main problem is at the rocky outcrop near the bottom of the steps from the car park. Watch your footing and keep your hands free as the seaweed and boulders are rather slippery. I couldn’t find the site on my visit last year, and I wouldn’t say it was late when I did so this time..except I saw a bat. Yes, little of the place remains, but it’s still worthwhile, not least because of the very fine beach, which, out of season, in the evening you’ll like as not have to yourself, and also the view from the other car park up at the lighthouse, where I’ve now come a couple of times to watch the sun go down over the Irish Sea. My site visit was truncated by the fast approaching darkness and also the arrival of a couple of cars in the car park and my ungrounded fear that their occupants may have had designs on mine. Memo to self: must return in broad daylight next time – tide willing. If you like to combine your hobby with chilling on a beach look no further

Before setting out on my explorations of Galloway sites in 2015 this was a site that I had decided I would definitely visit for no better reason than that I liked the name. Do not rely on the position indicated on the OS map – I think it is slightly nearer the ‘9’ numeral shown. This was the last site visited on a day spent exploring some superb lesser known sites in the South Rhins, and was the only one featured on TMA. This is being corrected. Parking at dusk in an informal parking area above the shore of Terally Bay I walked up and down the verge of the A716 looking at the skyline of the raised field on the landward side of the road and, after a few minutes, ‘aha!’ I spotted the top of the stone against the fading light. Access to the field, which had been freshly shorn of its corn, was via an ungated entrance, on the south side of which was a very distinctive gorse covered mound, of which more shortly. I made my way along the field edge to the stone, which is about four feet high, roughly rectangular, and compared to all the other stones I visited, unusually thin, at its top being about six inches thick, rather reminiscent of a tombstone. As the last rays of the sunset waned I carried on photographing using flash. It hadn’t images here, deserved to.. and would. I gave a pat and made to go, and then a thought struck me: was its orientation significant, a pointer? Aligning my eyes at either end of its top in turn I found that one pointed to the summit of Inchmulloch Hill to the southwest, while the other seemed to point to the highest point of the Mull of Sinniness on the other side of Luce Bay. Coincidence? Returning eventually to the field entrance in the gloaming I couldn’t help investigating that gorsey mound.. I groped my scratchy way to its summit. A perfect cone. Animal disturbance revealed that it seemed not to be composed of field clearance material but finer stuff. A cairn, I’ll be bound. A stream flows gently by the base of its southerly side to meet the shores of beautiful Luce Bay. A fine place for a final rest. A migrating corncrake flew over, calling in the dark. I descended carefully, walked back to the car as a golden near full moon rose over Whithorn and the water and drove off slowly to my campsite. It had been a good day.

It is a wonder that this stone has not toppled, and I would be very surprised if it has not done so within the next ten years. Parking on the verge a short distance along the minor road that leads to Low Clanyard after it leaves the A716, adjacent to a solitary static caravan to the rear of the corner house I found a broad holloway – perhaps indicative of a former sizeable human presence – with a disused farm track in its middle that climbed up onto the pastureland that overlooks Luce Bay, and the stone came into view on ascent as the holloway opened out at its crest. Although the stone, some five feet in height, looked in good order as I approached, the side view of it told a different story, as it is leaning southward at an angle of approximately sixty degrees, and I am totally convinced that but for some chocking stones on that southward side it would have gone already. The culprits are undoubtedly cattle, as its packing stones are exposed and its corners blackened by the grease from their rubbing. The stone is top heavy and seems to be tapering to a point at its lower end, and I doubt if that is now embedded by more than a foot. I gave it a gentle pat, but fear its standing years are very nearly over.

Like CARL, I failed to find this despite a prolonged search. I do wonder if the position indicated on the OS map is entirely accurate, as subsequently I found one or two instances where this seemed to be the case, eg Low Curghie. What I did find, though, were four very large stones set vertically at regular intervals set into the wall of the field below that where the wind turbines are. They seemed very out of place compared to all the other stonework, and I wonder if they were there as a consequence of a site being tidied away. I did not think that they included a recent addition to their number. They were not visible from the minor road that leads to Whirlpool, being on the far side of the first brow, but should be visible with binoculars from the road that leads to Clachanmore and Ardwell. I regret not having a look in the top ‘turbine’ field, but the increasing interest of cattle made me decide it was best to withdraw. I hope to have another crack next year..my only failure to find a site out of the thirty or so visited in western Galloway in October 2015. Hi ho..