Making use of
Hamish Brown delves into his cabinet of curiosities...
Blackwater Reservior’s Celtic cross
Forth ferry port of Pettycur, a name
which still appears on milestones
across Fife to Newport on the River Tay.
To make sure you have arrived at the
ferry slip the stone shows, ‘Pettycur,
33...Newport, 0’. My local museum in
Kirkcaldy has a collection of furniture
made of coal. (Queen Victoria bought
some.) But Fife’s best curiosity is
Britain’s oldest Via Ferrata (a claim
falsely made for some more recent
efforts). This has pegs and wires and
cut-out bucket steps round the cliffs of
Kincraig Point. I’d visions of Victorian
ladies in their long skirts and unethical
hats on the wires but it proved to be
a 1929 creation. The date was finally
cleared when an old lady telephoned
and explained that she, as a young girl,
had helped drag the chains along the
sands from Elie.
Perhaps my favourite oddity has to
be the Great Polish Map of Scotland,
a memorial made by Polish people to
their wartime Scottish partner. The
HQ of their forces was at what is now
the Barony Castle Hotel at Eddleston,
near Peebles. Imagine a football-pitch-
sized oval sunk six foot in the ground
containing a scale model of Scotland,
the model’s landscape surrounded by
water for the ‘sea’. Over the years this
became overgrown and forgotten but,
rediscovered, has had immense labour
by volunteers to see it restored. In May
2018 it has an ‘official’ opening with
the Polish Ambassador, Scotland’s First
Minister and other bigwigs present.
Curious? Go to www.facebook.com/
mapascotland; www.mapascotland.org.
Incidentally, taking a gravestone
addicted friend to see ‘Mapa Scotland’,
I diverted to Temple where the unique
ruined Templar Church graveyard
had an obelisk to a Rev James Goldie
on which his will is described in great
detail.
And, having started with graveyards,
let me end with quite the oddest
inscription I’ve seen. Every word of
what follows is on a table stone in a wee
cemetery below Esha Ness in a remote
corner of the Shetland Mainland. I feel
quite sorry for Laurence Tulloch. (A few
years later he moved shop to Aberdeen.)
The stone is to a Donald Robertson who
died in 1848.
‘He was a peaceable, quiet man and
to all appearances a quiet Christian. His
death was very much reg retted which
was caused by the stupidity of Laurence
Tulloch in Clothister who sold him
nitrate instead of Epsom Salts by which
he was killed in the space of five hours
after taking a dose of it.’
These notes are based on
Hamish’s book: The Oldest
Post Office in the World
and Other Scottish Oddities
published by Sandstone
Press. Also available from
Sandstone Press are his
first three classics: Hamish’s
Mountain Walk (the Munros in
a single trip); Hamish’s Groats
End Walk (the first foot-link
of the highest summits of
Scotland, England, Wales
& Ireland, and their 3000ers
– a pre-technology period
piece now); and Climbing
the Corbetts. Most recently
published, Walking the Song,
collected articles etc from
a lifetime of people, places
and experiences. He has also
edited: Tom Weir, an Anthology
for Sandstone Press.
summer 2018 | Outdoor focus 5