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Good weather again, how long will our luck last? Another good
showing of explorers, twelve of them: Adrian, Alexander, Alexandria,
Allan, Benjamin, Carol-Anne, Edward, Katie, Lucy, Peter William,
Rebecca and Thomas; five helpers, Ann, Caroline, Pamela, Peter
and Philippa and two dogs, Bruce and Molly(?).
Before we started the expedition we went to the graveyard
to see the grave of Hugh MacNaughton the Weaver, the only
grave in Acharacle churchyard I know to be of a man who died
in Tarbert.
The we drove to Tarbert (meeting Adrian, Alexander, Caroline,
Edward Peter William and Rebecca at the Telegraph Hill gate.
We got straight into the trip, crossing the burn and climbing
over some trees to get onto the forestry access track up the
hill. This led us to a group of old buildings where we stopped
to get our breath before climbing again to a small building
which many of the explorers had visited long ago before the
trees were cleared. We could recognise it was the same house
only because it had some old coils of barbed wire inside.
Then we went through the fallen timber to the old houses which
were most likely to have been the home of Hugh the Weaver.
We didn't stop long but crossed westwards into the pine wood
and climbed up the hill until we got to the old track to Glenborrodale.
We followed this for a time and veered off to look at an interesting
hill which looked like a fort after which we had our Tunnocks
wafers.
We rejoined the path and followed it a bit further until we
reached an old fank with many good walls and a stream running
through it. Adrian found a strange hollow built into the corner
of one of the enclosures. Soon after this we retraced our
steps along the road and re-entered Tarbert village. Very
close to the road we found a spot with hundreds of rifle cartridge
cases scattered about and the explorers learned that these
were fired by American soldiers based in Salen during WWII.
Each explorer collected one case and we then carefully crossed
the wood-covered ground to the main track and down to the
cars again.
John
Dye
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