Whisgills and Windy Hill - cairns, lichen and slime mould

Yesterday we drove up towards Newcastleton to investigate some standing stones on forest land.

map

Parking at the gate at the eastern end of the plantation, we took the path uphill through the pine plantation. It's a slog of about 1.5 miles uphill, but decent underfoot, and it was a dry, cloudy and windless day. We caught the occasional view of the surrounding landscape between the trees, but it was rare.

On the way up the hill, we passed an interesting collection of amberish blobs hanging from a naked tree. I think it might be some sort of slime mould, but not entirely sure (?).





We were hoping for some larger wildlife, but there were no nibbled pinecones, although there were various different types of poo so there must be something here bigger than a rabbit. There were a couple of large ponds so perhaps check back in the summer as it may well be home to some amphibians.

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, including treestumps with tiny forests of their own.









The standing stones (in fact, a ruined circle) were a bit disappointing, as one was well on its way to not being standing anymore, and the other one had won the race by being flat to the ground and about to be swallowed by monster moss. The only evidence that this was once upright was the typical weathering pattern at one end, found on lots of sandstone monoliths.





The cairns were very, very interesting, hard to illustrate with a photo! 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; but there are actually two round cairns too, all in a line.



One of the stones had a fantastic clump of pinky quartz set in it.



The weather became brighter as we yomped back downhill. The moss on the path had been rucked up by some sort of foraging beast, perhaps pheasants (but we didn't see or hear any) or maybe just blackbirds...

On the way home we satisfied the requirement for fish & chips I'd been resisting all week! (stayed off the deep-fried mars bar, though.)