Ben Tirran and the wreck of a Wellington bomber

A couple of weekends ago I went to Glen Clova and walked along the tops on the east side of the Glen. I walked along the high plateau along the edges of Loch Brandy and Loch Warral towards Ben Tirran (the actual summit of which is a point at an elevation of 896m called the Goet). This a great mountain route with some great views of Glen Clova, Lochnagar and Mount Keen, and is proof that you don’t need Munro summits to make an excellent high-level walk in the Scottish Highlands.

The high corries that the two lochs, Brandy and Wharral, sit in, are excellent examples of glacially scoured features, but I think that they are perhaps unique in the Scottish Highlands in being located facing south-west – all other similar features in Scotland seem to be on north and east-facing slopes, as this was where glaciers formed on high ground in Scotland during the ice ages.

There was another interesting feature of this walk that I made a detour to see – the remains of a Vickers Wellington bomber that crashed on this plateau during the Second World War. There are significant remains at the site, including the two engines, and large parts of the fuselage and wings (showing the Wellington’s geodetic construction very well).

I also discovered a second large piece of wreckage, about 200m to the east of the main debris pile which seems to be little known about and which I have not seen any photographs of before. This looks like the entire tailplane section of the Wellington.

You can see more details and photos of this wreck site on my website here, and photos from the rest of the walk here.