Mosquito wreckage on Cranstackie

Three weeks ago whilst staying for a week in nearby Kinlochbervie, I climbed the 801m Corbett summit of Cranstackie in Sutherland. Cranstackie (along with its neighbouring Corbett summit of Beinn Spionnaidh) is the most northerly mountain (if you count a mountain as being above the Corbett height of 762m) in the British Isles, and Sutherland is a very dramatic and remote landscape.

The summit itself is not too far from the A838 road though, so it is fairly accessible. The route of ascent I took up the head of Calbhach Coire to the bealach between the two summits was up a fairly steep and bouldery slope. I had good views on the bealach eastwards to Ben Hope. The final 100m of ascent to the summit of Cranstackie is a boulderfield requiring some attention.

Unfortunately I was above the cloudbase on the summit so there was no views, but this was the only day of the whole week I spent in Sutherland without heavy rain and high winds.

I descended from the summit by a slightly different route, traversing along the northern slopes of Cranstackie. This was so I could investigate the site of a RAF Mosquito bomber that crashed here in 1943.

The main debris field of the Mosquito wreck site is quite compact with a large amount of wreckage, although all pieces of wreckage are small, indicating the severity of the impact. Pieces of undercarriage and some engine parts are recognisable (see photo above), and several pieces of the Mosquito’s wooden components survive. The largest piece of wreckage is a section of the rear elevator. There are also a few pieces of wreckage lower down the hill in Calbhach Coire.

You can see my page about this wreck site on my website here.

On the summit of Lammer Law

At the end of March I did a 30km cycle route in the Scottish Borders. This route was a loop that started and finished at Longyester, and used 4×4 tracks to ascend to the 527m summit of Lammer Law and cross the high moorland of the Lammermuir Hills to the east of Lammer Law, along a track that follows a line of electricity pylons and doesn’t drop much below 400m. There aren’t many places in Scotland where you can cycle on decent tracks at such a high altitude. Unfortunately a new wind farm was being built on the moorland at Fallago Rig which I had to cycle through, although this was a Sunday and the site was quiet. I then continued on the B6355 road, which is one of the highest public roads in Scotland, rising to a height of nearly 440m, before an amazing descent, losing 200m of altitude in 4km.

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One of the engines from the B-26 Invader lying partially submerged in boggy ground

Last week I travelled to Ayrshire and went for a hike in the remote and anonymous moorland of East Ayrshire. The weather last week was extremely good, with blue skies, high temperatures and little wind, and this walk felt more like it was happening in the middle of summer than mid-March.

I walked northwards from the B743 into the featureless and boggy terrain of the area. There are two aircraft wreck sites in this area, and I had made a previous attempt to walk to these locations earlier in the year, setting off from the A71 to the north but was thwarted by difficult terrain and a new windfarm being built in the area which caused me to take a diversion.

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