Walking in the Pentland Hills. Susan Falconer
rel="nofollow" href="http://www.edinburghgeolsoc.org/downloads/lbgcleaflet_pentland.pdf">www.edinburghgeolsoc.org/downloads/lbgcleaflet_pentland.pdf for a leaflet about the geology of the Pentland Hills.
Cultural heritage
There is an impressive range of archaeological sites and remains in the Pentlands. These include the early Bronze Age cairn on Carnethy Hill (Walk 8), the souterrain (an underground chamber or passage) at Castlelaw (Walk 5), and forts at Clubbiedean (Walk 4), Braidwood and Lawhead (Walk 22). Other places, such as Cairns Castle (Walk 11) and the site of the Battle of Rullion Green (Walk 22), are testament to some of the area’s more turbulent times. More recently, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott have been inspired to base stories and characters on the area’s past events (see Walks 2, 4 and 28, for example).
Place names and dialect words
Place names
Today, a place name may seem merely a convenient label to attach to a location, but when it was originally applied to that place, the name must have had a particular significance. Place names can give us an insight into the past and those who populated it, and included in this book is background to some of the place names in the Pentlands.
Place names are evidence of the languages used by the succession of different peoples who lived in the Lothians. Celtic, the language of the early Iron Age British Celts, survives in Pentland names such caep, ‘pointed hill’, as in West Kip (Walk 3). The British Celts saw the Romans arrive and were largely trading allies. In the 7th century the area was conquered by the Northumbrian Angles, and Anglian is reflected in laecc, ‘boggy stream’ (Walk 5). Gaelic names appear later, around the 10th century, as a result of political change. A Pentland example is cloch mead, ‘the stone at the middle of the pass’ (Walk 4). From the 11th century to the 18th century estate and farming names began to dominate, although they often reflect earlier origins.
I have drawn heavily on Stuart Harris’s The Place Names of Edinburgh, Their Origins and History (see bibliography), and some research was undertaken by the Scottish Place-Name Society, so if this is an area of interest for you, it may be worth looking at www.spns.org.uk.
Dialect words
A number of words in the text may be unfamiliar to readers, so a brief glossary is included as Appendix C. These are local terms used for places and wildlife. The word ‘cleuch’ (or sometimes ‘cleugh’, used chiefly by map makers) is used often and means a narrow valley. ‘Bealach’ is a pass or saddle between two hills, sometimes termed a col. I have used the local phrase ‘drystane dyke’ to describe a wall built without mortar.
‘Peewit’, ‘whaup’ and ‘laverock’ (lapwing, curlew and skylark respectively) are birds you will probably encounter on a walk in the Pentlands. Personally, I like these names, and encourage their continued use.
Old maps
The British Isles are very well served in terms of maps. The practise of making maps stretches back centuries, with a variety of reasons for their production – military, land holding, legal and fiscal, and so on – and the late 19th century saw a rise in the use of maps as an aid to walking and recreation. The earliest maps referred to in this book are: Adair’s maps of Midlothian and West Midlothian, from 1682; A and M Armstrong’s Map of the Three Lothians, surveyed in 1773; Roy’s 1753 Military Survey of Scotland; Knox’s 1812 Edinburgh and Its Environs. After this the Ordnance Survey provides the basis for today’s cartography, with foundations laid by the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps from 1852 onwards.
The National Library of Scotland has an excellent digital library of maps, and their website is www.nls.uk.
Previous Pentlands guidebooks
A number of guidebooks have been written about the Pentland Hills, mainly in the last century, and they are an eclectic mix. George Reith’s The Breezy Pentlands (1910) is a lovely blend of heritage and walking routes, with humour laced throughout. Pentland Walks with Their Literary and Historical Associations (Robert Cochrane, 1908) describes a series of routes combined with cultural background and details of the literary connections of the hills (this book formed the basis of DG Moir’s Pentland Walks, Their Literary and Historical Associations, published in 1977). William Anderson’s The Pentland Hills (1926) – not written as a guidebook but as an appreciation – makes interesting reading.
Probably the best known of the Pentlands guidebooks is Will Grant’s The Call of the Pentlands (1927), and another of Grant’s books, Pentland Days and Country Ways (1934), is an anthology of stories about and reflections on the hills.
The publication of these books reflected the growing interest in walking and the countryside among ordinary people during the 20th century, as more leisure time became available and travelling became easier.
The early 1990s saw a further two Pentlands books published: The Pentlands’ Pocket Book by Albert Morris and James Bowman in 1990, and Jim Crumley’s Discovering the Pentland Hills a year later. Ian Munro’s The Birds of the Pentland Hills also makes fascinating reading, reflecting the changing weather, the character of the people, and Ian Munro’s own love of the area.
In 2014 the Friends of the Pentlands waymarked a route from Dunsyre to Swanston, called The Pentland Way. A comprehensive guide to the route, written by Bob Paterson, was published in 2015.
Literary Connections with the Pentland Hills
The Pentlands have provided inspiration for many writers, and Cochrane’s Pentland Walks with Their Literary and Historical Associations and Moir’s Pentland Walks, Their Literary and Historical Associations both describe these connections. Allan Ramsay based his pastoral comedy The Gentle Shepherd in the area around Carlops (Walks 16 and 17). Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson walked the northern Pentlands extensively, and Walk 2 covers much of the area explored by Stevenson. (The poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, both evacuated to Craiglockhart Hospital in 1917, also walked in these hills.) (See bibliography,Appendix B, for details of the above titles.)
Swanston cottage (Walk 2)
Protecting and enjoying the hills
The Pentland Hills have long been a destination for people seeking recreation in the countryside. Well over a century ago, in 1883, the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society began two years of negotiation with landowners and surveying of paths, and in 1885 inaugural signposts were erected on most Pentland paths. The society produced the first walking guidebook, with a copy presented to each Pentland landowner, and a further 300 to the Edinburgh Trades Council – for distribution among working men ‘in order that healthful enjoyment and recreation afforded by the rights of way across the hills should be better known’. The society continues its invaluable work today.
Bonaly Reservoir from Harbour Hill (Walk 4)
With improved and increased access, however, came an increase in problems – with litter, for example. In The Pentland Hills, William Anderson complained, back in 1926 ‘…there is nothing more offensive than, on arriving…to find the outflow choked with paper or cardboard boxes, and the ground littered with orange and banana skins, broken bottles, and such like’ (although his suggestion for hiding litter in molehills or under heather bushes is not acceptable now). On 24 May 1932 The Scotsman reported that the Victoria Day holiday saw thousands trekking to the hills, the lonely spaces being invaded from an early hour and traffic to Flotterstone Bridge (Walk 23) exceptionally heavy.
Recognition of the Pentlands’ role in Edinburgh’s recreation activities, and the need for protection of the hills, has been noted for decades. Letters to The Scotsman in November 1945 suggested that the Pentlands become the United Kingdom’s first national park, dedicated to the memory of those who gave their lives for their country in the Second World War. But