NIne Stone Rig

The Easter Holidays are here, so its time for a really fun, adventurous walk to entertain the kids & the kids inside us all. Put your boots or wellies on, by the way, cos there will be a boggy bit.

It begins at Johnscleugh – an lovely open, level green space on the winding & often windy road between Garvald & Whiteadder. Its a great place to park & even camp up overnight if you so wish.

Our walk begins by heading thro’ some gates, hopping over a little bridge & turning right along the tarmac track..

After a wee while of valley bottom floating you’ll come to a gate. You can continue through it in the direction of Spartleton, a lovely walk we’ve done almost three years ago; but for us its a right turn, a hop over the stream & an ascent to the road. Marvellous fun.

At the road turn left, head uphill a little way, then take the track in the photograph below.

You are now in shooting country – that despicable humiliation & mass murder of innocent animals branded as ‘sport’ by the same degenerate minds that thought it was OK to build empires on the ancient lands of disparate peoples across the world. The status of shooting in Scotland at the moment reminds me of when I first came to Scotland in the Naughties & was shocked to discover that female bagpipers had been banned by the patriarchy who ran bagpiping. Its the same for shooting – there’s only so many bribes, bungs & old boys’ slap on the backs before the whole house of genocidal cards comes crashing down & the vast swathes of shooting moorland in Scotland – about 15 percent of the total landmass – be used for agriculture, farming, public parks or housing – rather than for the grotesque fun of a tiny minority.

Whenever you see heather being burnt in the hills – its called muirburn – the idea is that the grouse that are shipped in Auschwitz style every summer from their nursery pens will be feeding on the green shoots from the regrowing heather. There’s also the untold suffering of thousands of animals that are trapped, snared and killed to protect grouse shooting for the pleasure of rather sick groups of individuals. The scale of the suffering for Scotland’s wildlife is simply shocking. For those interested in participating in or watching the decline of Scotland’s worst criminals, here’s a link to REVIVE, a group committed to transforming the face of Scotland for the better.

That’s my rant over, but if you do do this walk later in this year – hopefully there wont be many more years of this monstrosity of the human condition -, at least be aware of birds in the heather & if your dogs a chaser be prepared for a guy in tweed & a landrover turning up as if by magic to tell you off – its a case of ‘excuse me your dog is disturbing the birds that we want to kill with mindless abandon.’

So, back to the walk, & we’re now going to try & track down two extremely ancient sites. Follow the track for a wee while til you come to a fork. Take the right prong, pass beyond the avenue of ‘Grouse Butts’ which peel off for the right, & head for a good distance til another small avenue again peels off to the right.

Just a few meters along this new track you’ll come to the Nine Stones themselves which give a name to the ‘rig’ or open hill which slopes gently above us. The Nine Stones are a rough circle of nine low boulders a little over 6 metres across and the stones are generally under a metre tall and under two metres in length. For me this, & other stone circles, are agricultural calendars, when sunrises & moonrise, etc, dictate when to plant or harvest kindathing.

An intriguing entry taken from a Name Book of 1853 says: “A circle of nine stones. It is believed that some treasure is hidden beneath these stones and various attempts, all unsuccessful, have been made to find it.” This treasure hunting leads us to 1980, when Canmore tells us: “These stones once stood on the perimeter of a ring about 6.4m in diameter … The uneven interior suggests digging has taken place here.”

Nine Stone Rig from the air – the circle is centre left, slightly down

The two gullies in the flanks of the hill – the left hand one is in the centre of the photo, the right hand one over Grouse Butt number 9

It is now time to find our second ancient set of stones, which are a veritable stone’s throw away (if he have a Byzantine trebuchet that is). To get there involves muddying those boots if its been wet recently. If you face west you will see two small ravines in the far distant hill. At the bottom of the left one lie the Craw Stones.

To get to the stones, go back to the track & follow it for a while as it veers to the right. Then when you get to the rough point in photo below, its time to head across the heather.

After crossing Crow Moss, East Lothian’s version of Tolkien’s Dead Marshes – keep to the heather remember, they are dry – you will come to the Crow Stones. They are a little irregular for a circle, & were probably an oval, but a series of four low stones, 5ft apart diagonally, may be related to the Four-Posters of central Scotland.

It is now time to head back to Johnscleugh – if you do an about face you’ll see in the directions of the wind turbines a narrow valley in the distance, to the left of Nine Stone Rig hill. The idea is to head towards this while slowly veering left towards the ‘South Grain’. There’ll be seas of heather, bits of bogs & simply stunning open spaces, so enjoy the yomp. Then after crossing the South Grain head up the track to the white pole.

The South Grain is hidden in the grasses

It’s now time for the lollop back to the car. Up & over the hill you’ll come to another stream, over which you’ll turn immediately right & take the gentle streamside amble back to Johnscleugh – it really is a charming end to the whole, walk by the end of which you’ll be well buzzing about your trip to one the most ancient sites of East Lothian.