Lots to see on your daily ‘lockdown’ walks
Milton Bog
So where have you been walking on your daily hour of exercise? I’ve been doing a series of circuits slowly moving round Stirling hour by hour, day by day.
The other day I went from the Rotunda at the National Trust Bannockburn Centre down to Chartershall and then back to Milton along the lade which is fed from the Bannock Burn. Of course that name Milton (mill town) is connected to the lade which re-joins the burn just after the Milton Ford.
Anyway, this was the first time I had ever got up close and personal to the former Milton Bog which along with Halberts Bog acted to defend the
Scots right flank on day one of the Battle of Bannockburn. Certainly from the bog it was very easy to imagine the charging English vanguard heading towards the Scots’position and it’s a cracking wee walk.
But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about. When the bog was drained in the 19th century there was a wee surprise: the world’s oldest curling stone dating from when James IV was on the throne.
Now you can normally see this in the Smith Museum but of course it’s closed at the moment but you can always Google it.
On the side you can’t see, the stone is inscribed as a gift, but from whom? Today we are all lucky enough to have The PEAK and can curl indoors but in the past you had to curl outdoors and of course there was always the risk that a stone disappeared through the ice into the bog below!
Can you imagine this happening more than 500 years ago to this stone. Can you see the guy’s purple face slowly realising that his gift was gone for good and that no amount of swearing would bring it back!