Saturday 23.04.2011

Kept glancing out of the window at work this morning hoping the cloud would clear from the top of Bennachie which it duly had done by one-ish when Dog and I were driving over there.
Still hazy but really mild, almost close in the woods but with a welcome breeze above the tree line and even a few drops of rain. Swathes of blaeberry plants between the trees, the leaves bright green and the flowers beginning to come.

Having mentioned to friends last night that there never seem to be many people on the hill it was really quite busy today which was good to see and Dog was delighted to meet a few more of her own kind than usual - provided they didn`t want the particularly large stick she`d found.
Stopped to study the info about the fort on Mither Tap which I`ve never really done before.

One of those friends last night remarked that it`s the social history of Bennachie that`s as interesting as anything - who`s lived there, when and what happened to them:
"From 1800 to 1859 common land on the east side of Bennachie was home to a community of squatters known locally as the Colony.[4] A small number of families led a Crofting life often doing skilled work, such as dyking and quarrying, for local landowners. After 1859 the Colony dwindled as the common land was broken up and divided amongst the local estates. However, the last of the original colonists, George Esson, lived on the hill until his death in the 1930s." (Wikipedia)


There have even been two plane crashes on the hill at points in its history:
"Both were RAF planes, the first was a Wallace bi-plane fitted out to tow targets that was being moved from one base to another but was flying too low when it crashed, ironically on the day that war broke out in 1939. The Wallace was an aluminium framed cloth covered design so there isn't much left to see other than struts.
The second plane was a Meteor jet which hit the summit of the hill during a low flying exercise in bad weather some time in the early 1950's. Going at somewhere in the region of 500mph the jet must have dug a big hole in the peat before exploding so that bits of wreckage can be found over 1/4 mile apart. Most of it was buried where it lay by the RAF but there are still big bits to be seen including a large piece of the starboard wing."

Raining more steadily by the time we got back in the car so we timed it well - and hot cross buns* for tea.

*I`m with Elizabeth David who said you don`t need to faff around with pastry crosses provided you just mark the cross on the buns before you bake them - it`s the gesture that counts, although she may not have used the word `faff`.