Colganology2: Scotland

What better way to spend my final day in Scotland than by driving up the side of a mountain?

The South Chesthill Estate gamekeeper, a splendid chap called Ainster, offered to take us up there in his Argo eight wheeler and how could we refuse?

It was quite the trip but worth it for the views alone.

Our destination was a freshwater spring-fed loch called Lochan Creag a' Mhadaidh. It's kept stocked with brown trout but few were biting today. Ainster reckons that the cold spell has retarded insect hatchings - certainly the Mayflies have yet to swarm - so the fish aren't as big or as hungry as they should be at this time of year. Meanwhile, I wonder how he recognised a 'cold spell' - we were up so high that there was a small amount of snow lying around.

Up in the hills above Glen Lyon you'll also find the Tigh Na Cailleach (House of the hag) It's a kind of drystone shrine, thatched with rushes and decorated with some of those amazing river-carved stones that you see on local gateposts. The largest stone is known as the Cailleach, or 'hag'. The next largest is called the Bodach or 'old man' and the third and smallest is the Nighean or 'daughter'.It is thought to be an ancient shrine to the cult of the Mother Goddess. Each spring the 'family' are brought out of their house, and each October they are returned for the winter before Samhain - a tradition that has been going on certainly for hundreds of years, but possibly even thousands. Legend has is that the Cailleach gives birth to a new child every hundred years. Writing in 1888, Duncan Campbell said that there were 12 stones, although this may have been said to give the site a Christian spin, associating it with a St Meuran (probably St Mirin) and his eleven disciples. Today there are 7 stones in total.

After a slow and uncomfortable (if scenic) return down the mountainside we said our goodbyes to Chesthill House, which had been our home for the week. It really is a grand place. And we discovered that Benedict Cumberbatch and family rented it over Christmas, along with his parents. Learning that his mother Wanda Ventham - who I very much had eyes for in my teen years when she starred in Gerry Anderson's UFO - had been sleeping in the same room I was in gave me some small amount of nerdy excitement.