Glendevon's Maiden

Warning: This post contains photos of dead animals that some people may find upsetting.

Ohmyflippin'gods.

My body is broken.

Went into Alloa yesterday. Paul needed to pop to his bank, and I desperately needed a tuna melt and a cup of coffee at D'nisi. We followed that up with more coffee and cake!

 

Cup cake and ginger cake.
Perfect start to the day.

The plan was to head home, only the weather was spectacular: blue skies, sunshine. I had my walking boots in the back, so we decided to make for The Maiden's Well in Glendevon.

It started out as a fairly relaxed amble up a tarmac road, ending at a wooden bridge.

 

Here, I gave my first squee of delight. We found frogspawn! I haven't seen this since I was a kid. We used to collect it in jam jars and watch them turn into frogs, but it's getting rarer and rarer to find due to the destruction of the environment and use of pesticides.

This turned out to be just the beginning. Glendevon is a water valley. There are waterfalls and streams running all over it, and frogs, toads, and newts have turned it into a slippery mating ground.

Sad to see the ones that had laid in shallow puddles, because they will die when the sun evaporates the water. Most had managed to find a proper pool, though.

 

 

 We walked along the side of the reservoir towards the Maiden's Castle, an old faery mound.

 

Faery Mound Straight Ahead

En route, we passed a small waterfall, and then a large one, which we needed to cross via a bridge.

Small Fall

Large Fall

Dam by Large Fall

I've taken a short video of the larger fall. We crossed it to begin with, then ended up coming down the gully on our way back.

You can find more clips of waterfalls in an older post. The first part of the video above is taken from the top of the Maiden's Castle.

 

What is interesting is that, if you watch the video, from the top of this mound looking to the opposite bank, it appears to be flat, with a strange circular shape in the grass. However, from the man-made ridge near the forest, if you look up, you can see that there's actually a second mound opposite. You can see it in this panoramic I took.

Maiden's Castle, left. Second mound, right.
(click here to enlarge)

On the other side of the Castle is the Maiden's Well, a natural spring next to a stream. Paul spent a bit of time tidying it up, whilst I went for an amble up the track.

Maiden's Well

Paul Tidying the Well

I found a very dead sheep. Welcome to nature...

 

Paul and I spent a good ten minutes staring at a blade of grass creating a stream of tiny bubbles in a puddle. I find this equally as fascinating. Life and death right next to each other on a sunny spring day. Nice to be alive.

On the other side of the fence to the Maiden's Well is a thick pine forest. I sat on the bank watching the water for a while.

 

The opposite bank seemed far more magical, but I wasn't sure whether to cross at first.

Soft, green moss, but prickly pine needles beneath. It looked for all the world like the Witche's Hill at Castle Campbell. The same steep banks and big old boulders. Paul joined me in the woods a while later and explained that it was part of the same escarpment, and that the Witche's Hill was about a mile down the road!

It was hard work getting to the top because the damp mud below the pine needles kept giving way, and the drop was steep.

 

After the woods, we walked up the opposite bank looking for some cup and ring stones. I was a bit tired so I waited by the river, and made this unfortunate discovery.

 

Thought it might have been alive at first, but sadly not. Such as death. Not a lucky day for sheep. Still, plenty of sprightly little limmikins bouncing about the hillside. More make it than don't.

We climbed back down the waterfall and found a gorgeous green gorge. it'll be perfect for swimming in the summer, but ice-cold at the moment.

 

Also saw blankets of coltsfoot and cowslip (once represented in a cryptic crossword as: a bovine accident). Also found a funny stone which I'll call the Hare Stone, because it had a shadow like  a squatting hare. I suppose it could also be the Frog Stone, because it looks like a squatting frog from the back, plus all that frogspawn we found... might be better. 

There's a little more to this adventure, but I'll post it later.

Hare or Frog Stone