Willie Shand©This week Willie pays a visit to the “Bull Stane”, just a “stone’s throw” from his front door…
Just a short distance from the village of Crook of Devon, the dirt track known as the Broomy Road meets the old kirk road to the Muckle Toon of Aldie (long since abandoned). There stands a curious landmark – a large boulder that goes by the name of “The Bull Stane”.
The name may suggest it had been used for bull baiting in the past; like the one on Fife’s Leslie Green.
I don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve walked past this boulder. But each time I’ve recalled the story of how it’s now in several bits all cemented together. Originally, it was in one piece.
Along The Broomy Road.
Finding convenient stones to build field dykes is always challenging. When the local landowner decided he’d do a bit of dyke building, he had a plan. He thought he had no more to do than just blow up the Bull Stane and use the bits.
Little did he anticipate the reaction that would follow as the villagers took to protesting at his wanton destruction of a local landmark. His dyke building could wait as the powers that be ordered him to gather up all the bits and rebuild the boulder. And, like Humpty Dumpty, it couldn’t have been an easy task.
Anyway, a couple centuries on and it’s still there looking almost as Nature deposited it many thousands of years ago.
Catch up with more of Willie’s travels around Scotland in his regular blogs.
