Exploring the abandoned bunker

WARNING: Even by my standards, climbing into a disused, 50 year old flooded underground structure in the remote countryside is a really dangerous idea. But you're probably going to do it anyway, so here's the rules. Never do it alone, always have someone at the top, bring a rope, phone, torch and appropriate footwear, and make sure your tetanus jabs are up to date !

This picture shows a little bit of history hidden away - and one I've been meaning to explore for ages ! In some remote woodland outside my village is a fenced off clearing, where there are three tiny structures. Two are no bigger than a tree stump, and the third looks the size of a sheep trough form a distance. This is a place that was designed to be difficult to find - and also it's a bit of local history you may find near you !

Exploring the shoreline

Last year I went with my family on holiday for a few days on the west coast of England, which is a small country to the south of Scotland. It was a quiet spot, but it was next to the beach and as I live about as far away from the sea as it is possible to get in Scotland, I was hoping to go beach combing and to look at the wildlife.

This year I was back there again for four nights - but this time I had an expert guide in Sophie Bagshaw, who is a pretty cool naturalist herself. We spent most of that time on or near the beach - and this is what I learned and found !

Nine great activity ideas for the summer

Summer's here: my school broke up yesterday! (Scottish schools break up before those in the small country to the south of Scotland). I've got a lot of stuff planned for this summer, and I'll blog about those later in the holidays

If you are ever bored and looking for something to do, I have nine great ideas that I'm going to share with you. I have done all of these and they are great fun ways get out with your family during the summer. So here they are....

What do I see on my daily walk ?

For the last couple of years there's a walk I try and do every day, sometimes twice a day, in winter and summer. It's a popular walk, about three miles long, and you often see other people and joggers out, as well as all the farm and estate vehicles.  So you wouldn't expect to see much wildlife there - or would you ?

When I'm out, I see all sorts from new born lambs to field mice. The walk has loads of trees beside the path that hosts all kinds of animals. I often see red kites or buzzards gliding, stoats, squirrels and deer - and maybe even a kingfisher ! Read on to find out more.

Braco 200: The deserted sawmill

This will be one of a series of posts this year that I will be writing for the history of my village which was founded 200 years ago this year. And I know it's not a great idea for child bloggers to list the place where they live, but it's been mentioned in pretty much every newspaper article about me ever, so it's no great secret.

In my village there is a great walk along farm tracks through one of the big estates near my village. I walk there most days, often first thing in the morning before school or last thing at night to see animals like roe deer, red kite and salmon. Although a lot of people in the village use that walk, only a few know that just a few metres from the track is an amazing old building hidden from view.

Water mills were quite common in the area about 150 years ago, and the force of the water was use to drive something, like a mechanical wood saw or a grain grinder. This building is mostly destroyed, with no roof left, but the huge water wheel remains, half visible. Here is what I found.

Braco 200: The legend of the Roman tunnel

This will be one of a series of posts this year that I will be writing for the history of my village which was founded 200 years ago this year. And I know it's not a great idea for child bloggers to list the place where they live, but it's been mentioned in pretty much every newspaper article about me ever, so it's no great secret.

Just outside my village, there is one of the best preserved Roman forts in Scotland. Most other Roman forts in Britain have been ploughed over , but at the Ardoch fort you can see all the old defensive earthworks, some of the edges of where buildings were, as well as lookout posts a few miles away from it in every direction. I'll write more about the history of the fort, but for now I want to tell you about the story of the legend of the Roman tunnel, the hidden treasure, and the discovery I made !

The 19-year, 1,700 mile mystery

One of the things that I have learned while being a bone collector is how much you can sometimes learn about an animals life even from a single bone. You can tell if it died old (bones get slightly lighter in old age, and extra fusion occurs) or young, if it was healthy or if it had any injuries, and sometimes whether it was male or female (sometimes from the size or muscle attachments).

I had to put these skills to the test last week when me and my friend Jacob found a very unusual bone a 150 year old ice house. I have blogged about finding cool bones here but none quite as interesting as the one I found last week - or with as much information about the animal they came from !

Exploring the history of old farmhouses

There are dozens of old houses near where I live. I have written before about some of them, like the deserted castle and the ruined mansion. Most of the abandoned houses were used by farmers or shepherds 100 years ago. Nowadays less farms are needed because machinery like tractors, combine harvesters and quad bikes makes it easier to run a bigger farm so not as many farmhouses are needed any more.

All of these old houses are on land owned by Blackford farms, which is owned by Mr Al Tajir, Scotland's richest man. He hardly ever sells houses on his land, even if people want to buy them, so they gradually rot away. I think it's important that someone records and remembers these old houses, because a lot won't be there by the time I grow up. I try and visit every old house I find, and dad sometimes takes photographs to record them. (His photographs are the black and white ones.) Read on to find out what I discovered that was really amazing from 150 years ago !

The plane, the house, the mystery, and the fox cub

I'm not able to go on bone-collecting walks for at least another five weeks since I broke my leg, but this post is about the last walk I did before I broke my leg. It was on a weekday after school, and in the Haggis Woods (where we did this post last year). The Haggis Woods are a long strip of woods which slope uphill with the A9 road at the bottom of them.

I hadn't been there since last year, but I knew there would be roe deer there. Apart from that, I didn't know what we were going to find, but the end we found somewhere interesting to explore, found a mystery, and got a big shock !

Exploring the WWII bunkers on Sheriffmuir

This is a slightly different post and it's about things from World War II so I thought the best day to write about it was Remembrance Sunday. Remembrance Day happens on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and Remembrance Sunday is held on the second Sunday in November which are the same day this year. It is the anniversary of the end of World War I but on this day we remember the soldiers that have died in all wars.

On a moor called Sheriffmuir near my house there is a big secret from World War II that not many people know about, even the ones who live here. Hidden on the moors are bunkers and walls that were built in 1943, not to defend anything but to practice for one of the most important events of World War II, the D-Day landings when the Allied forces attacked France to force the Germans out of there. The Germans had built big fortifications along the beaches, and the Allies had to practice how to break through them.

Researching Ardoch House at RCAHMS

Two weeks ago I wrote about Ardoch House, which was an old country house in my village which was built over 200 years ago but which vanished in the mid 1980s. A man called Mr Forbes from Canada had emailed me telling me about the house, how he explored it in the 1980s and how an old ancestor of his used to work there.

I did a lot of research online, and one of the websites I used was the Canmore database which is run by RCAHMS who are the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historial Monuments  of Scotland. They keep all the records of old buildings, some of which you can see online but some of which you have to  go to their offices in Edinburgh to see.  About a month ago, during the summer holidays, I went with dad to see the photos they had of Ardoch House.

Where did Ardoch House go ?

This is the story not about bones but about looking for an old historical building near my village.

It began with an email I got in April. It was from a man called David Forbes who lives in Canada but who used to have relatives in Braco which is the village where I live. He emailed me because he found my blog post about the ice houses on the Ardoch Estate. He told me that he used to have a relative who was a housemaid at Ardoch House over 100 years ago, and that when he came to Scotland in 1984 he visited the old Ardoch House which was now derelict. But he visited again in 1989 and it wasn't there any more !

This is the photograph he took in 1984:

The mystery cross, a fox, a kestrel and a castle

This is a story about a walk a had a few weeks ago which I went to check out something strange near my house I'd seen on the satellite pictures on Google Maps. But it was such a great walk that I saw tons more so I'm going to write about all of it.

I use Google Maps a lot on the iPad to look at new places to walk and explore near my house. I wrote about it here. Google Maps is good for finding new woods and old buildings, but it doesn't have contour lines so you need a map as well. Here is what I found and wanted to explore.

Exploring the deserted castle

Last weekend, I went to explore a derelict castle which is a few miles from my house. Dad had read about it on one of the historic building registers, but it is well hidden, and we had to get permission to visit it. 

It was an amazing find because it is absolutely massive with loads of rooms, towers, servants quarters and even a chapel.

From the outside it looks amazing, just like you would expect a castle to look like. It almost looks lived in. This is how it looks from the north west corner.

A waterfall, a watermill and a brand new wood

Around my house there are about a dozen woods that I have explored already, and this year I want to find new woods to explore. Last Saturday night Dad looked on a map and found a new wood that he thought would be good to explore. We had a good time exploring it last Sunday and found three new skulls and then on Sunday night Dad heard out about something amazing that would be worth exploring, so we went back again today. This post is about those two walks and what we found.

Finding great bones in old ice houses

I was going to write about something else this week, but I had a really good walk yesterday and found some great new bones.

In the village where I live there used to be a big country mansion called Ardoch House in the woods which I call the Pheasant Woods which was built in the early 1700s. It was knocked down about 30 years ago but you can still walk round where it used to be. The house was built before there was electricity or freezers so they used ice houses to keep ice in. Ice house are built near lakes or lochs, and in winter ice was taken from the lake and stored.

Yesterday me and dad were walking through the old estate and we decided to explore the old icehouses and I made some amazing finds.

Exploring the ruined mansion

There are tons of old empty buildings where I live. Some of them haven't been empty for long, and still have the roofs on. Some have been empty for hundreds of years and have mostly fallen down. I've been exploring old buildings for as long as I have been collecting bones.

In March, Dad and I spotted an old building in a wood that we hadn't explored before. We looked at satellite photographs and it looked as if it was derelict. One afternoon, in the middle of a snowstorm, we went up to explore. We found a massive deserted mansion that had fallen down. This is what it looked like: