Chapman's Graves Today

The Chapmen's Graves in the Kilsyth hills.

"A Chapman or packman was an itinerant trader who would visit householders selling wares or services and, in the days before supermarkets, they were hugely important to the running of households.

The route is known as the Chapman's Road because the graves of two Chapmen or pedlars are located to the west of the summit of Tomtain.

The story goes that one of the two Chapmen murdered the other and was later executed and buried next to his victim. This may be true, but interestingly it does follow a trend of stories where Packmen or Chapmen are murdered. In any case, it certainly implies that this path was used by traders.

It is not clear why Chapmen would be using a route parallel to the Tak Ma Doon but it may be because they were trying to visit all of the hill farms to sell their wares. The Tak Ma Doon is also a very old road linking Stirling with Kilsyth and this may have been tolled at one time but there is no evidence of tolls on the Tak Ma Doon road so far."

Back at the vice

Been tying up some claret dabbler type flies I like.

The trout quite like them too.

Up The Hills

Went for a wee walk up the hills on Sunday 25th October

Hitting the high road.

The glade.

Twin trees ;-)

Lovely.

Twas a bit dreich but found a nice wee spot ;-)

Good Day on The Carron Dam

Good day up the Carron Dam today with Billy and Nigel. No blanks, stacks of browns, a few rainbows and quite a few misses. 

Billy out fished me and Nige by a long shot taking about 20 browns and 3 bows on quite a hard day with an East Wind to boot.

Big change in the weather over the last couple of days and we were glad to get in at five p.m. after 8 hours on the water as it was getting pretty nippy.

Tomtain Hill Kilsyth

Went for a walk up Tomtain hill today. Took the Yugoslavian Army Cookset and Canteen I bought last week to give it a wee try. Well impressed.

Lovely views

Started my walk about 6 o'clock and got back down to the road about 9.15 p.m. after messing about for about an hour and a half making dinner (that's the moon top deadcentre in the photae ). Nearly got knocked down by the local constabulary who were on the lookout for poachers about two minutes after taking this shot but learned some very interesting information about a wee loch I used to fish from them ;-)

Wee video of the cookset in action