What lies beneath the northern peatlands?
When I talk to guests about the houses people built in the North Highlands, the question of timber soon arises. Look around much of this country and there is little obvious woodland from which to select a roof beam, yet people knew where another supply might be found. Beneath the peat lay trees preserved from a much earlier landscape. Around Armadale, men went out during a light frost, looking for unfrosted outlines which could reveal buried timber. They probed with a thin iron rod before digging, splitting and carrying the wood home. Someone who knew how to read that apparently treeless ground could find part of a roof beneath it.
The wood, known as moss fir or bog fir, also supplied fuel and light, with resinous strips burned to illuminate evening work. A tree recovered from underground might help support the roof and light the room beneath it, which is a rather resourceful arrangement. Knowing what the surface conceals has a more immediate value when we are walking. On a visit to Puffin Island, I ask guests to place their feet where I place mine. One gentleman chooses another line, and his left leg disappears beyond the knee, leaving his footwear and trousers thoroughly soaked. Spare clothing back at the Land Rover allows his day to continue, although his appreciation of the ground has become considerably less theoretical.
Peat-cutters have encountered discoveries reaching much further into the past. In 1975, men working at Clayton Hill near Keiss uncovered a young man’s remains, with a woollen doublet dating from the seventeenth century. Stones laid above him indicated deliberate burial, but his identity remains unknown. The peat preserved his clothing long after the people who knew him had gone, leaving us with something tangible from a life we can no longer explain. Once you know that, looking across those apparently uneventful miles can prompt a rather unsettling question about what else remains undiscovered.
There is no reliable answer to how many people might still lie beneath the peat. The Keiss burial reveals one set of circumstances, while a recorded death near Swiney shows how losing the way in darkness could turn an ordinary journey into a tragedy. I understand how uncertainty like that gives the imagination plenty to work upon, particularly as daylight fades and familiar shapes become harder to distinguish. In the audio blogcast, we follow that journey home near Swiney, then encounter a local second-sight tale from the road between Reay and Melvich.
To learn more, listen to the blogcast or book one of our North Coast Explorer private tours.