Wednesday Walk - Edin's Hall Broch - a prehistoric hillfort in the Borders of Scotland

I was out for a walk at lunchtime today - but forgot to take photos - doh ! So today I'm drawing on a walk my wife and I did last summer for todays wednesday walk post. We took a hike up into the hills to visit Edin's Hall Broch, which is basically an ancient village from around the iron age - between 2,500 and ,1500 years old !

In Scotland, the word Broch is quite generic but refers to stone built settlements built thousands of years ago. As far as brochs go, I have to say this was by far the largest one I have ever visited.

The walk was probably around a 5-6 mile round trip, through the gentle rolling hills in the Borders of Scotland, across farmland. The broch itself is situated on a remote hillside - not very high, but not close to any roads.

The weather was gorgeous when we went - and we really enjoyed the walk. In the picture above we are beginning to get close to the broch, and you can just make out the circular rings of where walls and buildings used to be.

The information board above gives an idea of what it may have been like in its time - with a number of small buildings sheltered within the protection of some nested walls. In the bottom right you can see an aerial view - and it covers quite a lot of area. Most of the brochs I have visited are only around a quarter of the size (or smaller).

The pic above gives an idea of the size of one of the larger enclosures. They were expert builders considering they were simply building with whatever shape of stone they could find. You can clearly see the walls have withstood the test of time, and the outer edges are neat and well structured.

Above is one of the smaller buildings - and could have been used for anything from a dwelling, to storage or for keeping animals.

Brochs are generally always constructed in circular form. You rarely see straight walls or corners, although they do exists on some and probably goes some way to explain how developed their setting out skills were (or were not).

And it the pic above you can see that some of the stones are pretty large. And they would have had to have found them, then got them up the side of this hill and then used them for building. That would have been one heck of an effort back on those days - they must have been hardy people !

It was a shame because we didnt spend as much time at the settlement as I would have liked. There was a herd of cows about half a mile away, in the same field, and my wife has a mortal fear of cows ! So she was keen for us to look round quickly and then get away from the demon cows that were going to murder us both !

Well, it certainly was an enjoyable trip. We saw some unique ancient Scottish history, we had a lovely walk in the sunshine - and we didnt get eaten by the cows !

We'll definitely make it back here again - as it was worth it for the beautiful walk alone !

All the best from Scotland - I hope you are all having a great wednesday !