After a good look round the Iron Age cairn we squelched to the north of the small hill to climb Sidhean from the north west. Just a short steepish climb to some glorious views of one of my favourite places.
Obviously from the car park follow the previous directions and have a look at the wee cairns. Also look in the middle of the fort/enclosure and find a circular object that looks like a hut circle. Could this be Johnnie Blair's garden?
Next its to the west and two more cairns in this fantastic prehistoric valley.
Sat at the eastern end of Glen Banchor, one of my favourite places on earth, is the delightfully named Sidhean Mor Dail A’ Chaorainn (The fairy knoll of the glen of the Rowan trees). How could you resist that?
Marked on the OS map as a fort, Canmore has it as a “Palisaded Enclosure”.
The remains of the palisade trenches are faint but visible as lumps ‘n bumps in the heather. The tennis court sized level top is featureless apart from a circular turf enclosure that Canmore ascribes no great age.
The best reason to visit this site is of course the views, which are spectacular in all directions. It’s also relatively easily to reach, just take the Glen road out of Newtonmore, there are a couple of car parks at the top of the glen. Leaving the car park continue along the road till you cross the bridge over the Allt a’ Chaorainn then turn right and follow the burn up to the site visible in front of you.
Moving up from the cairn, on the way to the fort, we climbed over the small hill to the west of Sidhean and squelched through a small bog to a fence over which the cairn is situated. This Iron Age cairn, first I've seen specifically called that, is almost 4m square with stones clearly marking the corners.
The main views are south west, looking down Glen Banchor towards the River Calder. Beautiful views!
From the car park, at the road's end, we continued over the Allt A Chaorainn burn and took the track , heading north, which heads straight to the fort/enclosure.
About 3/4s of a mile up there is a small cairn just to the west of the path.
Sitting at just over 3m in width and 0.3m in height the cairn has impressive views of all the surrounding mountains, rivers and other prehistoric monuments. Several kerbs remain in place despite the site being slightly houked.
Difficult to spot, find the area that looks like a large platform area, the cairn is about 100 metres south.