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Image of Great Burney (Cairn(s)) by postman

Trig pointed Great Burney brings up the rear

Image credit: Chris Bickerton
Image of Great Burney (Cairn(s)) by postman

Couldn’t pin down the second cairn, this could be it.

Image credit: Chris Bickerton

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Great Burney

22/03/2019 – We started our walk at Kirkby-in-Furness. Heading over Kirkby Moor, visiting the enclosure and cairn there. Over the high point at Lowick High Common, we dropped down to cross the A5092 to visit the two tops on Great Burney. Luckily these couple of cairns between them make for a nice bonus to the walk. After that we headed back passed Kirkby Slate quarries to our start point in Kirkby-in-Furness. A very nice day out and easy enough walking underfoot. Turbines don’t really detract (just in case you have an allergy to them). Quarry’s a bit brutal up close though.

The northerly of the two cairns marked on the OS map is in a great location. Good view all round. It’s in poor condition now. Shame as it looks to have been a good one back in the day. The cairn to the south is pretty much gone. You can just about trace the raised outline of it in the short grass.

Great Burney

As you come off the A5092 heading north towards the Giants grave cairn circle, look for some trees off to your right, beyond the trees two cairns occupy the saddle between two hills, Great Burney and Combes.
Parking is easy, get as close to the foot path as you can. Follow the wall with the trees on the other side till you get to the top.

We were having trouble finding the two cairns so Eric suggested we climb the nearest hill to get a better look round, couldn’t argue with his logic so up we went. from on top of Combes we could see the trig point on Great Burney, at 298 meters it isn’t a terribly big hill but would have even better views than the hill we were on. North from here we could see Coniston water and The Old Man, with his head in the clouds, and down below us between the two hills was a very definite cairn. We held hands and ran back down, it’s something we’ve always done, it saves time, and it’s fun.
The cairn is a pretty flat affair except for the pyramidal walkers cairn on the side of it, some cairn material can be seen of course, but not much.
From here it seemed a simple thing to find the other cairn, once you’ve anchored yourself into the landscape, but could I eckers like find it, there were several contenders and I took photos of them all and posted the two likeliest on here. But chances are it still remains unfound, by me at least.
We leave the cairns behind for more substantial sites and bigger mountains.

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