For one cannot run the wheels back upon the tracks of life, nor again be two-and-twenty, and out on the hills (Dark o the Moon)

And so, this year our Crocketteering adventure took place away from the Dungeon hills but nevertheless, in the heart of Crockett country. Like all good adventures, we started out looking for one thing and found something entirely different!

In trying to place the Levellers Camp from The Dark o’ the Moon we caught sight of the back view of Little Duchrae. More pictures HERE. In Crockett’s day Little Duchrae was a single story building. I’ve only seen it as double story, and only from the front aspect. So it was pretty interesting (to me) to see it from the back. Essentially, we got access to the views Crockett would have seen and the landscape he played in as a boy living there.

I got pretty excited about the trees. I wanted to find the tree from ‘Love Among the Beeches’ but I can’t say I did. The trees we found mostly seemed to be oaks. I know that trees grow and fall over 165 years. So I know that most of these trees will not have looked the same to him. But it felt like a connection nonetheless. Taking a combination of my own and Crockett’s imaginations it wasn’t hard to breathe life into many of the descriptions he gives of life around Little Duchrae in all its fictional outpourings.

Over the last 10 years I’ve made an effort to travel through Galloway looking for the places and landscapes Crockett which I have only experienced from my armchair. It’s been a great adventure. First was Little Duchrae, Grenoch Loch and the Black Water o’ Dee, Back Hill o’ the Bush, then further afield to Glenhead, then Loch Enoch and now, full circle via the Levellers Camp to the back of Little Duchrae (Duchrae Bank Woods). There are many other places I’ve been of course: The Memorial at Laurieston, The Grave at Balmaghie, Castle Douglas, Threave and Mossdale to name but a few. There are some places still to be explored – more of the Dungeon Hills (unlikely) and Earlstoun (more likely) – but its been wonderful to have seen so much of Crockett country in the last 10 years. It’s something I never thought I’d do. I’m only sorry it took being in exile from Galloway to make me start (and continue) the adventure into the history and romance of Crockett country.

Ten years after the Galloway Raiders adventure began, I reflect that ‘Crocketteering’ isn’t just about reading. I have found that my love of Crockett’s work continues to provide me with adventures into the history and natural beauty which embody ‘Grey Galloway’. I’ve connected with lots of amazing people over the last decade but in the end it’s the landscape which always steals the show.

We went, we saw, we think we found it! 
In follow up to this post this year’s Galloway Raiders 'birthday' trip (24th September) saw us go in search of Duchrae Bank Woods and the ‘Levellers/Roman Camp’ which is mentioned in The Dark o’ the Moon and Raiderland.

Here’s what we went looking for, described by Crockett:

You might play hide-and-seek about the Camp, which (though marked ‘probably Roman’ in the Survey Map) is no Roman camp at all, but instead only the last fortification of the Levellers in Galloway— those brave but benighted cottiers and crofters who rose in belated rebellion because the lairds shut them out from their poor moorland pasturages and peat-mosses.
Their story is told in that more recent supplement to ‘The Raiders’ entitled ‘The Dark o' the Moon.’ There the record of their deliberations and exploits is in the main truthfully enough given, and the fact is undoubted that they finished their course within their entrenched camp upon the Duchrae bank, defying the king's troops with their home-made pikes and rusty old Covenanting swords.

I’m still not sure if we actually found it (there’s more pictures HERE of what we think is the area) BUT we did come across the back of Little Duchrae on our walk. The excitement then was to experience Crockett’s childhood playground – while the trees may be newer, and/or certainly bigger if they date from 165 years ago – the views, especially the distant views, evoke the sights he grew up with from birth. And that, for me, was pretty exciting.

The following description from Raiderland/Dark o’ the Moon suggests that you can see it from Hollan Isle. I can neither confirm nor deny this, but we used that as a bearing from which to try and reach what we think is the ‘spot’.

'over the trees and hazel bushes of the Hollan Isle… [there is] a view of the entire defences of the Levellers and of the way by which most of them escaped across the fords of the Dee Water, before the final assault by the king's forces.
‘The situation was naturally a strong one—that is, if, as was at the time most likely, it had to be attacked solely by cavalry, or by an irregular force acting without artillery.
‘In front the Grennoch Lane, still and deep with a bottom of treacherous mud swamps, encircled it to the north, while behind was a good mile of broken ground, with frequent marshes and moss-hags. Save where the top of the camp mound was cleared to admit of the scant brushwood tents of the Levellers, the whole position was further covered and defended by a perfect jungle of bramble, whin, thorn, sloe, and hazel, through which paths had been opened in all directions to the best positions of defence.’ (Dark o’the Moon)
Such about the year 1723 was the place where the poor, brave, ignorant cottiers of Galloway made their last stand against the edict which (doubtless in the interests of social progress and the new order of things) drove them from their hillside holdings, their trim patches of cleared land, their scanty rigs of corn high in lirks of the mountain, or in blind ‘hopes’ still more sheltered from the blast.'

[NB Dark o the Moon is set in 1724 as the Levellers last stand happened then at the end of the period of unrest]


Whether we found it or not, we did in our adventure, come across the back view of Little Duchrae. But that’s another story (with pictures, coming soon.) 
Looks like the Levellers got here before us! (ha ha)