Colzium Hill

It looks like the strip wood NT0757 : Strip wood, Birny Knowe has been felled. Harperrig Reservoir can be seen to the top left.

The Wolf Craigs are a group of small outcrops by the upper reaches of the Baddinsgill Burn.

I followed the course of this burn for about a mile. Not only is it quite picturesque in places, the going is fairly easy - certainly in comparison to a lot of the open country round here. West Burn joins with Mid Burn just downstream of here. After another unnamed burn to the West (following the naming pattern round here it should really be called Wester, or Westmost Burn) joins the flow it takes on its more famous name - Water of Leith - shortly before it enters Harperrig Reservoir, which starts around a mile North of this spot. The name 'Colzium', to me anyway, always has a rather ancient and menacing feel to it. Maybe it is because it contains the letter 'z'; it gives it an almost biblical importance. I have my doubts as to whether the origin of the name can really be the one which all online sources confidently suggest. Whilst the internet is a wonderful thing, this might be one of those instances in which one theory has just been copied and pasted by everybody since. Apparently it is a corruption of the old Gaelic word 'cuingleum' which is said to have meant 'gorge leap', which presumably means that in order to cross it you had to take a running jump over the water below. My arguments against are: (1) This is quite a big change in spelling/pronunciation over time. Spelling, however, varied enormously when literacy levels were low and there was no standardisation, so I am prepared to accept this might be wrong. (2) It seems too small a watercourse to have such a feature. I will at some point follow its course further though, to hunt out the supposed gorge. (3) Gaelic was rarely ever spoken round here. It may be relevant that there is a more famous 'Colzium' in North Lanarkshire which maybe does have a narrow gorge nearby. And Gaelic was spoken there to a certain degree at various points I believe. Online sources also differ in their guides to pronouncing it. These days - with this Colzium anyway - I have only ever heard it spoken as Coll-Zee-Um, with the stress on the first syllable.

Craigengar is much less visited than the distant hills closer to Edinburgh. One of several cairns on its summit plateau is visible here.

Another shower is sweeping in on a changeable day of weather.

A twentieth birthday somewhere. The "2" balloon deflated and brought down the heart and "0" right in front of me. I tied the two surviving balloons to my pack for amusement on the way out. What is not funny is the litter and the waste of helium. It ends up in space and there is only so much down here on Earth. What there is is thanks to radioactive decay of thorium and uranium - it is spent alpha particles.

View towards Muckle Knock.

View towards Craigengar.

The south (Baddinsgill side).

A shower of rain and hail is passing through.

A relatively featureless hillside in the quieter end of the Pentland Hills.

Very much the open heather moorland of the wilder part of the SW area of the Pentland Hills between West Cairn Hill, Byrehope Mount and Craigengar.

The boundary between Scottish Borders and South Lanarkshire on the moorland ridge.

On a rather brighter day than my last visit in 2009: NT0956 : Old cairn on Colzium Hill. The black dot R of the cairn is a meadow pipit in flight.

Rough going to reach the cairn from any direction as the ground is either heathery, boggy, tussocky or sown with semi-hidden stones and small outcrops. Enjoy the trip!

I was searching for the 'Ewe and Lamb' marked in this area, expecting to see gritstone outcrops rivalling a Henry Moore sculpture, but nothing very obvious was in sight. West Cairn Hill is in the background.

I was searching for the 'Ewe and Lamb' marked in this area, expecting to see gritstone outcrops rivalling a Henry Moore sculpture, but nothing very obvious was in sight apart from these two modest boulders near the place marked. There are much more striking outcrops up on the ridge nearer West Cairn, but perhaps the name on the map here has some local story attached. Maybe the Ewe and Lamb are elsewhere, but not much else was evident.

On the moorland south of West Cairn Hill.