The Signpost

I like this signpost. It stands just off the track which leads from the council offices at Drummuie to Loch Lunndaidh and it gives a clear choice of direction....

....left to Culmaily, straight on to the loch, and back the way to Golspie. I like it because it's made of wood, and because it gives its distances in the old currency, and for the way its bearded lichen prove that the air that washes around it is beautifully clean. I also like it because whoever raised it didn't seem to worry too much about how many people might avail themselves of its information: very few people pass this way, perhaps three or four on a busy day, and few of them, because most live locally, need its information.

The only thing I don't like about it is that it seems lopsided. For the sake of symmetry, it should have had a fourth arm pointing to the right. Of course it would have been a waste of wood to add an arm that showed no destination, though many of us go through life without feeling the need for one. However....

....the last time I was up there I checked to see if there was a path going to the right - and found one. It's very ill-defined, and obviously rarely used, but the men who planted the conifers left it clear, which they wouldn't have done had they not been told to.

So where does it go? For some time I had no idea because, sadly, by the time I reach the signpost on my walks I've managed about as far as I can go, so I haven't been able to explore it; and the OS map shows no track and no potential destination, except some prehistoric hut circles. Yet purpose it must have had.

Then a man whom I met upon one of these walks offered a suggestion: it's a drove road, one of the ancient ways along which cattle were driven to market in places like Falkirk. Old maps do show a drove road running close to the coast of Sutherland but they're too vague to prove that this is it - but, I like the idea.