HUGE AND SOLID, Castle Law looms over Blairlogie protecting it from all but the very wildest northerly winds - and even from these, I suspect. She's a friendly giant although there were two occasions in the relatively recent past when she forgot herself sufficiently to let slip a rumble of rocks. The first damaged property which had been in existence for 200 untroubled years, while the second not only severely damaged a half-timbered bungalow erected a mere 12 years earlier, but threatened life and limb of those within. In both cases, the buildings were speedily abandoned, eventually demolished, and today there isn't a trace of them. It's as though they had never existed, and the space they left was turned into Blairlogie's car park.
As soon as we Blairlogie boys were trusted enough to be free of the all-seeing maternal eye and confident enough in our young muscles' ability to get us out of possible scrapes, we were off, and Castle Law and the lesser heights of Goats Craig and Pengower (to the west of Blairlogie Glen) became our playground. Here we could indulge in playing cowboys and indians on a grand scale, or just generally explore this fascinating new world. We got to know all the gullies, cracks and clefts that would allow us to scramble up to a favoured area for scree-jumping or a recently discovered cave or a stream where we could satisfy our thirst.
No matter where we might wish to go, we could get there, the only possible hindrance to progress being a sheer rockface. Such an obstacle, of course, was as naught to the climbing fraternity, although the unstable nature of most of the rock on Castle Law (it's andesitic - a mixture of lavas and ashes) meant that there were few opportunities to indulge in the sport; indeed, I know of only one. Taking the old road behind the car park and heading towards Blairlogie, turn right at the gate leading to the village and go up the steepish path. At the T-junction at the top, ahead of you and slightly to the left, is a big rockface known to the climbing trade as "Prelim-Rock" - presumably it was a good one for beginners to learn their craft. On many weekends in the summer months we would watch the anchorman at the top belay his rope then lower it to the huddle of apprentices below, and soon the surrounding hillside would reverberate to his shouted instruction and encouragement and their cries of pain or panic or both.
Those days are long gone: children can no longer scramble at will and climbing novices can no longer scale "Prelim-Rock". Why? In a word - gorse. This unpleasantly prickly shrub has colonised the slopes of Castle Law to such an extent that there are now only two or three pathways to the summit and even these are at risk of disappearing. The yellow flowers make for a bonny show in the springtime, but each one can become a seed-pod and each seed can become a bushful of prickles helping to choke all access to the hill. Oh, I know, the shepherd has a go at the stuff from time to time with sometimes spectacular results requiring the attendance of the fire brigade, but his blazing activities tend to be confined to the Menstrie end and I'm describing the condition of the hills behind Blairlogie. No, the only thing able to keep gorse under control is a goat and the village once had a lot of them.
Some of you may know that, at one time in its past, Blairlogie was a health resort. Long before Bridge of Allan's spa waters began to be commercially exploited, doctors used to advise their wealthier patients to consider a stay in Blairlogie to complete their recuperation from whatever it was that ailed them in the first place. Thanks to the farsightedness of its mid-18th century landlords (descendants of the Spittal family), many of the houses then being built were of two storeys and ideal for accommodating paying guests. In addition, the village offered fresh fruit from its extensive orchards, good and invigorating hill air and, above all, whey from the considerable herd of goats. The latter didn't belong to one person; rather, it was an aggregation of the two or three animals owned by individual households which were released on to the hill of a morning and collected in the evening to be returned to their owners for milking. The practice of keeping goats existed well before Blairlogie's fame as a health resort and lasted long after this was superseded by Bridge of Allan - I have a photo dating from the 1920s of a village couple proudly showing off their two goats. But, when we arrived in 1941, I don't think there were any left - and, by that time, the seeds of the current problem were (literally) being sown.
Sheep are pretty one-dimensional creatures: they just eat grass. But goats? They'll eat a wide range of stuff and, it would appear, the pricklier the better. A goat-owner tells me that high on the creature's list of favourite grub is the wee yellow flowers found atop gorse bushes. No flowers, no seed-pods and, therefore, no more bushes. Or no goats, lots of flowers, lots of seed-pods and, therefore, lots more bushes. It's a simple equation really and, at this rate, we'll soon have great difficulty getting on to Castle Law at all.