Robert Burns lived and worked in Irvine in 1781-1782. During this time he worked in a Heckling Shop on the Glasgow Vennel (in Irvine Town centre) dressing flax. This involved removing the straw from the fibres, with heckling being the final and most important stage in the process where the fibres would be pulled through heckle combs to split and polish them. Burns lived at number 4 on the Glasgow Vennel and in his time in Irvine formed a friendship with a Captain Richard Brown. Burns and Brown would go walking in Eglinton Woods and on one occasion, which is famously recorded in a letter from Burns to Brown, Brown suggested that Burns should send some of his work to a magazine. This was the spark of encouragement which led Burns to become a Poet and the rest as they say, is history.
The Drukken Steps were stepping stones across the Red Burn in the old Eglinton Woods (behind the Knadgerhill Cemetery in Irvine) where Burns and Brown once walked. The steps are no longer there but a modern bridge crossing the burn is close to the original location. Their name is said to come from the way those crossing appeared when negotiating the steps, drunken!
The cache aptly named Drukken Steps is close to the modern bridge and lies in the old woods just off the path. The clue given was really clear and the coordinates bang on target, however this still took me a while to find. In the end it was exactly where I'd been, I'd just not looked hard enough. Cache found, I stamped the log (yes stamped! I was given a Super Collectors stamp on my 40th birthday!) and left a Burns Geocoin which we've had for quite a while now. This cache seemed like an appropriate place to drop it off.
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