Loch Tay - The Old Village of Lawers

The Lawers Hotel is on the North side of Loch Tay and it was here we parked to go off in search of the old village of Lawers. A sign in the car park states that hillwalkers are welcome to park provided they spend some money in the hotel upon return so assuming this also applied to Geocachers we got our boots on and went for a walk.

The first cache here Melting Mouths ~ Lawers isn't very far at all, in fact it just outside the car park next to the road to Kenmore. This was soon found and replaced and we set off again to find the old village.

From the road, a farm track leads down towards the Loch and it's at the very foot of this at the waters edge where the village was. It wasn't until we were actually on the track that we realised quite how far it was to the loch and how far down. The going was pretty steep and after a week of walking activity we were suffering (and not looking forward to the return journey).

The village is today completely ruinous and has mostly been so for many years, however the last inhabitant moved away as recently as 1927. It was featured on an episode of Weir's Way, when the intrepid Scottish explorer told tales of the Lady of Lawers. The Lady (or Baintigheam Labhuir) was a sooth sayer in the late 17th century and made many fairly specific prophecies which came true (albeit some took a long time to do so!).

The first cache we looked for within the village was Weir's Way: Lady of Lawers but although we were pretty certain about the location of this cache it was nowhere to be seen. We were fairly disappointed by this as we've found an other in the Weirs Way series of caches and it contained a DVD containing an episode of the old TV programme.

The other cache in the village Old Village of Lawers is at the opposite end and so we enjoyed a wander through the village. The details of the first cache claim that the village hasn't changed much in the past 30 years, however the state of the buildings is deteriorating rapidly and a number of gable walls have collapsed over the past few years. This was why when we eventually found the next cache we were so horrified. After a short search I spotted something inside the walls of one of the buildings right where the coordinates were pointing. A closer look revealed the cache, however it was a large tub and there appeared to be no way to extract it without dismantling the wall. We did so with care and carefully replaced the stones afterwards, however the potential for causing serious damage here is enormous. This is the reason the Geocaching.com rules state that caches are not allowed in dry stone walls.

After a long plod back up the hill we visited the hotel. A round of hot chocolate soon had us heated up and the log fire helped too.