I go walking a lot in various parts of Scotland, especially the more mountainous and hilly bits, and I have a secret about this that that I don’t tell many people; I’m fascinated by aircraft crash wreckage that you find surprisingly often in these sorts of places. I’ve written in detail about this here.
It is a bit morbid and definitely a niche pursuit, but I find it fascinating. I’m convinced also that collecting information on the Scottish sites would be of interest to many people, especially hillwalkers. There are a few books and websites about that cover this sort of thing, but I don’t think any of them are really the sort of thing I really envisage, so I think there’s a gap in the market here.
I’ve actually tried to convince some publishers of the value in developing such a book, but perhaps not surprisingly they see no market for it. However last year, a book called ‘Hostile Habitats‘ was published by the SMT. This book contains information about the impact of humans on the Scottish mountain environment, and includes things like the remains of bronze age settlements and medieval farming. It mentions aircraft wreck sites briefly, but doesn’t go into detail.
So potentially, a future expanded version of this book might be an ideal candidate; I hope that some of my photographs and collected information could be used so I’m going to try and get the SMT interested.
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