Posted by & filed under Military/Aircraft, Mountains & hills, August 19 2008.

Last weekend I travelled to Assynt in the far north-west of Scotland to climb the summits of Conival and Ben More Assynt and to look for the remains of an Avro Anson that crashed in the area in 1941. On the saturday evening I walked into the mountains from Inchnadamph and I had blue skies, the warmth of the setting sun and a breeze to keep the midges away.

I camped north of the two summits, in a high and wild location near Loch nan Cuaran, but the weather deteriorated during the night and in the morning my campsite was experiencing strong winds and mist.

I found the air wreck site despite the thick mist and managed to take some photos of it in breaks in the mist cover (you can see these on my website here). The site lies at an altitude of about 650m on a secretive flat moorland plateau 3km north of the summits of Conival and Ben More Assynt.

The 6 airmen who died in this crash are buried at the wreck site, making this only one of two in Scotland which are war graves (the other one is in the Lammermuir Hills just south of Edinburgh, see here). The site is marked by a cairn, memorial plaque containing the names of the airmen, and a large white metal cross. The church at nearby Inchnadamph village also has a memorial.

The two engines (both with remains of propellers), landing gear (with tyres) and various assorted bits of wreckage are scattered near the memorial cairn in hollows between peat hags.

I walked on to the summit of Conival but decided against pressing on to Ben More Assynt as the weather was so bad with rain now joining the strong wind and thick mist and the ridge between Conival and Ben More Assynt can be difficult in these sorts of conditions.

4 Responses to “An air wreck site in Assynt”

  1. Steve

    Hi – Just FYI it appears someone hacked your wordpress blog here…

    If you VIEW source / page source (depending on what browser you’re using) of this page, you’ll see a ton of spammy affiliate links lower down.

    I’d suggest you upgrade to the newest version of WordPress, if you haven’t already, and change your password. Then go into your template (I’d guess) and delete the extra text/links they added – possibly in the ‘footer’ section of your template.

    Hope that helps.

    Reply
  2. Eddie

    Hi Steve,

    Thanks for this, yeah I have been having problems with this hacking/spamming for a while – I think I’ll upgrade to the newest WordPress version…

    Eddie

    Reply

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