The Cloven Stone Traditional Cache

This cache will take you along an old route used by drovers, with plenty of evidence of the route still visible. The cache is at The Cloven Stone, previously well known to locals but now swallowed up by a forestry plantation.

This is one of the lesser known drover's paths. It's not shown on maps or signposted, so I hope that the walk to this cache will take you somewhere new and hopefully you'll be able to imagine what it would have been like hundreds of years ago when the drovers used it.

If you look at a map you might be tempted to approach the cache from the north or east. However those approaches aren't as straightforward as maps might suggest. All of the roads that seem to be relatively close to the cache are private and in some cases gated and locked. The road to the north in particular (to Doups Farm) might look tempting but you'll find that it is gated and marked as private before it enters the forest, and is so narrow that you won't be able to turn the car around (unless you go into the field!) so you'll face a big reverse. The route described below has the added bonus of being the drovers' route

I've given this a terrain rating of 4 as there is no path at any point along the route. It's flat for most of the way but it's rough underfoot: boggy in bits; extremely overgrown in others.

Park at the co-ordinates provided, go through the gate, and follow the wall/fence on your right until it ends (Waypoint R0).

Turn right (south) downhill and note the remains of walls on your left and right hand sides. These walls stopped the drovers' animals wandering off the route and are incredibly straight and regular. They take you down to the tree line. Here, you have two choices: you can either turn left and head straight across the field to the transmitter; or cross the fence so you are right next to the trees and then follow the tree line along and round to the transmitter. The drovers' route goes straight across the field, and the walls can be seen if you look carefully. They are mostly covered in moss and grass, but can be seen occasionally if you look. However, cattle is sometimes in this field, in which case you should follow the treeline.

Continue east past the transmitter through an obvious gap in the trees. The remains of the wall are clear here and eventually the wall on the other side reappears. Keep walking until the regular distance between the walls widens substantially, and turn right here through another gap in the trees (Waypoint R1).

After a short distance you will need to push your way through the trees on your right. Waypoint R2 marks the spot to do this. Push your way through a couple of trees and you will find a narrow and overgrown hidden corridor through the forest. Walk to the end of it, to Waypoint R3.

Finally, crawl through the trees on your left to get to the cache. It'll have taken you about 40-60 minutes to get here from the parking space.

At GZ you'll find two sets of cloven stones. The flat one has clearly been here for centuries or millennia, as can be seen from how weathered and smooth it is. Legend has it that this is the devil's hoof. Next to it is another stone that has split at some point - although more recently than the flat one. Older locals of Kilsyth and the surrounding areas remember these stones when they weren't hidden by the trees; the field they sit in was called ... The Cloven Field. Sadly they are now so well hidden that very few people now know how to find them, and there's a chance they will be forgotten over time.

Note that due to tree cover, the waypoints' co-ordinates may be out by approx 5m, but the above description should help.