I discovered this location whilst on a caching tour of castles round Inverness and the Black Isle. I had stopped to look for the nearby Castle Stewart cache and just happened to spot the word 'motte' on my OS basemap. Intrigued, I wandered on down the lane and discovered this lovely old church, graveyard and the grassy covered remains of the medieval motte for the old Castle Stuart.
As is typical with many abandoned motte & bailey castles, the bailey was re-used in later times and is now covered by the majority of the graveyard and the current church building. The church is undergoing much-needed repairs although work seems to have stopped at present.
The motte, although covered in quite a dense layer of grass, brambles and some small trees, is still fairly clearly discernable - even from the parking. The moat surrounding it is still clearly visible running along the western fence of the churchyard and, if you drop down over the northern boundary wall of the churchyard onto the track there, there is an even better view of the moat and steep earthen walls of the motte.
After parking at the small turning circle, head to the virtual stage co-ordinates where you will find a memorial plaque dedicated to Alasdair Ruadh na Feile attached to the wall. Once there you will need to look at the dates listed on it to work out the final co-ordinates of the cache using the following formula:
N 57° 3 A.BCD W 004° 0E.FGH
where:
A = the first digit shown on the plaque,
B = the first month shown minus 2 times the third digit shown on the plaque,
C = the eighth digit shown on the plaque,
D = the fifth digit shown plus the seventh digit shown on the plaque,
E = the second digit shown on the plaque,
F = the fifth digit shown on the plaque,
G = the sixth digit shown on the plaque plus 2 ,
H = the ninth digit shown on the plaque minus 1 .
Please do not upload any spoiler images of the plaque, these will immediately be removed.
***** Congratulations to Gerryu2 for their FTF! *****