After leaving the Edradour distillery, we decided to go for a drive to the
Scottish Crannog Centre near Kenmore on Loch Tay. The area is famous for its crannogs - Iron Age wooden structures, built on stilts in the shallows of the loch and accessed via a wooden causeway - and the modern reconstruction was built by the Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology between 1994 and 1996. It is very much a piece of living experimental archaeology, as well as being open to the public. The latter requirement meant certain "health & safety" compromises, such as the addition of emergency lighting and reducing the distance between the crannog and the shore; but, even so, the crannog still gives an excellent feel for what life must have been like in one of these rather strange and unintuitive structures.
The notice says "dogs welcome", although the beautiful black labrador, who visited at the same time as us, discovered that the causeway made from tree trunks was a bit of a challenge.
One of the demonstrations on offer was the creation of fire from first principles. The basic technique is to use friction from a "spinning top" to create smouldering embers which are then dropped into dry wood shavings. Human "bellows" are employed to kindle the first flame, which can then be used to light the fire proper. The sequence below was taken over a period of a couple of minutes or so.
Jason is one of the Crannog Centre's Iron Age textile experts, and it was he who gave us a tour of the crannog itself. His insights into the the crannog way of life - and why they were built around Loch Tay in the first place - were absolutely fascinating. Highly knowledgeable, and a real character.
Sadly we arrived rather late in the afternoon at the Crannog Centre, meaning that we weren't able to sample all the activities on offer. Definitely a place to re-visit, though - possibly for one of their dyeing or leather-making workshops.
