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Let's go out of Sneck


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Aw, gie's a break!     You could at least have pretended to wait for a while   :lol:

Right, here's one of my Dad's, from 1994 or 1995.  The area looks a little different now, but it should still be fairly easy.

The question is why my Dad would take such a boring looking photograph.  There's a clue in the picture, and it's still there today.

665340382_105sml.jpg.826c3b3eac2950f182d7a450c54cf26d.jpg

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That is the Brookfield housing development under construction another easy one :lol:  Could it be to do with the old building at the tree line which I think is now a shed behind another house.  I always remember it and think there was another two looked like old war time buildings but have no Idea what they were.

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It is indeed the B9006 at Leanach, between Culloden Moor and the railway.

That field and the housing estate used to be an airfield!   I assume you have heard of the legendary Captain Fresson and Highland Airways, which he founded in the 1930s.  (You'll have seen the statue at Inverness Airport, and possibly the memorials at Kirkwall and Sumburgh.)  He operated from the airfield at the Longman - close by the ICT stadium - but had this field as his designated emergency landing ground for when the lower-lying Longman was fog-bound.

During WW2, the RAF took over the airfield, and initially used it as a satellite landing ground (SLG) for Lossiemouth.  The idea behind SLGs is that the planes from a bigger airfield could be dispersed to smaller, camouflaged grass-strip fields, in case of attack on the main field.  Leanach had Hurricanes, Defiants, Beaufighters and even Wellington bombers.  However, they had a problem with brightly coloured civilian planes using it too, so they had to ban them because they compromised the camouflage.

There was also an RAF unit at Dalcross, and later in the war they too used Leanach as a relief landing ground.  The airfield was eventually de-requisitioned in March 1945.  That hut, which is still there accornding to Google Street View, is an RAF building.

My Dad, being an Innes Street lad and a teenager during the war, used to hang about the Longman airfield, and occasionally cadged a flight on a plane. 

I also know that he and my Mum once flew with Fresson, which would have been in the early to mid 1950s, when Fresson had a private charter business.  

Hence the photograph!

 

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That's a bit of local history I didn't know and there is nothing shown on old maps although they would not have been recorded during the war years.  There was a wartime airfield northwest of Brackla Distillery at Cawdor.

See the picture from Google where it clearly shows where the runway was in Easter Ross.

Old Airfield Easter Ross.JPG

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My Mum is from Nairn, and well remembers the airfield at Brackla.  Towards the end of the war, they were flying planes directly from the factory up to Brackla, and immediately scrapping them.

She also told me that scrapped planes were buried not far from where she lived in Nairn, alongside Nairn Dunbar golf club.  If you Google for Kingsteps Quarry, you will see that a few years ago they checked it for radioactivity.

Edited by snorbens_caleyman
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19 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

My Mum is from Nairn, and well remembers the airfield at Brackla.  Towards the end of the war, they were flying planes directly from the factory up to Brackla, and immediately scrapping them.

She also told me that scrapped planes were buried not far from where she lived in Nairn, alongside Nairn Dunbar golf club.  If you Google for Kingsteps Quarry, you will see that a few years ago they checked it for radioactivity.

I remember reading about the Kingsteps Quarry in the local news.  It's a pity there were no photos of these airfields from the past.

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Aye, I cycled the Great Glen in 2003 about Easter time. Unbelievable weather. Built that bike myself, still got it but using an electric bike for the past 2 years. Really regret getting it resprayed metallic green. The day after I got home we played Dundee at Hampden.

Edited by TheMantis
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3 hours ago, TheMantis said:

I asked because I was thinking Greenock or Gourock. But it's Old Cardross Parish Church.

That's it I was looking for some of my ancestors in the old grave yard in 2012 which I was lucky to find so was worth the visit.  A great great uncle's name is also on the war memorial in Cardross he was killed in WW1 in Belgium aged 54! 

It was on the way to Helensburgh to visit a second cousin that I spotted the Isle of Arran across the water.

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10 minutes ago, IBM said:

Not much to go on there Mantis I have no idea lets hope it's near Fort William and Robert get's it.

Nowhere near FW but a famous distillery...

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57 minutes ago, TheMantis said:

Nowhere near FW but a famous distillery...

A famous distillery somewhere in the hills that's not painted white that narrows it down a bit :shrug:

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The Glenlivet behind the hedge on google maps :lol:  I would have got a distant view while travelling from Tomintoul to Dufftown but not enough to remember it.

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