The Clootie Well Munlochy

After yesterday's mad dash to make it to the wedding reception, today being gloriously sunny we decided on a lesiurley drive home vie one place I have wanted to visit for some time and that was the Munlochy Clootie Well.
When we did find it, I was surprised at the very strange feeling it gave off, hard to describe but a little unsettling and indeed if you read the blurb below it actually says the same!
From there we headed back and decided to stop at the lovely Urquhart Castle on the shores of the famous Loch Ness.

Didnt see any monster other than the one called Historic Scotland and what a moster it is!
If you want to visit this lovely castle you need to run the gauntlet of Historic Scotland an PAY some ridiculous some of money, Why? so I decided to climb up on the wall and take pictures from there. Well would you beleive it, HS have planted thorns all along the top of the wall and should you manage to conquer that, you then cant see for all the bloody trees they have planted deliberatley so you can't see the castle and then succumb to paying their ransom to visit it.

I hate this. They have no interest what so ever in the preservation of said castles, all they are interested is in extroting money from poor stupid visitors who should be able to walk freely among our ancient ruins without having to fork out exhorbitant amonts of money and then to be given a guied tour by some kilted twee person with a Morningside accent!

Finally made it home early evening
Have a good whats left of Sunday blipofiles!



The Clootie Well is a rather weird remnant of an ancient tradition once commonly found in Scotland and Ireland, of holy wells to which pilgrims would come and make offerings, usually in the hope of having an illness cured. The tradition dates far back into pre-Christian times, to the practice of leaving votive offerings to the local spirits or gods in wells and springs. With the arrival of Christianity, the practice was simply adopted to the new circumstances.


Over time, as the Roman Church supplanted the Celtic Church in Scotland, practices which echoed the old pagan ways became frowned upon, and the number of holy wells diminished. And the Reformation of 1560 also served to suppress religious activity outwith a closely defined Presbyterian norm: in 1581 an Act of Parliament in Scotland made pilgrimage to holy wells illegal. Nonetheless the practice seems to have continued in some areas, and when Welshman Thomas Pennant toured Scotland in 1769, he recorded seeing holy wells "tapestried about with rags".

The holy well at Munlochy is said to date back to - and probably beyond - the time of St Boniface or Curitan, who worked as a missionary in Scotland in about AD620. Pilgrims would come, perform a ceremony that involved circling the well sunwise three times before splashing some of its water on the ground and making a prayer. They would then tie a piece of cloth or "cloot" that had been in contact with the ill person to a nearby tree.

As the cloot rotted away, the illness would depart the sick person. An alternative tradition suggests that sick children would be left here overnight to be healed. Presumably any with the strength or spirit to survive what would have been an exceedingly creepy ordeal were pretty likely to recover anyway.

Today's Clootie Well remains an unsettling place. Having left your car in the purpose-made parking area in the forest a hundred yards or so to the west, you make your way along a woodland path over the brow of a hill and find yourself in a setting that is - especially when the trees have no leaves - distinctly odd. At its heart on the far side of the hill is a spring, below which is a stone trough in which water collects.

Many people still obviously believe that leaving an offering will be of benefit to them or to others. One problem is that many choose to leave items made of modern synthetic materials that will never rot away. This does little for the local environment: and neither, according to the tradition of the well, can it do anything for the health of the individual needing to be cured.