I have pieced together several heritage trails around towns and villages by studying online maps and researching the local history. I tend to construct circular routes as they are practical to walk and hopefully appealing to those browsing the website. Cowie is a village in Stirlingshire, an easy half hour drive from my home. I'd previously examined the surrounding paths but failed to come up with a viable walk. The area was then placed on the back burner.
My attention was refocussed on Cowie when I learned of the existence of coking ovens on the edge of the village. Coke is a processed fossil fuel used in blast furnaces. It is formed by heating suitable coal to high temperatures in the absence of oxygen, which drives out impurities, leaving a carbon-rich product that releases more energy upon burning than the original coal. There is a website called Landscape Legacies of Coal Mining, run by Stirling University. It provides various walking routes with an industrial theme around central Scotland. I also follow their Facebook feed and happened to spot a series of pictures showing the remains of the Cowie coking plant. This looked right up my street and I made a mental note to head over next time I had a free morning or afternoon. A couple of years ago, I met one of the guys involved with the Landscape Legacies project while exploring the remains of Solsgirth Colliery. Royston Goodman is an ex-miner who worked in several pits in Scotland and also abroad. He suggested I download the app which summarises the mining-themed walks and I used the instructions to keep me right as I parked on the fringes of Cowie and hiked up a farm road. On the drive through, I had passed the site of Airth Station, closed to passengers in 1954 and now hosting a cattery. The lack of footfall can probably be attributed to the two-mile gap between Airth town and the rail halt bearing its name. The line itself split from the current Falkirk to Perth corridor and ran over the Alloa Swing Bridge. Freight continued until 1968 and the original Forth crossing was demolished a few years later. Today's main line skirts Cowie and a mineral branch formerly served two collieries and the cokeworks I was hopefully about to discover. A stub next to the Norbord factory was still used until the 90s to transport chipboard products. There was never a passenger station named Cowie but the stop on the Plean branch across the main tracks provided this facility. It sat equidistant between the two villages. Was this a case of the railway company hedging its bets?
The farm track gained height and I was treated to lovely views across the green fields towards Stirling Castle and the Ochil Hills. I looked over Cowiehall Quarry, opened as recently as 1989 but now at the end of its working life. The road dropped down to a junction where I picked up a path that paralleled the old railway cutting (now festooned with trees). Within minutes, the characteristics of my surroundings had changed completely. The acres of monoculture crops had vanished and I was now walking through a shaded thicket alive with birdsong. Ironically, the remains of industrial operations that once scarred the landscape are now providing a quiet home for nature. Vegetation has sprouted in random twisted shapes upon the old railway trackbed. A ribbon of wilderness among the chemically-enhanced process of modern arable farming. Cowie grew rapidly in the early years of the 20th century when the pits were sunk. Successive generations of OS maps show the settlement transforming from an agricultural backwater to an industrial village. Mining operations at Bannockburn Colliery ceased in 1953 and the site is now occupied by the Norbord timber processing plant. Carnock Colliery closed back in 1934 and the site was completely cleared in the 1960s. The coking plant was adjacent to the mine and the two industries formed an integrated unit. Useful by-products included ammonia and coal tar. There isn't a great deal of information online about the Carnock site but it seems the coke ovens were taken over by the Carron Iron Company following the closure of the pit. Carron ironworks near Falkirk was a vast industrial complex and a local source of coke was a hugely favourable situation. Perhaps the new owners brought in wagonloads of coal and trundled the resultant coke along to the foundry.
The walk instructions said to look out for the end of a concrete wall in the undergrowth, which marked the boundary of the coking complex. I spotted this and decided to plunge into the trees for a look around. Being off-path meant I had to place my feet carefully and brush branches aside but the going wasn't too bad. I encountered several old brick structures, possibly the remains of chimneys and kilns. As if to prove my earlier point about nature habitats, a bird with a long bill flew up in front of me. It was gone within seconds and my immediate thought was it must have been a woodcock. A bulky wading bird with short legs, it is largely nocturnal and spends most of the day under dense cover. The other possibility was a snipe but a quick text to Nicole confirmed a dense patch of woodland would be an unlikely place to spot this particular suspect. I had never seen a woodcock before and the entire UK breeding population is around 50,000 pairs. They feed on worms, beetles and caterpillars. Numbers have declined due to the increasing difficulty of finding suitable breeding areas. Another bird ticked off the life list. I worked my way back to the main path and followed it further. It led to a fine selection of decaying infrastructure, with brick arches poking above ground level. Probably old burning chambers that had been backfilled over the years. One had enough clearance to peer inside and I assumed this was part of an oven complex. There was no sensible way of squeezing through the gap but my torch illuminated a space that looked large enough to stand up in. A very interesting explore with a hint of an old-fashioned country wander.
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