Interviews with Jelka Plate: C. Raye, neighbour of the Battlehill

My first memory of the Battlehill would be in the 60’s. Because I did not grow up in the town, the Battlehill was not something that I knew at all. But when I was a teenager I had a horse and my very good friend lived over on the far side of the Battlehill and I lived down the river from Huntly. So we used to go along by Perris Mill and up over the Old Road what was a road down to the Banff Road. That was how we would meet. I do remember one time that we came around the Battlehill on the horses and all these trees that are now huge trees were about shoulder height. I guess there were planted in the fifties, they might have been about six or seven years old. I just recognized them as evergreen trees. My memory is of these trees coming up through burnt very brownish, yellowish grass – it must have been summer. I do not remember the beeches, but obviously they are so old, they were there.

At school I remember hearing the towns kids talking about that they had been up at the Battlehill for the weekend. It was obviously somewhere the kids in town knew and went to.

Apart from that my experiences of it is all since I came back here in 1990 as an adult. It was such a great place for my kids and their friends to play. There was a swing and they would play that they had little gangs that shoot each other, they would run and hide. And they used to camp up there. There was a kind of progression when they were getting a bit more independent. They would camp in the garden and after the garden when they thought they were brave enough, they would go up, camp there and light fires.

Actually I have got a memory coming back to me. When we first came back here my youngest son was just four. And I started to notice that when I suggested to go up to the woods for the walk, he would be very very reluctant and he did not like the woods. After a while I realized that it was because we had been reading things like Haensel and Gretel and I think he thought we were going to loose him in the woods. He was really quite scared of the woods. But you know in summertime it can be very dark and pretty spooky up there.

Do you have any preferred places?

I love the beech canapee. I do not know why, but I usually walk along the path clockwise. Sometimes I make kind of figures of an eight if I want to walk for a bit longer. You can quite easily walk up there for an hour by going over all the paths. But my favourite part is the beeches and especially in the autumn when it is all just golden and yellow. Even if the sun is not shining it is light and bright.

Are there any smells you associate with the woods?

Smells? I suppose the brake up on the top has got a bit of a smell maybe in the autumn a kind of musty smell.

Which sounds do you associate with the woods?

The birds and unfortunately you always hear traffic. I mean we think we are quite quiet here, but there is usually traffic noise.

Apart from the birds, have you seen any animals?

I have seen a fox up there, I have seen deer, rabbits. At one point there were some white rabbits. I think it was a pet rabbit that somebody had just set off and said goodbye – be happy here. I saw it under a bush right at the top and at first I thought I was seeing things, but then not very long afterwards there was a whole lot of other white rabbits. It obviously lived long enough to breed! But then they just seemed to die out as quickly as they had appeared.

Do you have any prefered season?

I love spring. And there is one particular thing that I love up there: it will appear that there is nothing much living among the Sitka and the other evergreen trees, but when the sun hits at a particular angle you will see that there is a little tree - usually it is a beech – coming up and the sun catches that fantastic green. I really hope with this felling thing that they are true to their word and spare these little trees that are coming up through there.

Talking about it being spooky, I do remember once being a bit alarmed up there. I was walking on my own and I met a guy with a gun. He wasn´t somebody I recognized or anybody local. He had something in one hand like a box and in the other hand he had this gun. It was just after Drumblane – you know the horrible shootings – so it must have been 1996 or 1997. I did not know this guy and I saw him with this gun and thought „Oh my god“. Afterwards I realized that he was probably rabbiting. I think he had a ferret in the box. So he would put the ferret down the rabbit burrow and then shooting them when they came out. I really thought that I don´t like that. I don´t like the idea of somebody up there shooting. I just felt that was alien to what the Battlehill is. It is a quiet recreational space.