An all-women climbing club have re-enacted a photograph taken around 100 years ago at a Strathblane geological curiosity.
The ‘Auld Wives Lifts’ on Craigmaddie Muir features three randomly assembled large boulders which were likely left by a retreating glacier at the end of the last ice age.
About a century ago, Robert McNeil produced an image of 17 men around the stones and sold a hand-tinted version of the image as a postcard in Strathblane, where he ran the local post office.
Ex-Herald journalist Anne Johnstone, and chairperson of Strathblane Heritage, recently challenged the women of the Ladies Scottish Climbing Club to recreate the image.
The LSCC, founded in 1908, is the oldest all-women climbing club in existence.
Anne said: “Local photographer Stevi Jackson did a recce of the site to identify the exact spot from which the original had been taken and secured access via a privately-owned farm track.
“The group assembled on June 21, Midsummer Day, and the deed was done.
“Their luck was in because the notoriously boggy area around the stones had dried out in the recent heatwave and a stiff breeze kept the midges at bay.
“The two images will form part of a ‘slider feature’ on the website to be launched in September by Strathblane Heritage.
“Viewers will be invited to shift from the old image to the new by dragging the cursor over the screen.
“Legend has it that the grey sandstone boulders were carried to the site in the aprons of three women who were competing in a trial of strength.
“The largest stone rests on top of the other two. Several human faces have been carved in the surfaces, as well as much Victorian graffiti, and it has been suggested that it was once a Druid altar.
“A more likely explanation is that they are part of the random detritus left by a retreating glacier at the end of the Ice Age.”
