100 Weeks of Scotland: The ‘middle’ of Scotland

The true 'centre' of Scotland is unknown - this week's pictures look at the possible contenders. Pictures: Alan McCredie

I THOUGHT it would be apt to mark the midpoint of my project with the search for the midpoint of Scotland itself. I naively thought that the centre point would be fairly well agreed on. Not so, as I quickly found out.

I discovered four specific places that seemed to have a reasonable claim to the honour (sorry Harthill Service Station, but you really aren’t the ‘Heart of Scotland’) and even these are probably not the true centre point as the Ordnance Survey make the point that as coastal erosion and coastal shift are constant, the midpoint would constantly be changing.

Unlike the North, South, East and West points of Scotland the locations of the possible centre point make no real claim to be so, with the exception of a spot near Newtonmore that has a small cross carved into a dry stane dyke.

Of the four locations I visited, the one that the Ordnance Survey say is the centre of mainland Scotland is a hillside in Glengoulandie, a few miles east of Schiehallion. This was measured by the centre of gravity method – in other words if you cut out a map of Scotland and placed it on a pin until it was perfectly balanced, that would be the centre point. Of course this becomes even more complicated when Scotland’s numerous islands are included.