Rust in peace!
Avro Anson R9583, somewhere in Scotland
 (Distance covered = 10.7 mile/Ascent =+457m)

 Yet another Championship for Heather meant I'd have plenty of time to drop them off then go and visit a remote and very unfrequented Avro Anson crashsite.

The Anson crashsite I was planning on visiting is not very well known about, it is not listed in HGWR or any other publication I have seen, I was told about it by someone who used to work on the estate as a Gamekeeper.


Setting off towards the Anson crashsite.

The Anson had crashed on land used for Grouse shooting, this would not cause me any problems as I was visiting on a sunday, but it did mean there was Landrover tracks I could follow for part of the way that had been built to access the shooting butts.

Above and next two photos-A good Landrover track made the going easy to start with.


The going from here onwards was not so easy.


A couple of the very deep gullies encountered on the way.

After reaching the end of the Landrover track I was following the going was a lot tougher, with deep gullies interspersed with areas of very wet bogs full of spaggy moss, the Anson crashsite was not easy to find amongst all of this even though I had a very accurate 10 digit grid ref!


The area where the Anson crashed, even though its only 50 yards away its very well concealed in the peat gullies.

above and next 7 photos-The items numbered on these 3 photos of an Anson being restored correspond to the photos of wreckage at the crashsite below*
No3 is that piece I often mention as being present at all the Anson crashsites.

Above and below:-Anson's cockpit showing the position of some of the pieces found at the crashsite, the red numbers correspond with the photos taken at the crashsite below. (The photo above is of a later variant of Anson so the instrument panel is a slightly different shape but still gives an idea of its location)

Above and below:-The Blind Flying instrument panel, the instruments would have been removed at the time of the crash by the RAF recovery team or shortly after by the locals as souveniers!

More wreckage photos

The Gamekeeper who told about this crashsite asked me not to reveal its location, he also emailed me a photo of it taken over 26 years ago and by comparing this with some of my photos taken in 2016 it could clearly be seen that everything was exactly where it was when he photographed it all those years ago. This suggest that very few people if indeed anyone had been to this site in the interim.

*-Thanks to Stuart Whittaker for helping to identify some of the parts from the photos.