Mountaineers' shot at tenpin bowling - after finding a Cairngorm cannonball!
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Neil Reid was helping restore a bothy on the Mar Lodge Estate when he came across a suspected cannonball.
He was working as a volunteer on the Mountain Bothies Association's Red House shelter on the National Trust for Scotland estate when he made the surprise find.
"I was helping build a cobbled path around the bothy and came across this rounded shape among the rubble and boulders.
"I am not entirely sure how it got there - I don't know of any battles in the area.
"Afterwards we had a game of ten pin bowling with it!
"But it has been given to the NTS for their archaeologist to hopefully solve the riddle."
It is not the first historic find for Mr Reid. He previously came across Neolithic flint in the Cairngorms on a project involving University College Dublin.
Mar Lodge Estate, Britain’s largest National Nature Reserve , is made up of more than 29,000 hectares of astonishing landscape: heather-covered moorland, Caledonian pine forest, towering mountains and the Quoich wetlands, home to wading birds and otters.
There are 15 Munros - mountains over 300ft. The beautiful ancient pinewoods are home to red squirrels and pine martens as well as birds such as the crossbill and black grouse.
The estate has a wide range of landscape conservation projects underway, including woodland regeneration, footpath repair and reducing the damage caused to woodland by red deer.
