Solstice

Summer solstice stirred the old pagan soul and drove me from sleep at 4 a.m. to the beach to see the sunrise.

The Knowe

There is a mound at the south end that noses into the North Sea. 

 I know it is a fluvio-glacial deposit pushed up by ancient snows and melt-water when the world was a lot younger but it does have a symmetry that suggests the hand of man.

It is at the end of a winding right-of-way that starts at the site of our 14^th century priory, itself built on earlier religious foundations. 

The priory site was probably a pagan sacred place standing, as it does, on the high ground between two streams.

 In post-Roman Britain, the legendary king., Lucius was reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Christian chronicler, to have deliberately converted all the old temples to churches. This is supported as historical fact by the discussion in the famous letter from Pope Gregory to Augustine preaching among the Anglo-Saxons ,advising him not to destroy the pagan sites but to convert them to Christian churches. 

 There are Anglo-Saxon graves near the Priory.

 The Angles of Northumbria probably took over the site from their Brythonic predecessors and they from earlier peoples.

The sunrise

The processional way from the old shrine to the beach and the knowe is still there.

Not proof but I like to think so.

The brightening sky

 

Today was a bit disappointing as it was for the hordes that descended on Stonehenge.  The skies were overcast and no sun could be seen at the eastern horizon.    Still the beach was deserted apart from the cries of the terns fishing and the chorus of birdsong.  The fluting of the whaups* and the piping of the sea pyats* gave an eerie cadence to the air, an atmosphere that wouldn’t have been found in the bustle around the stones at the world heritage site. 

I left to return home wondering if I was right and folk had once processed down to the hill to see the sunrise.  If not then it should have happened.

Daybreak

Back in the prosaic, everyday world of the Lowland Scot, the thoughts will be typically downbeat… “ Aye, the nights’ll be drawing in now”.

As P.G. Wodehouse put it … It’s never hard to distinguish a Scotsman from a ray of sunshine.

*  A whaup is a curlew and a sea-pyat is an oystercatcher.

Basking sharks and Beehives

Little Bernera

Recent TV programme “ Islands on the Edge” featuring the Hebrides has boosted tourism  to the aforesaid isles.  The problem is that the impression created by the expertise of the camera men is one of instant visual gratification with wildlife cavorting about and generally doing turns for the benefit of the visitors.  In real life it is hardly ever thus.  You can spend hours trekking over moorland or bouncing about in an inflatable  while scanning the empty horizon for the merest glimpse of  an eagle or a whale  without any return except sunburn and eyestrain.   Even if you do find a rarity, unless you are equipped with, which also means weighed down by, the best photographic gear, your chances of capturing it on film are about as good as winning the lottery.  In fact the whole business is just that…a lottery.

 This year was a bit different.  A trip to Little Bernera, a long deserted islet on the west coast of Lewis yielded some great results.   Basking sharks,  thirty foot long,  circling the launch, their great mouths gaping just below the surface, dolphins, minke whales, puffins,a spectacular diving display by the gannets and  Arctic terns fishing for sand eels like children bobbing for apples, all made for a great day out.

Basking Shark below surface

The basking sharks seemed uninterested in the boat unlike dolphins or seals that will come and investigate, the leviathans just  circle round and round sieving the waters for plankton apparently oblivious to all else.  

Basking Shark fin alongside

The dolphins must have numbered at least thirty as the received wisdom is that for ever one fin seen at any time there are two more unseen.  The skipper remarked that they were the first pod in that area this year, following the fish shoals around the coast.  So fast moving were they and so intent on fishing that, despite  them being all around us,  they would appear and be gone “ e’er you could point the place”.

A couple of minke  surfaced briefly but soon headed out to sea.  They have reason to avoid  humans while the Norwegians and Icelanders continue hunt them.

My attempts to capture any images made me appreciate even more the visual impact of wildlife programmes and the skill and patience of the crews that make them.

Altogether a great day and so what if my sun hat kept blowing away and the old bonce was a bit red the next day, it was a small price to pay.

Homeward bound

Beehive dwellings

The return trip took us past a tiny islet – Eilean Fir Chrothair – where beehive structures could be clearly seen.   An anchorite dwelling, one among the dozens dotted around these wild coasts, erected by Celtic missionaries in the so called dark ages, some have given their name to the  chapels where they preached - Saint Cowstan, St Donnan, St Aula – others are merely recalled as Pabbay – “father/ priest”. Perhaps the latter group were hermits having less contact with the local populace.

 One, where we picnicked on the west coast of Lewis, rejoiced to the splendid title of Teampull na Cro Naomh, the Church of the Holy Blood 

It is in a ruinous state, like most of these remnants of the coming of Christianity from Ireland and Iona displacing the pagan Celtic and Norse gods just as they had previously displaced the unknown gods of the Bronze Age peoples who, in their time, usurped the rites of their Neolithic predecessors.    Only the stones remain.

Have the basking sharks been returning year upon year to feed on the plankton surge since the time of the Callanish stones, showing as much interest in the changes to human activities as they did today?

Teampull na Cro Naomh

Steinaclete Standing Stones

                                             

                                     Only the stones remain