Hay-ho

I drive past a sign sign saying “Well got hay for sale”. It has such quaint, bucolic charm that it invariably makes me smile.

Well got, the very sound of it speaks of hay meadows and sun and cider with Rosie. Another time. Well got hay is hay cut at its peak of growth and properly dried, the sort of hay that smells sweet and summery.

Hay-making, so dependent on the weather, seems to be in decline. Silage is easier and not so reliant on the vagaries of the British summer. This year has been different ... long sunny days and warm breezes.

The Dell

I wandered up through the Dell, one of my favourite places. A beech wood where pig-nuts grow. Probably planted a century ago with pigs in mind...pigs like beech-mast as well as pig-nuts... it is now the haunt of roe deer and buzzards. It leads on to a small hay meadow that the farmer cuts yearly but apart from that, because of its small acreage and the cost of fencing it for stock, it is usually left alone.

The hay meadow above the Dell

A hay meadow from the past, it is a refuge for wild flowers long since banished to the edges of farmland or worse, eliminated altogether. Orchids, thistles, vetches, corn-mint, self-heal and wound-wort all jostling for their place in the sun.

A meadow that may possibly be, when he gets round to it, well got, but is also well left, thanks to the farmer.

How spectacular even the common dock can be when left to it s own devices

A Marriage of Convenience

Lamberton Kirk

With the impending referendum on separation of Scotland and England coming closer by the day, I thought I should take a look at the place where the union of the previously sovereign states of the United Kingdom started.

 An insignificant ruin on the border, just a mile or so from the A1, stands Lamberton Kirk.

It was never of any importance, a part of the extensive holdings of the rich and influential Coldingham Priory , it was valued at a lowly 15 merks.
 It ceased to be used in the seventeenth century, yet it provided the backdrop to the what was to become the Union of the Crowns and eventually the Act of Union.

In 1503, Henry VII, that crafty Tudor monarch, attempted to do by marriage what generations of his Plantagenet predecessors had tried, unsuccessfully, to do by force – unite Scotland and England.

His daughter Margaret was sent north to become the wife of James IV. She was conveyed to the border and, as John Younge the Somerset herald, recorded in his journal of events -

apud ecclesiam vulgariter vocatam, Lamberton Kirk

- in the church commonly called Lamberton Kirk, she was married by proxy to James.

A great tournament was held with Scottish and English knights taking part and horse races were run on what was to be Scotland's earliest racecourse on Lamberton Moor. Of this, nothing remains but grazing for sheep.

A widowed Margaret returned to pray at Lamberton in 1517, going south after the disaster of Flodden and the death of her husband in battle but she had done her dynastic duty and produced a male heir and thus established her grandson's claim to the English throne when Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors died in 1603 and the two countries, though still separate, had one monarch, James VI of Scotland and I of England.

It would take another century of bloody civil war, religious strife, and national bankruptcy for James's dream of one nation to become reality. It did in 1707 and it all started with a thirteen year old princess coming to Lamberton Kirk in 1503.

There was marriage house at Lamberton. In it heyday, it was as famous as Gretna for runaway couples to get their troths plighted. It was demolished in the 1970's to make way for the new dual carriageway of the A1 as it roars across the border.

Legend had it that James IV had granted Lamberton Kirk the right to hold marriage ceremonies without the banns being called so, when the church was abandoned in the early 17^th century, the local toll house took on the role of marriage house.  It is recorded that a notice in the window said

“Ginger Beer sold here and marriages performed”.

Site of the Marriage House at Lamberton Toll

 The site of the house, once the source of romantic tales of elopement, is now lay-by much used by HGV's and home to a mobile snack bar - and, no, it doesn't sell ginger beer. 

 Come September will the marriage of Scotland and England still be intact?  Will the thistle and the rose still be growing side by side as they are at Lamberton today?

Big Ben

Seven years ago, I had to come off the hill while climbing the Five Sisters in Kintail.    My knee was so painful I was holding up the group.   As it transpired, that was to be my last Munro at the time. The cause of the pain became clear and a new hip was required. More pathology kept me from getting back to the big hills but I've always wanted to do one more before giving up completely.

What about the big one. Despite having done a good few Munros, I'd never climbed Ben Nevis.

It was a fine day, so I set off to do the straightforward, tourist approach up the pony track built in 1883 to service the long defunct weather station at the summit.

Imagine a seemingly endless stone staircase with every step a different size and shape and depth and sometimes more than one level on each step and you get some idea of the pony track. Proper walking is impossible.

 A succession of baby steps and giant steps and sideways shuffles are all that is possible and always upwards. 

The views as you get higher make it worthwhile. Looking down Glen Nevis to the Mamores with Stob Ban in the foreground, the landscape is dramatic. Equally scenic is the view back to Fort William and Loch Eil.

But the slog goes on up and up and up. Five and a half hours. Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe, is often called the Halfway lochan.. it isn't !!

Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe

After the rocky staircase there was a wide detour by the Lochan on easier going but then back to the path with boulders and scree intermixed. Crossing the lower end of a waterfall provide icy cool drinks and a few negative ions to boost the flagging spirit.

Zig-zagging up and up and up eventually the summit came into sight on the other side of a small snow-field.

This delighted a couple of boys from Brisbane who hadn't seen snow before. I was just delighted to see the summit.

Snowfield- summit obscured by mist

Small birds were flitting about in the scree and rocks - snow buntings, I'm sure. 

Unfortunately, a smirr of rain and mist came in just then to obscure the summit plateau but cleared quickly.

The descent began easily enough to begin with then became increasingly painful as each jolting downward step hit the old knees. That's the thing about hills they don't care how much you hurt there is no other way but to put one foot past the other and cover the ground, the hill doesn't get any smaller, the path doesn't get any shorter.

Ravens were circling overhead. They had obviously picked me out as a potential  carcase.

Starry Saxifrage, a true mountain plant

By the time I'd got to road level, my joints were telling me that it was indeed seven years since that last Munro and they and I were seven years older but not seven years wiser.

Five and a half hours up and four hours down, longer than expected, but it is done.

I am cured. I no longer have a hankering to do one more Munro. The knees have spoken.

Two enthusiasts planning to make a more rapid descent than I could manage!

I must add a special thanks to the Scottish - Canadian couple who generously drove the blogger back to his car when he came off the hill by the wrong path and ended up miles from where he had parked it... and gave him a can of Irn-bru.   My knees give thanks for that gesture!!