Tuesday, 6 January 2015

T is for tea and taxes



Looking towards Hawk Ness


The high cliffs along our stretch of coast are a good place to look for peregrines. The inaccessible ledges provide roosting and breeding sites with the rock doves and sea-birds as a continuous food supply.
After a steep climb, you are rewarded with views up and down the coast. The peregrines have been here since before people came to name these places so that the highest point on the cliffs is called Hawk Ness.



I saw no peregrines but watched a lesser black-backed gull harassing a great northern diver. The gull had obviously sussed that the diver couldn't swallow its fishy prey while underwater so was waiting until it surfaced then trying to grab the fish from the diver's bill. The diver responded by diving again and resurfacing somewhere else to gulp down the catch before the gull could paddle over. The gull could see the diver under the waves and was turning to follow its path. An act of piracy worthy of a skua.

Climbing down the grassy slopes, I came across a ruined building that I had always thought was a sheiling built for the salmon fishers netting the fish on their coastal migration, albeit a more elaborate one compared to those further down the coast.

The smugglers' retreat

A new notice informed me that I was wrong. It had been built by a smuggler, one Alexander Robertson who smuggled the then highly taxed, tea into the country presumably landing it on the flat rocky shore line or in the adjacent bay, well out of sight of the coastguards and gaugers. He was so successful that he bought the mortgage of Gunsgreen House, an impressive Adams mansion built in the nearby fishing port by his great rival in the contraband trade, John Nisbet. Gunsgreen is perfectly fitted out for the smuggler with false walls and secret doorways.



Gunsgreen House





The tools of the smuggling trade
The waters below the old sheiling now attract surfers and sea-anglers but with a little imagination you can just see the men in their thigh high sea- boots splashing through the shallows or working the winch to bring the cases of tea and the barrels of brandy ashore.


Surfers below the sheiling

No peregrines to be seen to day so a steep haul up to the coastal path then home for a cup of untaxed, VAT-free tea.