With a hey ho, the wind and the rain,the rain it raineth every day

Swithin’s day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain
St Swithin’s day, if thou be fair,
For forty days ‘twill rain nae mair

St Swithin’s day has come and gone and, indeed, it did rain so are we due a long wet summer? The rain was certainly needed by the farmers but the prospect of more just as the harvest approaches cannot be anticipated with much delight. To be honest, the weather is never quite right for the agricultural community. What pleases the stockmen isn’t the best for the grain growers and what suits the tattie growers isn’t just perfect for the rest.

Ripening fields

Our annual pilgrimage to the Atlantic’s edge, the Isle of Lewis trip, featured wind and rain that, even by Hebridean standards, was dreadful. You don’t expect to need factor 30, but to be confined to quarters with paper backs and crosswords in July was a bit frustrating. The St Kilda trip was cancelled and even quick local forays resulted in soakings however we did manage a few jaunts so that LotH could recharge her Gaelic batteries.

On one trip to the west side of the island, we stopped at the Norse Mill in Shawbost, having driven past it scores of times before. A restoration of an old mill of the kind that was common throughout the islands right up into the 20th century with a horizontal water wheel rather than the more familiar vertical one. the design must date back to the Iron Age. A companion building housed a simple grain drying kiln heated by a peat fire so it would seem that the farmers had problems drying their crop right back to the days of old Saint Swithin himself. Of course, they didn’t have to meet the demands of the grain buyers on moisture content or pay for diesel but I bet they grumbled just as much.

Shawbost Norse Mill

Interior of mill

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/lewis/norsemill/index.html

Heading home with a haul of famous Stornoway black puddings and duff (dumplings, to the uninitiated) we were lucky that the North Atlantic low had moved on taking its gales with it and allowing for a reasonable crossing of the Minch.

NCC was ecstatic to have her walks reinstated, throwing herself around and rolling over with joy. A couple of long walks seemed poor recompense for such a welcome and despite the prediction in the rhyme the rain has held off for the time being.
The wild flowers are, by and large, beginning to set seed though the almond scent of the meadowsweet is still a pleasant background to our tours of village.

The swallows seem fewer this year and I have not seen a swift at all. Only two last year and none this year. Sad. The scream of the devil birds round the houses was always part of village summers. I remember picking up a young swiftlet that had landed on the ground and couldn’t get airborne again with its long wings and short legs. Place it on top of a bay window for take off and off it went. What has happened to the swifts? Cousin in Florence tells me there are dozens there. Lack of nest sites as all the old buildings get tarted up?
Perhaps the planners could make it a condition of consent that nest sites are included. I doubt it.. If they don’t return, I’ll miss them because if ever a bird lived up to its name – blackbirds are black birds: ducks do duck: fly-catchers catch flies: wagtails do wag their tails and swifts are gloriously, wondrously swift.

As Ted Hughes says in his poem Swifts, about their return

They’ve made it again,
Which means the globe’s still working,

A more perceptive observation than old St Swithin’s rhyme ever was... and all the more ominous when no swifts are seen.

Grey, white and blue

The Grey Mare's Tail

Eight months since I got my new hip, time for some field trials. With no unclimbed Munros near at hand, I settled for a Corbett (2500 to 3000 ft.). After last week’s foray up the Yarrow valley, it seemed natural to venture just a wee bit further over the watershed into Moffatdale to White Coomb. Roadside car parking, courtesy of the National Trust and a well maintained, if fairly steep, path up the side of the Grey Mare’s Tail waterfall was a easy start to the climb. Sun hat, sunscreen, plenty of fluids – gone are the days when you could happily drink from hill burns - a fleece, for despite the sunny day, the temperature at the top might be a lot less, and off I set.
Up the long “staircase” to the top of the falls then further up to Loch Skene sitting in its little valley below Lochcraighead . Itself no mean hill at over two thousand feet. – a so-called Donald after Donald’s lists of lowland hills of this height,- it lowered over the loch.
Halfway up, a hawk cried from a high crag but was too far off to identify, possibly a merlin. I had seen one in a neighbouring valley previously.






Lochcraighead looms over Loch Skene while a couple of feral goats pay me no attention

Lochcraighead proved a bit of a challenge on the old legs but once the summit was reached, the ridge out to White Coomb looked a nice stroll following the county boundary fence. Ah, the county boundary – a face saver, indeed, maybe even a life saver, in the days before GPS navigational aids. Lost in the mist – find the boundary fence and you knew where you were on the map. Follow it and you would get to somewhere else on the map without risk.

The boundary wall and fence !

White Coomb provided the greatest of views. To the east the Eildons and the Lammermuirs: to the north the Pentlands and the southern edge of the Grampians : west to the Manor hills : south to the Cheviots, then over to the Lowthers and, hanging in the haze, the Lakeland fells.

White Coomb from Loch Skene

Going up had been strenuous enough but, oh, coming down was hard on the old joints. Plenty of stops gave me time to admire the carpet of wild flowers. Yellow stars of tormentil, the deep blue of milkworts, the tufts of bog cotton, northern orchids, and masses of dwarf cornel. Apparently, its berries are an appetite stimulant which gives it its Gaelic name lus a chraois – plant of gluttony. I would have thought climbing two thousand feet would have been enough of a stimulant without any berries.

Dwarf cornel

Down at car-park level, there was time for an expedition up to Dobb’s Linn to look for fossils. The fossils are easily found amongst the oil shale rocks -Ordivician graptolites, like little doodles on the slatey shale.
Dobb's Linn
The most pleasing find was the linn itself, a delightful little three-stage fall, much prettier than its big blowsy hyped up neighbour down the road.
So the new pin stood up to a bit of off-roading. Well done, the orthopods !

The blue remembered hills ...............where I went but cannot come again

but now I can, thanks to the skill of the orthopaedic surgeons and the marvels of technology. I am very thankful.

Black magic and bread & butter pudding

Monument to James Hogg near Tibbie Sheil's Inn

Reading James Hogg’s The Brownie of Bodsbeck with its setting in the Border valleys where Ettrick and Yarrow almost meet, we felt a trip to Tibbie Sheils Inn at the head of St Mary’s Loch and erstwhile convivial haunt of Hogg and Scott and the literarati of Edinburgh, was in order. By happy coincidence Tibbie Sheils turned up in the Times list of 50 Best Places to eat in Britain. It seemed like a good omen.
It also gave me a chance to go and look for the site of Binram’s Corse, corse being Old Scots for cross. It was common for the r to be transposed as in brunt for burnt or girse for grass.
According to tradition and to Hogg’s poem, Mess John, Binram was a priest at the nearby Kirk o’ the Forest who was so obsessed by “the bonnie lass o’ Craigieburn” that he raised the devil in order to bring her under his power and seduce her. He was shot and killed by Covenanters and his grave is still to be seen though the cross has long since gone.

After the success of my play with its hero, the grave-robbing Dr Laurie, a necromancer priest might just prove a source of further inspiration and there was the prospect of a pleasant meal in literary surroundings to boot.
Journeying up Yarrow is a trip into historical romance. _ the Dowie Dens of Yarrow. The characters appear from all sides Mungo Park the explorer of the Niger: Sir James Douglas, Bruce’s lieutenant, - the Black Douglas to the English, the Good Sir James to the Scots: Mary of Dryhope, the Flower of Yarrow: Hangingshaw, the home of the Outlaw Murray: Newark Tower, hunting seat of Scottish kings and setting for Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel: the Brakehope Burn, scene of the ballad The Douglas Tragedy with its tale of eloping lovers and pursuing brothers, duels and death.
What a river!
Tibbie’s proved as good as expected - simple food, excellently prepared, using local produce, a good Sunday roast beef and two veg. with a suitably comforting bread and butter pudding to follow, though LotH declined the latter.

After lunch, I wished I had taken the same firm stand as I puffed up the footpath looking for Binram’s grave.



Binram's Corse overlooking St Mary's loch and Bowerhope, once home to James Hogg

After my misadventures in the mist on Hart Fell (Blog 27/03/2007) when some rather dodgy compass work had resulted in my ending up in the wrong valley, the girls, fearing for my safety had bought me a GPS navigation aid, so it was easy-peasy finding the site using the RCAHMS co-ordinates..
A lonely spot made even more desolate by the mournful calls of the whaups, - curlews to English speakers. Binram's Corse, a lonely spot

Mission accomplished. Home to re-read Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Hogg’s great master work.

Ospreys and Eye-ops

A trip up north to Carrbridge was just the way to take advantage of the recent sunny spell. A chance to watch the famous Boat of Garten ospreys and search for the elusive Scottish crossbill, our only truly indigenous bird. It’s a sair reflection on our delusions of Braveheart grandeur when we realise that our truly native species, found nowhere else, is not the majestic golden eagle but a dumpy wee finch with a beak like a pair of secateurs.

Male osprey leaving after bringing fish

The crossbills proved too elusive. It would seem the long harsh winter has diminished their numbers, but we did spot golden-eye on Loch Mallachie and Slavonian grebes on Loch Ruthven, six breeding pairs alongside red-throated divers and the dotterel on Cairngorm.

The Clootie Well

A trip to Cromarty in search of the dolphins ended up in Raigmore hospital. We had gone by way of the Clootie Well, an ancient site where people have left bits of clothing as part of an old belief that as the cloth decomposes the ailment from that part of the body will also go.
Two hours later, I was in the Eye department with a vitreous detachment and a retinal tear getting lasered. The influence of the Clootie Well is obviously not pro-active.

LotH has become an osprey fan and has been watching the hatching and the rearing of the three chicks via the web-cam.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/webcams/birdsofprey/lochgartenospreynest.asp

The last and smallest chick’s battles to get a share of the food are fascinating to watch. To raise three young is a huge achievement. but the pair did manage it last year and the male bird seems a great provider so here’s hoping for a similar success this time.

A trip to feed the Cairngorm reindeer was fun but an even easier way to watch wildlife is to go to Inshriach gardens and sit and eat cake while watching the squirrels. If only all nature was so accessible

!!!!

Close encounters for the third time

UFO (Unidentified Floral Object)


Anyone who has been daft enough to persist with my ramblings over the past few years may recall the late, lamented VBA (Very Big Alsatian) and his encounter with the UFO (Unidentified Floral Object). For two summers the UFO appeared in The Dell, growing Triffid –like from the stony bed of the burn then, as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished.
Reference -Blog 06/05/2007
Yes, I know, who is going to remember that far back. O.K. It was a few years ago.
Today, while out poking about in a small wood downstream of The Dell ,where buzzards might be nesting and badgers have been busy, lo and behold, there was not one but two UFO’s and one of them looked as if it was beginning to flower. The long spike of a stamen was arising from a bract of leaves. They look like banana plants but even with global warming that would be really ridiculous. The mystery deepens. Obviously they are escapes but from where?



VBA and the original UFO May 2007

VBA liked to cool off in the burn and regarded the intruder with suspicion but NCC has no horticultural leanings and regards the wood only as a source of things furry or feathered to chase, if only for amusement

We shall monitor the Triffid’s development. I have sent a picture to a website that answers garden questions to see if it is terrestrial or if our wood is the secret landing site for alien plant life come to colonise Earth.

If they have come to stay here, they are as green as they are cabbage-looking, things being the way they are at present.

Do two swallows make a summer?

Greater Celandine

Hurrah, Hurrah. The swallows are back. I saw my first two arrivals perched on the telephone wires yesterday, sighted on the same day as last year. How do they do it? Despite the volcanic ash and stiff northerly winds that have reduced us poor creatures to our natural status as humble ground dwellers, the swallows came swooping in, back from their winter sojourn bang on time. Wonderful creatures, they give me a lift every year, these spirits of the air.
Less pleasing is the pervasive, irresistible march of the celandine through the garden borders. The tiny bulbules are scattered at every attempt to eradicate it, spreading the pernicious weed even further.
Celandine derives from the Greek khelidon, a swallow, and it does bloom at the same time as their arrival but, each year, there seem to be fewer and fewer swallows and more and more celandine. Odd how some visitors are greeted with genuine delight and others with a moan of despair. The swallows don’t outstay their welcome and don’t take over the entire place like their starry, yellow namesakes. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

Invasive species aren’t all bad if they are in their proper place. Apparently, one can tell the age of a woodland by the extent of the spread of an Indicator Species such as Dog’s Mercury that increases its ground cover at a fixed rate. The same is true of Bluebells, Wood Anemone, Wood Sorrel and Ransomes.
Dog's Mercury, carpetting an ancient woodland floor

I will be checking out our local woods soon. Some of them must date back to the days when the monks of the Priory were granted rights to all the woods in the shire by William I , William the Lion. A fine of £10 (Scots) for anyone taking wood or wild animals or usurping the rights to warrens would have been an enormous deterrent when the average annual income was measured in shillings and pence.

Not much chance of anyone usurping the "rights of warren" these days, We seem to prefer battery chicken to free range coney. NCC has hurt her paw and is not for walks at present but as soon as she's better we can go and explore some of these ancient woods. She certainly shows a great deal of interest in rabbits.

Heights, hares and herons

NCC on the road

The daffodils have survived the blast. The northerlies that brought winter back with sleet and rain left them battered but unbowed which is more than can be said for the Sky dish which tells us that “no signal is being received”. Hidden as it is up amongst the highest chimneys, it will need the vertigo-defying skills of our local T.V. man to repair it.
The first time it caused problems, the engineer from the parent company took one look, sucked his teeth and said that it was a job for the “exceptional heights” men. When they arrived, I was a bit disappointed to find they were a pair of cheery Glaswegians of quite average stature. Our local friendly T.V man takes it all in his stride although even he will have to wait until the wind drops a bit.

The latest stranger to the bird feeders has been a long tailed tit. I have seen them around the village before but not often and never in the garden. An extremely attractive bird in white,black and a hint of pink .

Long tailed tit

NCC has had her excursions curtailed by the appalling weather so, today, we made long circuit by way of some local conifer plantations and she set off madly in pursuit of a roe deer which was a dot on the horizon before she had got into full stride. BFC lived and died in the belief that he could catch deer and was equally as inept, trailing in their wake by half a mile.

My abiding interest in wildlife has caused me, on occasions, to be a less than attentive driver, my attention being caught by birds flying overhead or some thing glimpsed in a hedgerow. This has brought remonstrations from LotH as a passenger, often with what I would regard as an undue note of urgency in her tone. Last week, while driving down the A1, I saw a heron fly into a wood. Woods are not the normal habitat for herons so I returned, passenger-less, to have a nose around the spot. There it was, not more than thirty yards from the constant roar of the A1, a full blown heronry with at least half a dozen birds, though counting them in the canopy of the trees was difficult and played havoc with the old cervico- vertebral joints, they being much less flexible these days.

A pair of sentinel herons

Crossing the road during a lull in the stream of vehicles,. I came across a pair of brown hares, a jack and a jill, cementing their courtship in the next field, unconcerned about the traffic noise beyond the hedge.
We drive past in our mobile living rooms with the climate control and the C.D. player on, totally oblivious to the other world that goes on yards away: a world that regards us as, at best, an inconvenience, at worst, a threat. A world that we came from and were once part of but, with which we now have so little contact. What a pity when we are all urged to think about “the environment” that we spend so little time in this other world. Maybe if we did we would take better care of it all.