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!!

Invasion

Inveresk village with its 17^th and 18^th century houses and beautiful gardens is one of the finest conservation areas in Scotland.

Gardens to delight the senses are stocked with plants from every part of the world.

The stones that made the garden walls and the old houses are from still older buildings as far back as the Roman town.  There are no ruined stones only ruined buildings and good stone will always find a home... or make one

It has not always been the place for tranquil contemplation. Situated on a ridge commanding views of the Forth and above the point where the Esk river meets the Firth of Forth – Inbhir Easg , the confluence of the river Esk, with the Forth, in Gaelic – it was of strategic importance on the coastal plain.

It was occupied by the Brythonic tribe, the Goddodin who, no doubt, had displaced the earlier inhabitants. When the Romans invaded and marched north, its significance was obvious to them and they established a large fort and, later, a vicus or township. The Goddodin, latinised toVotadini became a client state of the empire at its northern frontier, at the eastern end of the Antonine Wall.

Diagonal chisel marks of Roman stonemasons

 on the walls of the church

When the legions left, the land was disputed by Northumbrian Angles and Southern Picts. By the time the country had melded into the nation of Scotland, the invading English armies took the same route north.

The land around St Michael's Kirk had great mounds to take artillery batteries guarding the old bridge and port.

The Rough Wooing of 1547 when Henry VIII tried to force a marriage between, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots and his son Edward, had the English armies devastating the area and defeating the Scots at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh.

Pinkie Cleugh  Battle Site

The seventeenth century saw Cromwell's Roundheads take possession and the eighteenth saw the arrival of Charles Stuart's Jacobites

Invaders and invasions have come and gone, none have possessed the land but fleetingly. All have retreated and left. But now there are more persistent interlopers.

The plant invaders – Japanese knotweed, Himalayan balsam., Giant hogweed.   More demanding and more dogged than any Roman, Anglo-Saxon or Englishman, they have colonised great tracts of the country, subduing and displacing the natives. These invaders are here to stay it would seem.

Himalayan Balsam

Japanese Knotweed

Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers – he didn't manage to invade either – but it is because we are a nation of gardeners that we suffer under the alien intrusions. Plants brought back to Victorian gardens have commandeered great swathes of riverbank overpowering all in their path.

It looks like these invaders have succeeded  where all others have failed. They are the possessors of the land now.

Feeding the gulls in Dublin

June 16^th - Bloomsday – the day that is forever associated with James Joyce's Ulysses. The day he met,  in Nassau Street, Nora Barnacle, chambermaid at Finns Hotel who was to become his lover, wife, life-long companion and muse.

 Ulysses, the novel - though that is scarcely what it is - takes place over that one day in Dublin in 1904.

Joyce's Dublin is still there despite the changes and you can follow the paths taken by his two protagonists as they make their way from opposite sides of the city and eventually, by chance, meet in the Holles Materrnity Hospital.

 The solicitous Leopold Bloom is enquiring of a woman he knows who has been three days in labour while the impetuous Stephen Dedalus is getting drunk with the medical students.  Having met Stephen's father at the funeral of Paddy Dignam, Bloom's concern for young Dedalus is such that he later rescues him from a beating by two soldiers in Bella Cohen's bordello.

Last year, we made our way in from Dalkey where Joyce / Dedalus taught at school and lived in a Martello tower, following him on his  day off  into the city to the National Library.

(Blog 6th April 2013)

Eccles Street

This year we came from the north of the city from Eccles Street.  No.7, the home of Bloom and his unfaithful, but loving. wife Molly, no longer exists but the rest of the Georgian frontage with the fanlights over the doors, is still there.

49 Lower O'Connel Street - Lemon's shop sign is still there

In O'Connel Street, you can still see Graham Lemon's sweet shop - “a sugar-sticky girl shovelling scoops of creams for a  christian brother. Some school treat.”, where Bloom is given a free newspaper – a throwaway - which gives rise to much misunderstanding and malice.
 A twenty-to-one outsider called Throwaway did win the Gold Cup in 1904.

The racing mad populace of the Dublin pubs think he has backed the horse and resent him for it but Bloom is quite unaware of it all.
We followed his meanderings around the city centre before and after the funeral - the shops, pubs, meeting places, offices and public places of Joyce's remembered city.

 Joyce left in 1904, ran off with Nora, and only returned briefly on four occasions, the last in 1912.
Although the Dublin of 1904 is the setting, the themes, thoughts, connections, literary and mythological links, symbolism, and archetypes found in Ulysses are universal and timeless.  It could be set in any city in any country yet because James Joyce wrote it, it had to be and still has to be, Dublin in 1904.

Davy Byrne's pub is still as popular as it was in Joyce's day.
Bloom muses...
"Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a drink now and then . But in a leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once".
 After a glass of wine there, he continues his perambulations around the Dublin streets.
 He feeds the gulls with a couple of Banbury cakes bought from an old woman's stall for a penny.

We couldn't get Banbury cakes so had to make do with croisants – three for 2 Euros!

 Further down Bachelors Walk, the Ormond Hotel, where he had a late lunch in the back room to avoid meeting his wife's lover, Blazes Boylan, is sadly dilapidated.

Ormond Hotel

Mabbot Street, the entrance to “Night-town”, the red light area where Bloom and Dedalus end up is still there if now thoroughly respectable.  The site of Bella Cohen's house of ill repute seems to have become the glass fronted tower of an asset management company, but then Bella was just managing her assets in 1904.

Mabbot Lane

Joyce's Dublin cannot survive for ever but with careful planning and preservation, we should be able to follow Bloom, Molly, Blazes Boylan, Stephen Dedalus, Buck Mulligan about their city for years to come......and feed the seagulls at O'Connel Bridge.

A day of enlightenment and a question

 LotH was battling with the soft furnishing departments of the Edinburgh stores so I withdrew and  took the opportunity to visit a place I had always meant to go but, because it is so easy to  reach, had never done so.

Hailes Castle in East Lothian

Hailes Castle was the home of the Dalrymple family so, when David Dalrymple purchased the Palladian mansion near Musselburgh from its architect, James Smith, it became New Hailes and, eventually, Newhailes.

It typified the move of the Scottish aristocracy from the tough defenders of embattled strongholds against both local and cross-border attackers in various combinations and alliances, to cultivated men of educated tastes and interests. 

Newhailes

 The Union of the Parliaments and the creation of Great Britain in 1707 created a peaceful environment for learning to flourish and led on to the phenomenon of the Scottish Enlightenment

In Scotland, the wide base of literacy, and a collaborative spirit among the key thinkers of the day, meant that when world class philosophers emerged, their ideas were taken on board, developed, and - most importantly - applied by others whose interests ranged from economics through medicine, engineering, geology, law, archeology, physics, chemistry, biology, history and more. The result was astonishing and has since been described as the greatest outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishment seen in any nation at any time in history.

New Hailes and David Dalrymple, the 3^rd Baronet were part of this great interaction of enquiring minds. The library with its huge collection of books was described by Samuel Johson as “the most learned drawing room in Europe”

The Library now denuded of books

The gardens and grounds were designed to stimulate the senses with outstanding views and specific features added such as the grotto which was associated with thought and contemplation. The poet and satirist, Alexander Pope, had a grotto dug at his Palladian villa in Twickenham.

The Shell Grotto

A more mundane tunnel was excavated at Newhailes to allow servants access to the house from their separate quarters without the upper classes having their contemplation spoiled by the coming and going of the lower orders!

The walkways and viewpoints are still there but the hoi polloi now have the freedom to roam the paths and the views have been somewhat marred by the march of progress.

The chimneys of Cockenzie power station providing a different sort of enlightenment for the masses

The spread of ideas from the philosophic to the practical with the work of Hutton in geology: Black in chemistry and physics: Cullen in medicine, chemistry and agriculture: Watt in steam engineering: Murdoch in gas lighting; Walker in natural history, resulted in changes in society that those who inspired them could never have foreseen.

The windows of the great library, and many others in the house are now blind, mainly as a result of internal alterations. Somehow they seem symbolic of the intellectual blindness that followed that most glorious time when the Enlightenment finally succumbed to religiosity and romanticism.

Blind windows

 Would that eighteenth century outpouring of  philosophic and scientific thought that came to be known as the Scottish Enlightenment and that influenced western society to this day, have happened without the Act of Union?       We will never know.

Beinn Bragar and beyond

 

Beinn Bragar

Beinn Bragar isn't much of a hill, less than a thousand feet, but on the flat Lewis moorland it, and its two companions, Beinn Rahacleit and Beinn Choinnich, stand out as a mini-massif on the peat bogs. The ramparts of ancient stone promised some energetic scrambling with the prospect of some decent views of the coastline to the north and west.

A good scramble!

The path in from Shawbost took me over abandoned peat hags and squelchy mosses to the base of the ben then a stiff but relatively quick, even for an old guy, climb to the upper stony redoubt.

The entire climb was accompanied by the call of cuckoos, perhaps voicing an opinion of the sensibility of the blogger, and the warbling wheep of curlew. The approach slopes were steep enough to keep my face parallel to the ground and gave me a passing inventory of the flora and fauna of the hill - the insectiverous butterworts, spotted hebridean orchids, busy burying beetles, marsh violets and delicate sedges.

The scramble to the top was quite exhilarating and the views, as expected, were beautiful.

To the north, I saw a good track which looked a lot easier than the peat moor that I tramped across and seemed the best way out but, as I discovered, everything has its price.  The descent was not as easy on the northern slopes. 

No easy way down

 Somewhat bruised but intact, I made my way back to have look at the remains of an Iron age fort – a dun,on   the edge of the appropriately named Loch an Duna, in the village of Bragar.

Dun Bragar

Built in the first millenium B.C., it was occupied up until the middle ages when defensive sructures were still essential in the habitual clan battles between Morrisons, Macalays, and Macleods.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/jun/21/scotland-windpower-lewis-morrisons-macaulays

Now, the only occupants of the loch are grey lags and mallards, raising their broods in peace.

  Down by the sea, I came across the somewhat grandly named Port Mhor Bragar,  translating as the big port of Bragar which only consists of a slipway but, like so many of the spots on the Hebrides, has an a view round every corner.

Another relic of the middle ages is the pre-reformation chapel, Teampull Eoin, at Port Mhor Bragar.  Like so many of these charming little early churches along the coastline of Lewis, it has been allowed to fall into ruin, despoiled by modern graves dug in its interior.
 Strange that islanders so famed for their religiosity should treat the places of worship of their forefathers in such a cavalier fashion.

Teampull Eoin - St John's chapel

   Despite the bruises, a good day out.