Expedition 158 - 16th September 2006
The South Channel

 


This was one of the best days ever, but it started rather poorly: there were only two explorers, Benjamin and Thomas, when we left Acharacle but when we got to Shielfoot we found four more waiting for us - Caitlin, Eilish, Kerry and Sarah, so with Maureen, Morag Anne and Pamela it made quite a team, particularly with Findlay getting his paw in for the first time.
I expected it to be wet underfoot but the going was dry and we made good time to the fishing hut, where everyone read the inscriptions and then the waterfall, which was pretty noisy, they must have had rain at Glenfinnan. There were lots of little dark dragonflies by the river. Then we looked at the cairn by Cairn Bay and walked round to the bottom of the old village. Everyone saw the gravestones on the ancient cairn and then we quickly carried on round the shoreline.

We were very lucky that the expedition coincided with a very low tide so we were able to go right out across the sand to the rocks, which are not often accessible. I took some photographs, but I was nervous about the tide and we returned to the shore for the Tunnock's wafers.

The route back was much more strenuous - I was looking for the ruins of an old croft but we only found the cultivation ridges. It was a steep hill and I didn't get any support for going over to the next valley to find the old house. Eventually we all struggled across the peat bog to the top of the hill, and then it was all downhill and the explorers started moving fast again.
On the way down, one of the boys found a caterpillar - a sweet gale moth, feeding on some bog myrtle. When we got down to the old village we located the corn kiln and the boys climbed into the fire passage, but couldn't get right through because it was blocked. The last features we examined were some glacial scratches on the rocks above Cairn Bay. Everyone was pretty tired at the end and the girls stayed in Shielfoot and did their drawings there

John Dye



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