A great day on the hill, spoiled
only by my failure to take a picture of the group, and we
were all looking so smart. Six of us set out from Acharacle,
Robbie L., and Zack with Howard, John Dove and Richard arriving
at the Smirisary lay-by in good time, where we found Sandra
waiting, so we were seven in all, plus Ellie the expedition
dog. Before attacking the hill I set up the telescope and
we checked out the bay for whales. Zack thought he saw one,
and Robbie spied some people in a sailing boat, giving us
an incredibly detailed description of their clothing.
Then we set off on the long climb up to Loch na Bairness,
stopping on the way to examine some cairns and a big rock
with a shelter underneath. When we reached the loch we all
went to the remains of the old boat house and had a quick
search for the submerged boat I saw on the last visit, but
it seemed to have disappeared.
I had set our destination as the black pool, an dubh lochan,
and we had to cross a lot of really rough ground to get around
the loch. Both of the boys were in very observant form and
Robbie managed to catch a butterfly which I tried desperately
to photograph, but with little success. Then he found a bright
blue damselfly and I didn’t do well with that one either.
Finally he got the damselfly to settle on his finger and I
got a couple of good pictures of it. It was a male common
blue damselfly, Enallagma cyathigerum; I think the butterfly
was a meadow brown.
Then we set off again on what seemed to be an interminable
climb to the black pool. It was lucky that we had Sandra since
she knew the way well and was able to reassure us we were
not far from our target. Eventually we reached it and the
adults had a sit down and restored our energy with a wafer.
The boys had plenty of energy to spare and managed some rough
games in the water, getting fairly wet for the walk back.
For the return I set off fairly directly down the hill over
some more very rough ground. At one point we reached a very
rickety old bridge and I went across first – fortunately
we all got across. Then it was a quick walk to the track and
back down to the cars and back to the Blue Parrot.
John
Dye
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