Expedition 218 - 18th July 2009
The Third Dam

 

The day was dreich at the start and I wasn’t expecting much enthusiasm, but it turned out to be a good turnout: Alasdair C., Ben, Edward, Fern, Robbie C., Rowan and Thomas, with Howard, John Dove, Pamela and Sharon and Ellie as a first-stage pathfinder.
This time we set out from Acharacle village, starting from the burn gate. John Dove and Ellie were not available for the whole walk and simply guided us onto the high ground before returning for other duties. On the way up, Sharon found an Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar in the burn, it had unfortunately become submerged and seemed to be beyond resuscitation, nobody volunteered to give it the kiss of life anyway.

The next part of the climb involved getting through a rather tricky narrow pass, but then the ground became level and easier. I was looking for a tributary joining the stream from the right and when I found it, there was some doubt among the team, but we followed it up and there was the little lochan just as the map predicted. Everyone looked at the water lilies before pushing on up round the shoulder of the hill. At this stage the boys were moving fairly fast and we got a bit spread out, which was a shame since Fern, at the back, found a baby meadow pipit and we all had to go back down to see it.

The little bird was almost fledged, another day or two and it would have flown away, but it just sat in the grass while its mother was cheeping in the background in great alarm. I took a picture of the little bird and we resumed our climb to the top.

We could see the Loch na Nighinn and the burn coming out of it, but most of the explorers didn’t recognise the dame since it was completely covered with high bracken. When we got to it we found it had been broken by a flood; which gave us a chance to dig into the base and confirm that it did have a clay lining.

This was the smallest of the three high dams and we couldn’t find a penstock valve this time. We did find a big hole in the middle of the dam and Thomas went in to investigate, finding more clay.

We crossed to the cliff where there seemed to have been a quarry and we had our wafers sitting on the rocks. All this time there was an unusually warm breeze blowing from the north.

After lunch I had originally intended to go to the top of this hill to enjoy the view but the cloud was down on all the bens so it wasn’t worth it. The boys set off back on a route with avoided the meadow pipit and we quickly made our way to the small lochan. Then we crossed the burn and walked round the hill so that we came out above Acharacle village.

I had picked this route to take in the old Acharacle Fank, which seemed to have originally been made of vertical flagstones. Everyone had a look at the fank and the dip and Alasdair found a clipping stool and we located a turf one just outside the fank.

On the way down to the village, we stopped to look at an old wooden water tank on the hill, possibly the original hotel water supply. Ben found a piece of the filter lying nearby. Then it was a quick descent back to the cars and the Blue Parrot.

It was clear from the drawings that the pipit was the star of the day, I picked out Robbie’s drawing of it in the vegetation.

John Dye





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