Expedition 242 - 23rd October 2010
Salen Village

 

Another lovely sunny day for the most dangerous expedition of the year, since it is almost all on the main road; not only that but it coincided with the Morgan Rally so there were a lot of nice cars to watch. We started out with ten explorers and had eleven by the time we finished: Becky D, Billy, Calum R., Ewan S., Fern, Jonathan C., Laura C., Lucy D., Roslyn, Rowan and Stewart S., with six adults, Fiona S., Jan, Phil, Philippa, Sharon and Simon, plus Ellie and Rocky to assist with tracking.

Surprisingly, all of us assembled at Acharacle, although most of the group had come from Salen, and we drove back and set off from the Salen Car Park. The explorers were carefully shepherded across the road and we set off into the wood to look at the small lochan. I explained that there was a history of a magical horse in this pool which was said to have carried off two local children – a tale treated by the explorers with considerable scepticism.

Climbing to the top of the wood, we all took a breather in the Wood School, a place which all the children already knew well. Then we passed the compost centre and assembled to get everyone across the road again. The next part was through the bushes and I rather feared we would have trouble with brambles, but it was not bad at all and we all arrived together at the cairn and looked into the open grave. There was some disappointment in not finding a body in it, but I explained the body had been removed in 1897 and was probably a bunch of bones in a cardboard box somewhere ever since. Then we scrambled back to the road and walked back to the corner on the wide grass verge.

There were three things to see at the corner: the milepost made in Blaydon, the Eucalyptus tree and a standing stone near the wall, none of which detained us long before Rocky led us on familiar territory round to the back of the hotel. We sneaked in to a garden at the back in order to examine a lovely iron gate, possibly made by Calum MacPherson, the Salen smith, and the building which was probably once a stable and garage for a carriage belonging to the hotel.

We carried on down the hill passing a building which used to be the police station and the site of the old smithy. Then we went up the side road to look at Skipper’s Cottage and the site of the cattle sales. Returning to the main road, we slowly passed through the village looking at the various old buildings, paying particular attention to the hall and the sites of the WW2 military camp. We stopped for our wafer break at the old viewing point, where the old school bench has almost rotted away, before going to look at the steamer pier where the ships from Glasgow would call twice a week.

By the time we reached the end of the village, the sun was out and it took us far less time to come back, calling at the jetty and the Lord Provost’s lamp post on the way.

This time everyone got to the Blue Parrot and they all made drawings, it was a hard choice but I picked out Calum’s composite view of the morning: in the middle are his hands holding a half-brick he found with the word LOCH on it and at the side are views of Billy’s lobster creels, a yacht and a buoy with a cormorant sitting on it.

John Dye

 



 










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