Expedition 256, 16th July 2011
MacNeil's Isle

 

Yet another day when the weather forecast said we should stay in, but it turned out OK. Unfortunately it was also another of the days when the tide at Newtown didn't do what I expected and my promised visit to the mouth of the bay will have to wait for another time. Three explorers this time: Benjamin, Calum and Thomas, with Clark, Pamela, Philippa and Simon plus Ellie detecting things in the distance which none of the humans could see.

We set off from the end of the road at Newtown and found the stream quite deep so we did a detour around the top of the beach and along the hills before we reached the strange boathouse, which the explorers were pleased to examine. From the boathouse we climbed the hill, probably following the route of the old path from Shielfoot to Ardtoe. At the top of the hill we found a large flat area with some peat banks, but no idea as to who would have cut them.

It was about here that Ellie did her concentrated-stare-into-the-distance, which we all tried to interpret without success, possibly she smelt a deer or a fox but none of us saw anything. We made a turn towards the south channel and crossed another bog before finally climbing onto a nice hill with a view down onto MacNeil's Isle and the South Channel. Here we had our wafers and looked at the lovely view.

From the top it looked like an easy walk back down to the beach, where the tide was clearly now going out at last, and the walk down didn't take long at all. The beach was quite muddy and covered with lugworm casts but it was easier walking than the bog. We passed an oystercatcher which was quite agitated and must have had fledglings in the vicinity. We stopped for a while to look at the oysters in their racks before continuing up to the top of the beach.

The final stretch of path followed the burn closely and we had a look for small flatfish. There were lots of shrimps but we didn't see the flatfish until we got well up the burn, but eventually we found lots of small plaice and flounders.

Once again, I sadly omitted to get a picture of the whole group in the most exciting place and had to settle for a quick picture before we got back in the cars. However, Calum did a fine drawing showing us looking for flatfish in the burn.

John Dye





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