Expedition 259, 28th January 2012
Shielbridge

 

It was quite like old times to see everyone assembling at the church triangle again, when I arrived there were already quite a few cars and several young explorers racing around the trees. By 9.30 we had assembled nine explorers, Alexander, Calum, Fern, Josephine, Parker, Roslin, Robbie, Rowan and Serena, nine adults, Alastair, David, Howard, Joanne, John Dove, Mairi, Pamela, Sharon, Simon, and two dogs, Ellie and Fizz.

My leg still wasn't up to tackling the high hills so this time we kept to low, mostly level ground. We started off up the Kentra road where I told everyone about Queen's Cottage and the time when Charlie Pacey pretended to be a gnome fishing in the garden pool, and also about the heap of oyster shells found under a local shed, remains of the meals of some very ancient inhabitants.

Further up the road we came to the lochan, which was the first of the glacial features of the day, and a little further on, a tiny but very old pine tree struggling to survive on a patch of boggy ground. Beyond this, everyone looked at the ridge across the moss, representing the edge of an ice sheet which once dammed this end of Loch Shiel.

There was then a rather dangerous walk along the public road across the moss. Everyone saw the drainage channels across the moss and I explained how a man had run a peat-cutting machine in that area many years ago, but it turned out too rainy for him to make a success of the venture. Near the Arivegaig road end we looked at a rounded rock outcrop bearing the scrape marks or striae, from the glacier which ground them into the rock.

We had become rather dispersed at this stage and everyone gathered again on the track opposite the Arivegaig turn-off. I pointed out the quarry which had been used to produce material for Shielbridge House and the iron box which had once been a magazine for explosives. We continued down the track towards Shielbridge that had once been the route of a short railway which carried stone for the building.

Fortunately John Dove had been along the path with his secateurs so we were able to get through the rhoddies without too much trouble, but the ground was very soggy in parts. Eventually we all emerged onto level dry ground behind Shielbridge House where the explorers saw where the power station used to be and looked at the finials on the shed which could once have been on David MacBrayne's Hotel.

We walked round the house and down the road to the gate of the big house and I told everyone how I had met the same Charlie Pacey with a wheelbarrow and rake, clearing leaves by the gate on his 99th birthday.

We then went up the road towards Acharacle for a little way and finally turned off onto the route of the old road. Once again the rhododendrons were pretty overgrown but we all got through without trouble to reach an open hilly area among the trees known geologically as the Acharacle Eskers. Eskers are ridges of gravel produced by rivers flowing under glaciers and these ones were used by the explorers for a lot of running about, swinging from a tree and rolling an old tyre, during which activity, we fitted in our rather late Tunnock's wafers.

Continuing along the track we crossed a makeshift bridge made, I was told, from the doors of the shed which once stood nearby and was used by Johnny Gorten as an office. A little further on was an old house, once the home of the MacIntyre family, one of whom got a mention in the Acharacle School records over a hundred years ago. A few yards further there was a field containing a rather bemused pony and all the young explorers climbed on the gate trying to make its acquaintance, but it turned out to be rather shy. My camera failed but David got a nice picture of this.

This brought us back to the road and our return, after a long gap, to the Blue Parrot, where everyone got down to some serious drawing. There was no general consensus on the high point of the expedition and I have picked out Parker's inspired portrayal of his friend Alexander walking through the tangled rhododendrons.

John Dye




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