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It's always a bit of a gamble when an expedition coincides
with a holiday weekend, but I prefer to stick with the regular
fortnightly sequence. This was a time when I only got one
young explorer, Alexander, but we had five helpers, Mairi,
Maris, Phil and Simon with two dogs, Fizz and Jamie to fetch
sticks and investigate interesting smells.
The day was neither warm nor sunny but the rain held off and
we covered a lot of ground. We started from the car park at
Arivegaig and made good speed along the track until we reached
Airidh Iain, where we turned and climbed the hill to the glade
of oak trees around the old croft. We had a look at the site
of the old spring, now choked up and covered with a fallen
birch, and the well-built 'new' house with the rather poor
'old' house next to it. Alexander wasn't keen on climbing
the big oak this time and we walked around the house to pass
the stone building which might have once housed a bull.
Although nobody has lived at Airidh Iain for over a hundred
years, animals have used the paths around it and it was possible
to see the old route back to the track, which we followed
very carefully since it was rocky and steep.
Once on the lower ground we made a detour to visit the little
power station, which was not operating on this visit. Then
we crossed the new bridge and had a look in the pond. In previous
years this pool had been hooching with tadpoles but there
was not one to be seen this year, although it had a lot of
pond skaters. We looked in another pool close by and still
found no tadpoles but a group of whirligig beetles, this time
mostly under the water.
Carefully negotiating the gate we carried on up the track
to the woods. This was quite steep and tiring and I was receiving
requests for a Tunnock's stop, but we pushed on to the woods
to see if we could reach the waterfall.
When we got to the wood we found a regular game of big spillikins,
with fallen trees all over the place. It was starting to spit
with rain so we selected a nice spot under the trees and had
our wafers, with Bonios for the quadrupeds.
There was no way we could get through the woods so we started
slowly on our way back. A short way down the hill I spotted
a tree with lots of woodpecker holes and we went off the track
to have a look. This was an apparently healthy oak, the woodpecker
must have had a tungsten-tipped beak, and the bark was already
starting to grow over the holes. There were no wood chips
around the trunk, maybe the bird found a softer tree this
year.
After a brief stop we set off again down the track, pausing
to look at the gulls out on the mud flats and we made it back
to the Blue Parrot before the hard rain started.
John Dye
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