Expedition 267, 2nd June 2012
Glenmoidart

 

This was the Jubilee weekend and there were lots of things going on, I was surprised to get any explorers at all. We got four: Alexander, JJ, Josephine and Serena with Joanne, John B, Les, Mairi and Marco as the adult helpers and no dogs this time. Actually we also had Daibhidh for a short time but he was engaged in a project of his own and couldn't stay long. The weather was fantastic but there was a bit of a cold breeze at the beginning.

We started from the car park at the end of the road and set off up the rough track. It's a lot better than it used to be, but I still couldn't keep up with the explorers who made a very good speed up to the old fank at the top. We stopped a bit to look at the old walls, which include the remains of a house.

Leaving the fank we carried on and the explorers got well ahead and had a look at the river bridge. While they did so, they disturbed a pair of greenshank who were flying about piping away. We all kept watching for eagles but saw none on this trip. However, the explorers were doing a lot of investigating and found many caterpillars and beetles along the path.

We made fairly slow progress so I didn't go up the hill to Glenforslan but carried on to the old house and the steading. On the way we stopped to look at the burn, which might have been adapted to drive a mill at some time. We examined the house which had big cracks in the wall, and then moved on to the steading, where everyone was able to see the names written on the woodwork by shearers, some of the writing was over a hundred years old.

After a Tunnock's break, which was none too soon for some of the party, we set off slowly back down the glen, but were soon distracted by a big dragonfly which was hanging onto some rushes and eating a fly. Everyone watched the dragonfly for ages and it was still eating away when we left. That was a dangerous place for insects since there were butterworts and sundew growing nearby.

There were requests for drinking water and we waited at the waterfall while bottles were filled, with all the explorers scrambling precariously over the boulders.

The next part of the journey was very interesting with tadpoles, newts and a lizard to see and the group became rather split up again until we got back to the car park. Before leaving, Mairi took everyone down to the river to look at the animals among the stones.

Although we didn't see an eagle, this was still a good day for finding things. Most people couldn't go to the Blue Parrot, but Alexander did go and turned out a picture of the dragonfly eating the fly.

John Dye








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