Expedition 275 - 22nd September 2012
Ardery Woods

 

Once again, the expedition coincided with a major event, the Book Festival at Strontian, so some explorers were eager to get away, at least we were on the way to Strontian anyway. We had nine explorers: Alexander, Archie, Calum, Roslyn, Maighsi, Parker, Roanna, Roscoe and Zack with five helpers, Alasdair, Liz, Mairi, Shona and Simon and three expedition dogs Fizz, Flecks and Hamish, who all found items of great interest they couldn't explain to us.

The weather was nice but we were under the trees and I waited too long to get a picture with a view and then forgot to take it. We all parked at Ann Henderson's and walked very carefully up the main road to the start of the Ardery brae. I pointed out a group of ruined buildings in the woods near the road junction which seem to have no name and appear on no maps. The track to Ardery is stony but at least traffic-free and the explorers set off at a good pace and had to be called back regularly when our route took us into the woods.

The first diversion was halfway up the hill and it was a bit awkward getting through some fallen branches to reach the old pollard tree. The tree is another which has fallen since I first saw it in the survey of 2000, but the cultivation terraces, the old houses and the remains of the turf house were all just as clear as ever. We found a tree with a strange black fungus, I later found it was called Bulgaria, just like the Womble.

Then we pushed on up the path for a long way, turning off by the wreck of an old lorry and moving up into the highest part of the woods. We found a nice place for our Tunnock's wafers and spent some time wandering among the trees on nice grassy slopes. There were lots of badger paths there and we could seen many places where badgers had been scratching up the grass for worms.

Finally we went back down the path, making a diversion to look at another old oak pollard, which had been hollow but had lost half its trunk. Next to the tree was a pit where gravel had been dug out and this proved to be a great attraction to the dogs, and two of the explorers came within a whisker of falling in.
It was quite a long way back so we didn't go to the high platform but returned along the track and back to the Blue Parrot.

Not everyone was able to stay at that time and I have picked out Parker's picture sent in later, showing the gravel pit with the dog and an explorer falling from a tree near the edge, plus me with my stick.



John Dye




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