Expedition 279 - 1st December 2012
East Dalilea

 


A cold day, but mostly sunny and generally voted a very successful outing. We had four explorers, Alexander, Josephine, Parker and Serena with four helpers, Joanne, Les, Liz and Mairi, plus Hamish who shoved his little nose into every corner we passed.

We parked at the pier and started off by taking a look in the shed where the old cart is kept. There is sometimes an owl here but it wasn't home when we called although there were lots of owl pellets on the floor.

Then we set off through the gate and down the road, carefully going past a herd of cows, who found us very interesting. We had a good look at the old fank and then climbed down to the beach to see an exposed rock with lots of glacial scratches on it. The rock was covered with a shiny sheet of ice but this didn't stop the explorers standing on it in their wellies, I had visions of another emergency call-out for the coastguard but they all got down safely and we quickly moved on to a little wood where there used to be a big bird's nest. We didn't see it we saw lots of peck marks made by woodpeckers.

Just after this we saw two ducks in the loch and Parker was able to use his binoculars to confirm they were mallard. A bit further up the road we came to the old stone bridge and the explorers spent some time looking at the burn below it.
The next stage was more exciting when we followed the shore round the wood and the explorers had a chance to go into a lot of little shelters where the waves had hollowed out spaces under the trees, Hamish was very interested too, and got further in than any of us. We went to the water's edge and Parker's binoculars came out again for everyone to have a look at a dipper sitting on a post in the water.

I got the explorers to the edge of the wood and asked them to look around and they suddenly saw a huge stone cross sticking up among the trees. They all broke into a run and went up to investigate. The cross is a memorial to Philip, son of Lord Howard of Glossop, who had been killed in the First World War. The memorial area had recently been renovated and a new fence installed but the gales last December had brought down many big pine trees and one of them had broken a section of the new railings. However, this gave the explorers a way in to see the cross at close quarters and they spent quite a while there.

All too soon they were called out to look at a group of crossbills in a larch tree, climbing in the branches like little parrots.

We had a real scramble to get back to the path and it wasn't far to the gate, where we stopped for the long-requested Tunnock's break. The explorers did a bit of wandering and came back with some fine sheets of ice picked up from local pools, it was a cold day.

There wasn't a lot of time to spare so we hurried along the track to the Green Isle Pier, but we didn't stay long and came quickly back to the gate, where one of the twins had some time on the swing while waiting for the others to catch up.
When we set off in the cars we saw a lot of piglets rooting around by the fence and there were three jays by the road but I don't know if all the explorers saw them.
There was great interest in the memorial and it featured prominently in the drawings back at the Blue Parrot, but Parker also turned out a view of me on the Green Isle Pier, it is blown up here, the original was under 3 centimetres across.

SJohn Dye





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