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
|
|