This was one of my quieter expeditions, possibly because my
notices had the date wrong but also reflecting the effect
of a big fire in Salen which cost my Salen helpers a lot of
sleep. So we set out with just one explorer, Alexander, plus
Mairi and a new dog, Bess, on her first expedition.
We started out from Mingarry Hall and walked along to the
old school, where the stone wall followed the line of the
limit of the old woodland. We did a detour to look at the
‘hanging fireplace’ on the outside wall, built
when they expected to extend the building around 1860.
We carried on past Fergie’s and we could see the line
of the old wall, although most of the stone had been removed,
possibly to build the Mingarry houses? The sharp edge marking
the wall continued past the stream and right to the new houses
and we followed it into the wood as it once more became visible,
first as a turf dyke and later as a stone wall.
The clearance of the rhododendrons has make a tremendous difference
to the appearance of the wood and it was a pleasure to walk
through it, following the wall to the edge of the Druim Fearn
croft. The wood had been extended at the west end and protected
by a wire fence and we could follow the remains of this fence
all the way up the hill to the back of the wood, stopping
to have a look at a fine spring on the way.
The wall turned eastwards and we followed it up a very steep
section until we were close to the top of the hill, where
we stopped to look at a rather peculiar pine tree, possibly
diseased? There were also badger trails to be seen but we
didn’t find any badger hairs on the overhanging branches.
We were then above the old school and quite close to the children’s
cave, but it took me quite a long time to find it and we covered
a lot of steep and rocky ground. Finally we got there and
settled down to Tunnock’s wafers for the humans and
a Markie for Bess.
I had contemplated crossing the top of the wood and coming
down through High Mingarry but the ground was rather difficult
so we slithered back down the hill and went back to the road.
When we returned to the Blue Parrot, Alexander did a drawing
of the cave with the three of us inside and quite a good likeness
of Bess standing outside.
John
Dye
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