| Once again we had
a forecast of foul weather and got a nice day. It was still
in the school holidays and there were quite a few other things
going on, so our expedition was a little unusual: we had two
regular explorers, Alexander and JJ, plus three visiting explorers,
Daisy, Matilda and Ruby, with quite a few adult helpers, Anna
B, Anna D, John B, John D, Mairi, Michael and Philippa and
two dogs, Ellie (on her 109th expedition) and Brambles. Actually
Matilda was still a bit small to do a full expedition and
travelled in her father’s rucksack/carrier.
We started from the school car park and I showed everyone
where the old school used to be and a picture of the view
across the old playground. Then we walked round the school
to the site of the new playing field where I explained that
some timbers had been discovered which had been dated to the
early fourteenth century, showing that there had been a village
at Acharacle long ago. I also told them about a pit which
had been discovered which contained Mesolithic flints, so
people had been using the site thousands of years ago.
Then I scrambled down into a drainage trench with Alexander
and JJ and we looked for an unusual moss, which Alexander
soon spotted. This was the heath star moss, Campylopus introflexus.
I explained that this moss was first discovered in the southern
hemisphere and had only recently arrived in the UK but had
now spread to all corners of Britian.
Then we started the walk proper, following the old track
from the school up the hill and across the moss. This was
once the main route from Acharacle to Kilchoan but it is now
mostly used by the Water Board men, servicing the water main.
The track was rather wet in places but everyone managed very
well. We stopped to view the old peat banks where I have heard
the Rev. MacRitchie used to get the local boys to drag his
enormous peat barrow back to the manse.
We also found a piece of railway line, dating back to the
war when there was a big timber operation going on at Arivegaig,
but we failed to find the chassis of the old truck, maybe
it has been swallowed up in the peat.
As we got near the new water works we joined the recently
resurfaced road, so perhaps next time we will drive all the
way to the water works and park there to enable us to get
more time on the hill.
Finally we reached the old Arivegaig fank where, after a
bit of poking about under the bracken, I finally found one
of the turf tables used when the sheep were sheared. We had
a look under some sheets of iron but we didn’t even
find a beetle this time, although we did find an ants’
nest nearby with the ants carrying the larvae back underground.
By this time everyone was ready for their Tunnock’s
wafers and a bit of a rest; it had now got rather warm. Before
we set off back again we went beyond the fank and looked at
the walls of the old village, but it was difficult to see
them in the high bracken. At our furthest point we found a
good climbing tree and Alexander, JJ and Daisy did some very
adventurous climbing.
The wafers seemed to have given everyone a lot of energy
and we covered the ground back to the school much faster than
I had planned. This meant we got to the Tearoom when it was
still quiet, although not everyone went that far. Both Alexander
and Daisy did drawings and I have picked out Alexander’s
view of me standing in the drainage trench and him standing
next to it holding the moss.
John Dye
|
.JPG)
.jpg)
.JPG)
