Expedition 351, to Gorteneorn, 19/3/16

 

Not sunny but a dry day and not too cold. We started from the Triangle with only a single explorer once again (Alexander, plus Mairi, of course), but when we arrived at Arivegaig car park, there was Kate, with Maighsi and Roanna hiding under the bridge doing fish impressions. Before we left the Triangle we spoke to a couple of visitors, one of whom had been brought up at Drumbeag.
I was a little apprehensive this time since I had been told there was a lot of traffic on the track related to the TV project, but the only vehicles we saw were driven very carefully by local friends. The road surface was greatly improved and we had an easier walk to the power station than I expected.
The power station at Gorten is an old stone building which I have always thought to have been built when Mr Rudd had the estate. I had never photographed it before so this time I got a few shots, including one with the explorers.
Then we set off on the main expedition; the last time I was on this ground (almost exactly six years ago, Expedition 227) we had a bit of trouble getting up the burn but this time I took a different route and we all managed OK, although we needed our wellies from time to time.
The Gorteneorn Burn led us to a lovely walled meadow with big ash trees all down the river. This place always has a nice feeling about it and I'm surprised nobody built a house here. The winter storms had brought several fallen trees down the burn and they were spectacularly piled up to make a dam at one point. The centre of the field was rather wet and the dam may have caused the river to flood.
We had a good look at the ash trees and found owl pellets under one of them, but there were no otter spraints along the river. We carried on up the burn, crossing at intervals when the going was easier on the other side, but we didn't get as far as the waterfall. We turned east across a bracken-covered field and climbed to the top of it where we found the remains of two houses, and also the remains of a deer which hadn't made it through the winter. The deer skull had been crushed by an animal and there was some discussion as to what did it. The unsightly remains did not put us off our Tunnock's wafers when we stopped nearby.
I didn't want to come back exactly the same way so we followed one of the many deer tracks across the hill and eventually crossed a broken part of the stone wall back into the big field. We forded the burn, except for one brave person who crossed on a fallen tree, and followed the deer fence back to the main track.
This area has always been good for tadpoles, but we didn't see any this time although Roanna found a magnificent frog and later transferred some stranded frogspawn into a pool.
We then carried on along the track back to the car park, but one of the party spotted a strange little cairn near the shore so we all went to see it. It turned out to be one of the most skillfully-built cairns we ever saw, if the builder reads this, congratulations. I got a picture of the cairn and then we hurried back to the car, Kate and the girls having left their bikes near the bridge.
Unfortunately the Tearoom was closed that weekend so I didn't get any drawings.

John Dye









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