A Day at the Beach

Although it may not look it, this is a picture of a very happy small boy. I know, because it's me, aged perhaps six, and I'm holding my precious inflated inner tube in which I love to sit and paddle myself around just off the beach. In my left hand there's a ball, the idea being that I throw the ball and then paddle like mad to collect it.

I'm at the Swimming Club, which is on the north side of Mombasa's Old Port, the historic harbour into which the great dhows from the Persian Gulf arrive in November and depart in April. There are no dhows so, the picture was taken in the months in between.

The Club looks across the harbour to Mombasa's Old Town, its buildings crowded along the waterfront. To the left is Fort Jesus, the great castle which dominates the harbour. Built by the Portuguese, it changed hands several times in wars with the local Arabs, conflicts which gave Mombasa the name Mvita, the island of war.

I loved the Swimming Club. It had a sandy beach on which to build castles and dams, interesting things. were washed up along the tideline, and there was enough in the water just off the beach to make snorkelling fun. Even getting to the Swimming Club was an adventure, because we were rowed across the harbour from the Old Town in a water taxi, having ridden down to the jetty with Mum on our bikes. That was one of the best things about our Mum - she loved packing a picnic and taking us to the beach. Mum did have her down-sides as well: being a Scot, she was very careful with her money, so, for example, our swimming costumes weren't the most fashionable.

I look at this picture and remember those early years in Mombasa as very happy ones; and then look at the small boy and grieve for the tsunami which will engulf him in a couple of years' time, when he'll be packed off to boarding school in England.

Solitude

This was the view this morning from my favourite bench sited along the rough coast track between Golspie and Dunrobin Castle. The forecast was for 16C, a strong northeasterly breeze and the occasional sharp shower: the forecasters got it right on the temperature and wind, wrong on the rain, so I was far too hot walking in full wet-weather gear.

It was a very peaceful scene. Not another walker passed me, and little wildlife was in evidence, just a few oystercatchers arguing amongst themselves, some common gulls, a sparrow hawk which seemed intent on being somewhere else, and a large seal which was asleep just off the jetty, bobbing up and down on the waves with its nose in the air.

Nor was there much wildlife on land, though the spring flowers are at their fresh best - particularly the yellows such as eggs and bacon, dandelions, buttercups and, just beginning to appear, yellow rattle. A single butterfly passed me, an orange tip which didn't stop.

I'm very fortunate to have such a quiet place to sit and contemplate the world. Paradoxically, it seems even quieter because one can just hear the traffic passing along the A9 half-a-mile away. But I do wish there was the wildlife which seemed so much busier even a year or two ago.

Beauty

This beauty is a northern marsh orchid. It's growing....

....beside the exit road from the visitors' car park at Dunrobin Castle and, while several cars passed, no-one noticed it - which, I suppose, isn't really surprising as it's not very big and is....

....growing all by itself on the left of this large area of rough grass. Why it's so far ahead is a bit of a mystery as, judging by last year, there are several dozen other northern marsh orchids around it waiting to appear.

I spent some time keeping it company, grateful to it for giving me such pleasure at its beauty.

Garden Birds

When we first came to our new house I rather despaired of seeing many wild birds come into our garden, at least in part because it was so bare of vegetation but also because a neighbour puts our a veritable feast for them. After some effort, we now see a fair selection of bird species, the unexpected pond - it was never planned, the dip just filled with water - being a particular attraction, especially for the wood pigeons, and....

....the house martins and swallows who have taken away vast amounts of mud with which to build their nests under the eaves of the houses in the next road down from us. At times we have upward of a dozen of them excavating the banks of the pond.

Perhaps surprisingly, we've had relatively few tits visit the feeders - the occasional coal tit or great tit, and rather more blue tits - and when they do they seem to prefer seeds to peanuts. This blue tit is interesting as she's been ringed - the ring is just visible on her left leg.

One of the species which came into the garden quickest was the blackbirds - at times we had half-a-dozen digging for worms at the same time - so it's not surprising that we're now seeing juveniles, rather bad-tempered youngsters which spend much of their time harassing their parents for food.

This song thrush hasn't come in to the garden but the beautifully clear notes of his repetitive song have. He sings for much of the day from the tops of the trees on the other side of the road from our house, and seems to be at his best either late in the evening - its still light at eleven - or as part of the dawn chorus at around 4am.

While we used to see siskins occasionally at our previous house, in our new one they're amongst the most common visitors. The reason may be that, to compete with our neighbour, we now put out large amounts of sunflower seeds. These also attract goldfinches, usually one or two at a time, which, again, were only occasional visitors at our previous house.

Roe Corner

Approaching roe corner on our way down to the village this morning we were barked at by this roe buck. A roe deer's bark is very like a dog's bark, but singly, and almost like a cough, and then repeated at intervals. Later we saw the roe deer mother again - surprisingly, she hadn't moved since we saw her on Friday - but there was no sign of her kid.

On our way home, we were watched by this doe, who also barked at us, before she was joined by....

....a second doe, the two then running away up the hill.

Just by roe corner we spotted the first green-veined white butterfly of the season, while above us....

....a buzzard soared.

Buzzards used to be common but we seem to be seeing fewer each year. At present, I would say that we're seeing more red kites than buzzards.

Last Sunrise

This was my last African sunrise, a view over the Indian Ocean from a beach on the east coast of Zanzibar seen through the outrigger of an ngalowa.

I had woken early, 5.30am, and walked out onto the beach in front of our room. At that time the air is chill, the sea a mirror, and the only evidence of the approach of dawn a greyness in the eastern sky. The beach sand, washed by the night's high tide, is cold, crunchy underfoot. I remember seeing the neighbouring village's ngalowas away to the right, so I walked along the beach towards them, reaching them as the sun broke the horizon.

While I knew this was the last morning of our beach holiday and, therefore, the last opportunity for a shot like this, it never occurred to me that we wouldn't be back in Tanzania if not the following year, then the one after that. Our lives changed direction, our African holidays replaced by holidays in Canada. 

So I didn't think it would be my last East African sunrise but, as it turned out, it was made memorable by the boat, for I have always thought of the ngalowa, such an elegant yet practical machine, as one of the icons of that African coast, just like haggis is for Scotland. But, if you look closely, this is an old ngalowa, seaweed growing from its anchor rope, its wood desiccated by years under the African sun.

I'm not going to see Africa again. I'm too old, too increasingly decrepit, for safaris, so I now know that my last view of the continent that has been such an important part of my life was this one, a study in blue taken in the late afternoon from a cruise ship leaving the Mediterranean. It seems, in a way, such an anticlimax.

A Special 'First'

Last year we found the season's first orchid on May 26th so this one, seen at Achavandra on Friday, is a few days earlier. It's a northern marsh orchid, and if it looks a bit downtrodden it is: it's growing on a path.

Backies Walk

One of the walks we used to do fairly frequently before moving to our new house was to cross the Golspie Burn and then climb steadily through fairly dense forestry into....

 ...the croft lands of Backies township. Today, regrettably, we had to drive to the start of that walk, and the weather wasn't too special.

Along the way, as well as noticing the large number of trees felled during last winter's gales, we found two more seasonal 'firsts'....

....yellow pimpernel, a flower which we've only found occasionally before but which seems to be having a good year, and....

....the remarkably similar but much more common tormentil, with its characteristic four petals.

We also spotted this rather fine fungus, growing on a dead gorse branch, and....

....yet another roe deer. Over the winter roe deer seemed to be an endangered species, now they're everywhere!

There was a good reason for our walk to Backies: we've been missing the free-range eggs from one of its crofts. Happily, there was a plentiful supply today, stored in an old fridge.

A Happy Event

As well as being a very pleasant walk the path we follow from our house down to the village shops is fairly safe for old legs except for this section, where the good people who maintain the path - not for the benefit of walkers such as us but for the local Wildcat mountain bikers - have laid a section of stone paving which....

....can be slippery underfoot, particularly after rain. This is the worst bit but, from the top of the jump this morning, we caught sight of....

....a roe deer on the far side of the field, not many metres from the Inverness to Wick and Thurso railway line.  This seemed a strange place to choose, particularly as she didn't move, and we were beginning to wonder whether there was something wrong with her, the more so when....

....the 10.10 Inverness train came along the line and she still didn't move.

We were wondering whether she was sick or injured in some way, and whether we should contact the SSPCA, when the cause of her odd behaviour suddenly became apparent.

It does seem a strange place to keep your young as the two of them are very visible from several directions but it may be that the kid had only recently been born and was too young to move.

It seemed to be a good morning for deer as this is another female I saw at Roe Corner on my way home.

More Firsts Along the Shore

On Thursdays I usually take a walk in the direction of Dunrobin Castle, often along the coastline but occasionally through the woods. Almost every time, even in cold weather, I stop at the bench about half way to the castle - at left in the picture with the castle beyond it - and....

....sit and watch what's happening out on the beach and the sea beyond.

Today, under heavy. grey clouds, with the temperature struggling to reach 12C and a strong northerly wind bringing in needling showers, what little of interest included two pairs of oystercatchers, a couple of cormorants, the usual crows scavenging the tide line, a single black-backed gull, and a few common and....

....herring gulls. This herring gull looked very comfortable on its nest on the roof of one of the houses by the Golspie Burn but I don't envy the people who own the house once the chicks are hatched as the parents become very aggressive.

None of the birds particularly excited me - other than I wish there were far more of all of them - until....

....this beauty soared across the firth. It's the first gannet of the season and a very, very welcome sight.

Then, as I was on my way back to the car and leaning on the rail of the footbridge over the Golspie Burn in the hope of spotting the first dipper of the year....

....I had the joy of seeing half-a-dozen sand martins feeding along the water - another first for the year.

The End of the Newts' Pond

After a run of sunny, warm days we were back to normal service today with grey skies and a temperature not above 15C when we walked down to the village to collect the morning's paper. There were no deer to be seen at Roe Corner but, from the far side of the field we....

....spotted a female roe which, obviously irritated at the way we were staring at her, barked and then disappeared into the trees.

Later, on our way home, as we passed Roe Corner, we saw what I'm fairly sure was the same deer, a little further up the field beyond the broken wall and broken gate.

This is another first for the year, a flower which looks very like wood anemone - which we haven't seen yet this year - and wood sorrel, but this is the more unusual chickweed wintergreen, a small group of them growing very happily at one shaded spot in the forestry.

We brought a number of plants with us from our previous house and have been busy planting them out. There's something about Golspie which lupins seem to like as we've had no trouble transplanting them as well as moving several seedings which had rooted themselves. The lupins are now at their best so we were thrilled to find....

....that they were already doing their job - attracting local insects into our, otherwise still rather bare new garden.

Meanwhile, in the forestry above our house, the machines have finished quarrying rock, grinding it up, grading it, and transporting it away, leaving the newts' pond filled in and ready to be turned into a car park.

Holidays - 2

My concept of a 'holiday' changed completely when I was nine and sent 'home' to Glengorse, a prep school in Sussex. Then, suddenly, a 'holiday' - up until then a month in England every couple of years - became the most important thing in my life - the eight weeks between late July and late September which I spent in Mombasa with my parents. In the years between 1954 and 1961 I spent six summers in East Africa, the other two - to my brother and my disgust - being in England as my parents came 'home' on leave.

It is difficult to describe the abject yearning I had for Mombasa during those eight exile years in England. When I was at Glengorse the misery drove me to cry myself to sleep for several weeks after my return to school, though I did it very secretly for fear of the bullying that would happen if I was found out. In one way I was fortunate: both Glengorse and Bradfield had a policy of keeping the boys as active as possible, particularly through sports, so they were less likely to get into mischief. I couldn't think of home while I was playing football although, judging by the above photo, the same couldn't be said of playing cricket - I'm at top right.

If the summer holidays were spent in paradise the other two, at Christmas and Easter, caused my parents some problems. When I first came to England I spent these holidays with my father's elder brother, Frank, and his wife Grace in their flat in Rivermead Court (above), just by Putney Bridge. So they didn't shoulder the full burden, I would also spent some time with my mother's younger sister, Noel, and her family, also in London.

However, this arrangement couldn't continue once my brother joined me at Glengorse, so my mother found Mrs Groome, a lady who had been widowed during the war and had set up a business looking after children like us. She had a big house near Fareham in Hampshire, bred cocker spaniels, which were fun, and was really very good with us - but I didn't look on the time we spent with her as 'holidays'.

Roe Corner

We've named this point on our morning walk down to the village, where the path through the woods emerges from the forestry, 'Roe Corner' because we've now seen so many roe deer from it - there's one in this picture if you can find it. Most of the roe deer we've seen have been females but on Friday....

....this male, which had been feeding close to the path when we disturbed it, suddenly got up and dashed away across the field.

If the sun is out we spend time at Roe Corner sitting on a log looking out across the fields, and while we're sitting there the butterflies come to us. This is another 'first' for the year, a large white which landed so close us us it was almost as if it wanted to be photographed.

This is another 'first' for the year, one of a small group of bugles growing in the woods just a few steps from Roe Corner.