The 'Durban Castle'

My father's contract with his employer, the African Mercantile, included 'home leave' every three years, and this was due towards the end of 1952. My parents felt that it would be good for my brother and I to experience an English winter, but to keep that 'experience' fairly short they decided to travel from Mombasa to the UK 'the long way' - that is, from Mombasa southwards calling at Dar-es-Salaam, Beira, Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, St Helena, Ascension and the Canary Islands - which took six weeks rather than the four weeks via the Suez Canal.

I have some vivid memories of that journey. We travelled first class so the food and accommodation were good, and we enjoyed important events like ice cream served on deck at eleven every morning with, occasionally, second helpings. I remember the magnificently decorated rickshaws in Durban pulled by Zulus in feathered finery, and the huge shark which swam beside the ship in one of the east coast ports. I recall catching a small black fish off the stern of the ship, this achieved by lowering a tin on a long piece of string - though I can't recall what I provided in the way of bait, nor how I obtained the tin and the string. I remember going ashore at Gran Canaria and being captivated by the brilliant yellow canaries for sale in cages. I desperately wanted one but my parents vetoed the idea.

As we approached the Bay of Biscay, the ice cream was replaced with bovril. The weather deteriorated, we had to wear thicker clothing, though however thick it was it didn't seem to keep me warm. And when we docked at Southampton I remember being amazed to see white men doing labouring jobs like mending the roads.

It wasn't a good leave. My father was ill with suspected TB, so we had to spend an extra two months in a bitterly cold winter. Fortunately, we had a pleasant flat overlooking the Thames: I recall having to cross Putney Bridge to reach the small private school we attended.

While there, my parents made the decision that, as soon as I was nine, I would go to school in England. They visited their chosen school, Glengorse, but I don't remember being either invited or consulted. When we set off to fly back to Mombasa - which took three days as the 'plane could only fly in daylight - I hoped never to see England again.

Corrugations

This section of estate track near our house is displaying a phenomenon with which drivers in countries where dirt roads are common are only too familiar. Corrugations are like ripples in sand, usually with a wavelength of about a metre and an amplitude of 25-50mm, which develop across the road. They're formed by the passage of vehicles along a road which has an unconsolidated sandy or gravelly surface, the corrugations being formed when the wheels start to bounce along the road.

Travelling along such roads is both uncomfortable and jarringly painful, particularly as corrugations can continue for many miles. That they have formed on this estate track is a bit of a mystery - it's the first time I've seen corrugations outside Africa. The juddering has other, sometimes dangerous effects. For example, phillips screws have a habit of falling out.

We found that it was agony to travel along such roads slowly, and that the best approach was to drive as fast as possible so the car planed across the corrugated surface. When the car did this, it lacked traction, which meant that, in inexperienced hands, there was an increased chance of an accident. 

Corrugations were just one of the many trials of travelling on African roads. In the wet season these surfaces were sometimes covered with a slick of mud, which meant the surface behaved rather like the black ice of UK roads. Add to these problems the hazards of clouds of dust in the dry season, the way loose sand also acted like black ice, and deep, glutinous mud in the wet, into which cars sank axle-deep. Little wonder that African roads exacted a high price in human lives.

Despite the Weather....

Despite the recent appalling weather the small birds have been doing their best to carry on as if spring really was almost here - so we're seeing the males in their mating finery and....

....even some of the birds, like this greenfinch, which we've not seen in the garden for some time, now coming in to fill themselves with good things so they can excel at the mating game.

Sadly, some of them are getting a little too excited. This female chaffinch was evidently being chased by an over-amorous....

....male so, in their excitement, the two of them ended up crashing in to the glass sheets of our balcony's balustrade - with terminal results for the female and, probably, a severe headache for the male.

Down at ground level spring is being measured by the flowering of some 'old favourite' plants, like this lesser celandine and, in the Council meadow that runs along the A9....

....by the very first cowslip of the season.

A Crowded Anchorage

The Moray Firth off the mouth of Loch Fleet was crowded with ships by late afternoon yesterday, no less than six of them of which two were Wilson ships and one was....

....the ocean-going tug Kingdom of Fife, which was exceptionally close in to the Golspie shore - far closer than....

....we've seen any ship in the time we've lived here.

The Kingdom of Fife is an old friend from our days on Ardnamurchan, when she not infrequently sailed past us in the Sound of Mull. She was also involved with the salvage work when the Lysblink Seaways ran ashore at Kilchoan - for the story, see the Kilchoan Diary blog here.

It's one of the things I have most missed since leaving Kilchoan, where a wide variety of ships working up and down the Sound of Mull passed very close to our house.

The reason for so many ships being anchored in the Firth is very apparent today. We are in the grip of a run of fierce westerlies which are battering us with hail, sleet and even occasional snow; and there's little sign of this weather letting up as the week progresses.

A Deserted Beach

We were on the beach again yesterday morning, walking into a stiff southwester which brought sudden showers ranging from rain to hail. While not altogether pleasant, the weather kept other people off the beach so, in walking about a mile along it, we saw not another soul.

In the seaweed washed up by the falling tide we found....

....a dozen or so of these 6" long flatfish - having seen hardly any washed-up fish in months - and....

....one of this species, probably a short spined sea scorpion.
 

Out in the Firth, four ships still lay at anchor, though the Rix Pacific had been replaced by the Wilson Plymouth.

This shot shows the Wilson Harrier and a large flock of wind-harried geese.

Ships in the Snow

It's been snowing here on and off since yesterday morning but, during the day, any that settled melted almost immediately. However, through the night some of it accumulated on....

....the rooftops, though these deposits didn't last long.

Although the weather really shouldn't be doing this to us in late March, more surprising was the number of ships anchored in the Moray Firth, more than we've seen before.

To the left in this picture is the Jomi, the ship we saw at Littleferry the other day, while the ship to the right is the Wilson Harrier.

From our house the Neuseborg (above) lay away to our left while the Rix Pacific was too far round for us to see.

Why we have this sudden accumulation of ships is a bit of a mystery, particularly as there is no exceptionally bad weather forecast during the next few days..

A Wide, Sandy Beach

It's one of the privileges of living in Golspie that we have easy access to a wide, sandy beach which stretches for miles but which usually has hardly another soul on it.

Today, this beach was so deserted that we also shared it with....

....two seals. This one, from the tracks it left running down the beach, had come ashore during the night's high tide but, by the time we were near it, it was almost back in the sea while....

....this one seemed quite happy to ignore the very occasional passing human.

To add to the interest of the walk a ship lay at anchor not far offshore. She's the Jomi, and this isn't the first time we've seen her off Golspie - see earlier post here.

The wreck in the right foreground is all that remains of the Tones, which came ashore in 1937 - see earlier blog entry here