An Unexpected Farmer

We motored - I use the word deliberately as it best describes the slow pace of our journey - up the single-track road through Golspie Tower and then on towards Rogart on a day when the sun made an unusual but very welcome appearance from between puffy, flat-bottomed cumulus. We were heading once again for....

....Loch Farlary where we sat for some time in the sun listening to a silence broken only by birdsong and hoping to see the osprey. We then inspected a hut circle - it's perched on the little ridge in the foreground of this picture, a rather unlikely position.

We then motored gently on to the entrance to the Kilbraur wind farm with the intention of finding some more hut circles when a farmer stopped his Land Rover and came across to us. Now normally one expects at this point to be told one isn't welcome on this particular bit of land for this or that spurious reason but Bob, as he introduced himself, was keen that we try out a series of paths which he has been constructing across his extensive croft - for anyone to use.

No.... really!

This is the first time I have ever had such an invitation from a farmer and the next hour or so were an absolute pleasure as we followed the tracks through a variety of habitats, seeing where Bob had planted new trees and cut back some of the old, rather thick coniferous plantations to allow light in. The above is the lochan where he promised us dragonflies if we came back again in the summer.

He has done a huge amount of construction work, including putting in culverts and considerable distances of all-weather paths. Some of the funding to do this came from three of the Kilbraur wind turbines which are on his land.

Towards the end of our walk we came across this stone seat in the shelter of a wee glen, perfectly positioned to catch the sun, and it was while we were sitting there working on our vitamin D that....

....a butterfly landed on a cuckoo flower a metre or so away, and tantalised us until a cloud passed, the sun came out, and....

....the male orange tip opened his wings. This species is not uncommon in southern Britain and we saw it occasionally on Ardnamurchan but it's a bit unexpected this far north.

The day also brought two more spring flower firsts, a small patch of heath milkwort and....

....an outbreak of lousewort.

Bob and his wife, as well as running a working croft with sheep and cattle, have a holiday cottage called The Old Byre.