An Eggless Backies

We walked up to Backies today to buy some of the magnificent brown eggs from one of the crofts to find the cupboard in which they're left empty. The chickens were still there, looking rather limp in the warm sunshine, so either other buyers are beating us to the eggs or the hens are off the lay. Perhaps, though, the crofter is diversifying - on the opposite side of the road from the chickens we found four growing piglets which might be Tamworths except two have spots.

Rather despondently, we followed a track off the Backies road which leads into the higher croft lands. Many of the old fields which were worked so intensively by the people who were moved to Backies during the Clearances are now increasingly lost to bracken, willow and gorse but some are still used, mainly for grazing sheep.

There are now three active farmers in the Backies community each of whom own several crofts, while the other crofts are simply abandoned. Some of the original croft houses lie derelict, others have been refurbished and turned into modern homes.

The views from this high in the hills are magnificent, typically looking across Golspie village and along Golspie beach towards Loch Fleet and, just visible in the distance in this picture, the Dornoch Firth.

The croft fields are mainly rough grass and heather, and populated by several dominant wildflowers, including bog asphodel, sometimes forming large patches of brilliant yellow, and....

....cross-leaved heath, though this was the only white one I could find in amongst more of the usual pink cross-leaved heath than I have ever seen before.