Poseidon

Unexpectedly and, after days of truly miserably cold, wet and windy weather, the sun was out by midday today and we were able to eat lunch out on the lawn, only to be disturbed by a very large, low-flying aircraft.

Golspie's a sleepy place but it is accustomed to the Typhoons operating out of Lossiemouth practising their gunnery on the range on the other side of the Moray Firth but this is something quite new. A few minutes on the internet revealed that it's the RAF's relatively new Poseidon MRA1 maritime patrol aircraft, the one we bought off Boeing after we abandoned our home-made BAE System's Nimrod upgrade.

Poseidon comes with all the frills. It's described as, "a multi-role maritime patrol aircraft, equipped with sensors and weapons systems for anti-submarine warfare, as well as surveillance and search and rescue missions, radar for high-resolution mapping", and various other bells and whistles.  The aircraft can also be armed with a weapons system that includes torpedoes for engaging sub-surface targets.

We've bought nine of them and, with the way things are going with Russia, we might need them.

A Short Story

After my father died, and while she was still living in Maldon, Essex, my mother joined a local writing group. To celebrate their efforts, its members produced this little booklet in....

....June, 1992. Her first contribution was a short story set in East Africa. That it harks back to those days doesn't surprise me at all as she loved her time there and, as I do, probably thought often of it even though she had left Mombasa over thirty years before. The story features....

....the little yellow weaver birds that came to drink and bathe in the birdbaths we had both at the Hoey House at Nyali and our last house in Cliff Avenue. 

The story becomes a little lost when she also tries to add....

....the flowering of the baobab tree, a rare and very moving event which few have the chance to witness.

It's so easy to be critical of a short story. I have written upward of fifty that I finished, ten of which were, perhaps, good, two winning quite major prizes, and a good fifty more that lie like wrecks along the way, so I know how incredibly difficult they are to write. However, if I can claim to have some talent in this difficult format, at least I know whence the seed came.

A Summer Signpost

Another damp, wintery day here today, with the wind firmly in the north, the temperature struggling to climb above 10C and occasional cold showers to keep us cheerful. Not that any of this is an excuse for us to shirk our daily walk, this time along the shore by Dunrobin Castle and in its woods where....

....we found an impressive fungus growing on a rotten stump. The biggest of the fruiting bodies was almost....

....a foot across - we're being encouraged to return to the good old imperial measurements, aren't we? - and beautifully patterned. Identifying fungi is always a lottery but the pattern and the....

....pores on the underside suggest it may be Polyporus squamosus, Dryad's Saddle.

As if that wasn't a sufficiently exciting discovery to cheer a dull day, we had the additional joy of finding, along the exit road from the castle car park and just outside the strip they'd recently mown, the year's first....

....wild orchid just coming into bloom, all alone and very likely a northern marsh orchid.

The discovery of the first orchid is always one of the turning points of the year, signposting that we are, whatever the weather may suggest, at last moving towards summer.

We're Losing Our Butterflies!

The reality of change on a global scale is only brought home when something happens in our local neighbourhood. So Butterfly Conservation's new report, which warns of yet more British species which are on the slide to extinction, has hit me because we've seen three of the butterflies mentioned, the scotch argus, dark green fritillary and grayling, relatively recently on either Ardnamurchan and/or here in the Golspie area. So the scotch argus, above, which a few years ago was common around Kilchoan, is now classed as Vulnerable. I have difficulty in believing it!

In the report, Head of Science for Butterfly Conservation, Dr Richard Fox, says: “Shockingly, half of Britain’s remaining butterfly species are listed as Threatened or Near Threatened on the new Red List. Even prior to this new assessment, British butterflies were among the most threatened in Europe, and now the number of threatened species in Britain has increased by five, an increase of more than one-quarter. While some species have become less threatened, and a few have even dropped off the Red List, the overall increase clearly demonstrates that the deterioration of the status of British butterflies continues apace.”

I wrote only a few days ago about the lack of butterflies here at the moment but largely put that down to a miserably cold, windy and wet May. While land-use change is quoted as being one of the main drivers of their decline, butterflies are also struggling with the warming of the British Isles. This is hitting species like the scotch argus which would prefer Scotland's summers to remain cool - picture shows a pair doing their utmost to keep the species going.

The dark green fritillary is also mentioned, as Near Threatened. This, again, is close to home as we've found them in healthy number in the last couple of years at Littleferry.

The greyling is another that's suffering - this one was pictured at Littleferry but we also saw them on Ardnamurchan. It's been moved from Vulnerable to Endangered.

As an individual I feel frustratingly powerless to find anything constructive to do about the loss of our butterflies because the changes that are needed are on such a massive scale - like, we've got to stop burning hydrocarbons. Yet I hate to think that I'm leaving a world to my children and grandchildren which is going to lack these beautiful creatures. 

Fledglings

Suddenly there are sparrow fledglings all over the garden. This one found a sunny spot in which to doze but then moved to....

....a safer one in the protection of our bird feeding cage. Not that it availed itself of the seeds in the bowl being - like all small children - quite happy to wait until....

....mum came to feed it. However, mum was constantly busy as....

....she had two more fledgling in her care so she was rushing around from one to the next leaving the little ones....

....out in the open where they were almost preyed upon by a large....

....rook which, in its turn, was gathering food for....

....its fledglings which were waiting, none too patiently, out in the field.

A Disappointing May

We have always advised potential visitors to come to the Highlands, if they possibly can, in May, as it's usually by far the best month from the point of view of weather. Well, this May has set out to be the exception that proves the rule. It's been one of the coldest and blowiest we can remember. Today, as an example, has seen a westerly wind gusting to about 25mph bringing hard showers and temperatures struggling to get above 11C. Fortunately, there have been occasional sunny intervals, but the swallows must be pretty fed up, given that they are recently arrived from the warmth of Africa.

Butterflies have been hard to come by this month. We saw some of the usual early species - tortoiseshell, emperor and peacock - in April but the next batch, such as the speckled wood, have hardly dare show their faces.

By comparison, the wildflowers of late spring have been making a brave appearance. Species like the yellow pimpernel and....

....marsh cranesbill have been welcome finds.

The cranesbill pictured was all alone on the links at Littleferry a few days ago but when we returned we found that the area around it, but nowhere else, was covered with masses of these delicate little flowers.

Sadly, there's no sign of the weather improving for several days.

'Ships Monthly'

During much of his long retirement, my father's interest in ships was kept alive by this magazine, which he read even more closely than his newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.

The other day I found, in amongst the rest of the junk that has moved with me, the front cover page from the November 1988 edition. It took me a few moments to realise why I had kept it: the date. My father died on 9th November 1988, so this would have been the last edition he looked at.

It's a coincidence but, on the back of that title page, is a picture of a British India Lines boat, the Karanja. She's leaving Mombasa, with Ras Serani in the left of the picture.

While it would have been even better had the ship been a Harrison Line ship, while BI ships were looked after by a rival agency in Mombasa, Smith MacKenzie, my father had many friends associated with the line, not least his great friend Bill Solly, who for many years was a captain in the line. Bill and Margaret retired to the Isle of Man but came across to England every year, in the summer, to stay with my parents and to attend some cricket matches.

To my surprise - perhaps, I shouldn't have been - 'Ships Monthly' is still going - see link here.

An Elephant at the Seaside

Probably one of the most generous and appreciated of the gifts given to my parents when they left Mombasa in 1961 was this painting by their good friend Commander John Hall, which showed the view from the upstairs balcony of the last house we lived in along Cliff Avenue. All the things my parents would have remembered were squeezed in, including - though I've cut it off in my photograph - the coastguard station at 2 with a flag flying at the masthead indicating a ship coming up from the south. The station was sited on Ras Serani, the headland of peace, below which, at 1, is an elephant taking a swim off the reef. We always called it 'the elephant' but it was, in fact....

....the remains of a ship, the Ahmadi, which came ashore in 1909 while attempting to enter port at night without a pilot. She had over 400 passengers and crew aboard but all were landed safely, along with their baggage and much of the cargo.

An enquiry found that the master and crew had acted correctly, and put down the cause of her loss to strong currents.  Although every effort was made to re-float the ship, she was declared a total loss and, over the subsequent years, most of her fixtures and fittings were salvaged.

Many thanks to Kevin Patience for pictures and background story.

Kevin's book is 'Shipwrecks & Salvage on the East African Coast'.

Special Moments

The other evening, at about eleven o'clock, I stood at the back door of our house looking out towards the woodland in Golspie Glen and listened to a song thrush. His was the most intricate of melodies, each phrase repeated two or three times, never two the same, with the occasional mistake when, for a moment, he would draw breath, as if annoyed at himself, before launching into the next sequence.

Breathtaking.

And today, as we walked down the hill from Backies after collecting a dozen rich brown croft eggs, we spotted a roe deer standing in open woodland. She was watching a car coming up the road and was quite oblivious to our presence until I moved when, in a series of bounds, she made for the nearest thick woodland.

Breathtaking.

Along the Beach

Buttercups aren't renowned for putting on a mass display - that's left to flowers like daffodils and bluebells - but along the sides of the path from Golspie to Dunrobin Castle they're doing their best to impress. Not to be outdone, in the sandy soil between the buttercups and the cobbles of the upper beach the....

....bird's-foot trefoil is also in full flower though there's far more eggs than bacon this year, which didn't seem to bother....

....the few bees that were out in this morning's rather grey weather.

The tide was low so we walked along the sand, seeing....

....several oystercatchers trying to disguise themselves against the seaweed-encrusted rocks while....

....crows, mostly jackdaws, scoured the upper beach for their nests.

Chalvedon School

I receive few comments on this blog - which is fine - but most of those I have received over the years relate to my time at Chalvedon School in Pitsea, Basildon. They are from students who were there during the late 1970s and early 1980s, around the time I taught there, but a few are from teachers some of whom, like me, found the early part of their time at the school very tough.

I had taken the job at Chalvedon out of desperation, having spent the previous two years in Jamaica and having to find work when I returned to the UK to support a family. Chalvedon was so desperate for teachers at the time - 1975 - that the then head, Bob Ford, appointed me without an interview but on a temporary basis.

By the end of the first year I was equally desperate to get out, and applied for jobs all over the country, even travelling to South Wales for an interview. Having failed to move, and having made the decision to buy a house within commuting distance of the school, I gritted my teeth and went back in the new academic year determined to survive.

I did more: I spent four more years there, very happily. Most of the hard work had, in fact, been done in that first year. For example, I had learned how to deal with children who often came from very disadvantaged homes but who, underneath their anger, were great fun. So by the time I came to leave - very reluctantly and because I needed promotion within the teaching system to support a growing family and to create some sort of career for myself - I was desperately sad to say goodbye. In particular, I had come to have great affection for my form, pictured above.

I often wonder what happened to the many thousands of students I taught in nearly thirty years in the classroom. A few kept in touch for a time, so I know a little about their lives, but I never made any effort - for example by using Facebook - to actively find out about some of the others whom I found particularly interesting. All I can do now is hope that they are happy and have done well in life.

Harrisons & the Hayletts

My "Harrisons of Liverpool" book - see earlier post here - has in it much that is very personal to the Hayletts, with details of which I was not aware until I read it. 

I knew that my grandfather was a captain with the Scruttons line, his last ship being the Savan (above). When Scruttons sold their ships to Harrisons after the end of the First World War, she was renamed Speaker: it's interesting to note that the picture shows her with the Scruttons name and the Harrison funnel. Captain Haylett continued as a master with Harrisons, though not very happily at the time of the takeover, according to.... 

....this account in the book.

Although he is not mentioned, my grandfather's last command was Defender. He didn't die aboard her but at sea on his way back to England after he had been landed, terminally ill, at Madeira.

This picture, taken from the book, is of the ship aboard which I had my most personal experience of Harrisons. I went out to Cape Town on the Arbitrator in January 1963 on my way to teach for two terms at Bernard Mizeki College in what was then Southern Rhodesia. I sailed as a supernumerary, doing odd jobs around the ship: I can't think I was of much use but I am eternally grateful to Harrisons for their kindness.

The Oystercatcher's Nest

On Sunday we watched this oystercatcher make herself comfortable on her nest amongst the seaweed and other flotsam of a previous high tide and commented that the nest was, "....in the most exposed position, only a few yards off the coast path and the dogs that come along it, and watched by several crows and seagulls."

It wasn't the dogs or the gulls or the crows that did for the nest but the northeasterly wind which, on a miserably cold, blustery day yesterday, pushed the high tide up so it....

....deposited weed all over the nest.

Such a shame, particularly as the nest was just below one of the benches along the coast path, so we could have sat and watched the family hatch and grow up.

Cnoc na Croiche

For many people at this time of year the highlight of a walk through the woods between Golspie village and Dunrobin Castle would be the bluebells but when we walked the woods this morning the weather - cold, grey and increasingly windy - hardly did their bold display of colour justice. However, wandering along the paths I was reminded of....

....the massive, elongate mounds that snake through this part of the woods. If the site weren't covered with trees they would, in my humble opinion, be immediately recognisable as the ancient walls of a fort. In their time they would have been twice as high, and complex - there's evidence in places for what might be defended gateways and parallel walls. If it's a fort, one would expect to find something about it on line but....

....I couldn't. The area is shown on this map, taken from the Highland Historic Environment website - here - and shows only one registered site within Cnoc na Croiche, the rough area of the 'fort'. 'G' is the site of a gallows, described as "a stone socket in the depression in the summit of Gallows Hill". Sadly, the socket hasn't been seen since 1953 but, on the positive side, the mound is described as 'artificial'. I think it's the point where one of the walls meets the steep slope down to the open fields of the Dairy Park. The other nearby sites are "C&S', where cists and a symbol stone were found, and 'I', an iron works.

The name of the area doesn't help: it's derived from the Gaelic words croiche, a gallows and cnoc, a round hill or knoll. A gallows site like this is common near centres of power, such as Dunrobin: before the woodlands were planted the hillock would have been a prominent feature visible from the coast path.

I use Bing maps a fair bit, and I was using it to zoom in on the Cnoc na Croiche area on the OS map, to discover that, if one zooms in too far, this topological rendering of the area appears. It seems to show the 'fort' walls forming a rectangular structure between the edge of the ancient cliffs and the A9 - 'G' is the gallows site.

I suppose the next thing to do is to approach Dunrobin Castle and see whether they have anything in their archives.

This is the sort of thing that intrigues me, so I offer these thoughts with apologies to those who are reading it between yawns.