Beatrice Alpha Main

We set off this morning to walk in the forestry that clothes the lower flanks of Beinn Bhraggie, following the road straight up from our house which takes us through Golspie Tower Farm where.... 

....the haylage - animal forage that is half way between hay and silage - is already stored for the winter and where the barley is just beginning to ripen. They've planted far more barley this year, perhaps in anticipation of higher prices.

The track which continues on from the road is lined with heather, wildflowers like devil's-bit scabious which is just coming in to flower, and....

....the heaviest crop of blueberries we've seen. The track's surface being warm attracts the butterflies. As well as common blues we saw two of....

....this species which, each time it landed, refused to open its wings so I could identify it.

There's a convenient rock at the highest point of our walk, which totalled just under four miles, on which we sit and contemplate the view. From it, for the first time, we spotted a distant oil platform. A few minutes on the Marine Traffic website identified it as the main production platform for the Beatrice oilfield. Located twenty-four kilometres to the west of Golspie, the field was developed from 1980 and was decommissioned in 2017. Barely visible in this picture are two of the eighty-four wind turbines of the Beatrice offshore wind farm which became operational in 2019 - more about this here.