Typhoons

We woke to find snow on the hills around Golspie and even some slush down to sea level but after a morning of wintery showers the sky cleared, so we....

....walked to Drummuie at the southwest end of the town, where the sun had burned the snow away, and then....

 ....up into the forestry on the slopes of Ben Bhraggie.

A forestry walk isn't my favourite, particularly if its coniferous forest as there always seems a sad lack of wildlife in it - the occasional chirrup of a bird and, as happened today, a rare, fleeting sight of something a little larger, this time a beast with a long bushy tail. It wasn't a squirrel as it was too big and, in any case, even though they ought to be there, we haven't yet met a Ben Bhraggie squirrel, red or grey.

The best that can be said for forestry walking is that, if one is lucky, there's the occasional glimpse of a view - here looking down onto Golspie High School and the centre of the village.

Today we had the additional frustration of being able to hear, but not see, the fighter jets that were circling out over the Dornoch Firth, though we finally found a clearing where we could see them, at least two Eurofighter Typhoons, probably based at Lossiemouth.

There's very little in the way of air activity here. We rarely hear or see a passenger plane flying over and we've only heard fighter jets briefly on one previous occasion.

Tain Scalps

The latest visit to Lidl in Tain gave me another opportunity to walk along the southern shore of the Dornoch Firth. Last time the tide was low and a long way out across the mudflats but today it was rising, pushing....

....the ducks and waders much closer to the shore and just about within the range of my camera. This view looks across what are called Tain Scalps - a scalp is a shellfish bank - to the Glenmorangie whisky distillery.

Most of the ducks were wigeon, along with some mallard, and the waders included oystercatchers and curlews, but a passer-by wearing a very expensive-looking pair of binoculars told me that I had missed a large flock of teal by a couple of days and that I should also be able to see smaller numbers of shelduck.

Big Burn Walk

Golspie's 'Big Burn Walk' follows the Golspie Burn upstream from a small car park by the A9 at the northeast end of the village. It's touted as the one thing for which it's worth the passing tourist stopping here - one reads comments like "Golspie may disappoint but....". While I do agree that the glen well is worth a visit, I also think there are lots more sights in Golspie which outclass it - like its long, sandy beach.

From the car park by the A9 the first impressive feature is the railway viaduct which soars over the burn, upstream from which....

....the burn runs through an open valley of mature deciduous woodland. The burn was running high when we walked up it today, the peat-stained water the colour of fine whisky.

The valley sides then close in, and for much of its course through the woods the burn tumbles between the walls of an impressive canyon, and the path is only able to follow it by crossing from side to side by means of a series of wooden bridges.

The recent heavy rain meant that the path was wet and, because after yesterday's rain the sky cleared overnight and we had a sharp frost, sections of the path were very slippery.

In this 4.5km section the burn drops 80m in a series of of falls and rapids, of which this is the most impressive, the more so because the rain had filled the burn.

We walked to the top of the tourist attraction and then followed a narrow road further upwards, seeing a dusting of snow on the hills before....

....we came out of the forestry and could enjoy the view up towards the headwaters the Golspie Burn.

Perhaps it says something about Golspie that we have been resident here for seven weeks, walking in its environs almost every day, and have only just felt the need to visit its 'premier tourist attraction'.

Offshore Birds

We woke to a wet day but, being accustomed to such things after our years on Ardnamurchan, we donned our wet-weather gear and, because the tide is approaching springs and the beach is now covered for most of the daylight hours, walked along the top of the rock embankment between the beach and the golf course, thinking that, with the lack of beach for the waders, we'd have nothing to look at but grey sky and grey sea but were....

....quickly and pleasantly surprised at how much there was to watch, including this trio of guillemots which kept pace with us a few yards offshore, diving regularly to feed but coming up together for a few seconds on the surface, and....

....a very smart male red-breasted merganser.

Then what looked like a distant mass of floating seaweed turned out be a raft of eider ducks which, by eider duck standards, seemed to be getting on remarkably well with each other.

We feel very fortunate indeed to have all this wildlife to watch even on a grey, cold, rainy early January day.

Dornoch

Along with the pleasure of discovering a new area's history there is enjoyment to be found in exploring its geography. Today's visit made Dornoch the fourth - after Helmsdale, Brora, Tain and Golspie itself - of the small local towns/villages we have been to, and each has its own charm. Dornoch is pretty in a chocolate box tourist way, rather like a Cotswold village, with its warm stone buildings, neat shops and typically Scottish clean-ness. It's packed with history too, with some interesting interpretation boards relating to the clearances and, despite its small size, a cathedral, old law courts and a jail, now closed.

Dornoch is perhaps best-known for its very highly-regarded championship links golf course, the word 'links' referring to it being on sandy, dune ground, but it also has a long sand beach where we enjoyed a walk. Even though the sun had been up for some time both golf course and beach were still rimed with frost, and the surrounding countryside was white with a hoar frost.

Pretty little town that it may be, we wouldn't put Dornoch high on our list of places in which to settle. The first proper Highland hill is miles away, there is no rail station and, although its shops include an excellent hardware store, it hasn't half the services which Golspie boasts; and we met far too many people on the beach, a good dozen in the hour we walked it.

Dabs

With the moon moving towards full and low tide later and later in the afternoon, we've been walking along the beach into the 'evening' which, here and at this time of year, starts around four o'clock.

Yesterday, in a low sun, we came across a stranded flatfish which, although the evidence on the sand showed that it had been attacked by birds, was still....

....very much alive when we moved it into a pool of water. It's almost certainly a dab, a small flatfish which is common in the North Sea, particularly on sandy bottoms, and makes a tasty meal both for humans and....

....for the seabirds which had already had a good chew on this small dab which we found this afternoon.

It seems strange that we're suddenly finding dead dabs on the beach but....

....the carrion crows certainly aren't complaining. This one took the trouble to move his find so he could eat it in style on a bed of seaweed.

Sunset

The days are very short: the sun dropped below the horizon just before half-past three this afternoon. Earlier, we had some heavy showers which included hail, and the summit of Ben Bhraggie was capped with snow.