Dawn

It's seven-thirty and sunrise is still three-quarters of an hour away in this morning's view looking southeast across the Dornoch and Moray Firths. To the right the lighthouse at Tarbat Ness flashes four times in a thirty-second cycle. Beyond it to the left lie the distant coasts and hills of Moray and Aberdeenshire.

We are fortunate: this is the panorama we enjoy with our morning tea, though what we see on a day-to-day basis is controlled by the whims of Scotland's weather.

A Walk with a Purpose

I do like to set off on a walk that has some sort of purpose to it, and today's was just such a walk, though the chances of success in this particular search seemed low.

Each year one of my favourite fungi 'flowers' in early to mid-February, so finding one today seemed a bit optimistic but, on following a footpath near Dunrobin Castle while.... 

....admiring the masses of snowdrops that are in full display, I found the day's objective....

....some scarlet elf caps.

These two were small, not more than an inch across, and growing all by themselves on the steep, muddy bank shown in the top picture. I confess I was surprised to find them: I only know of two other sites in Dunrobin Woods, and the number of fungi in general this year strikes me as being exceptionally low.

I was following the particular footpath in order to reach this woodland clearing, the place where we've found elf caps on several occasions before, but a good search produced nothing until....

....I spotted this little beauty, which was followed by three more.

An Old Friend

The Scottish Government's fisheries patrol vessel Minna was anchored off Golspie this afternoon, probably sheltering from the gale force winds we've enjoyed earlier today. She's certainly not there to inspect fishing boats - there are none in this part of the North Sea.

Minna is an old friend from our Kilchoan days when we would see her frequently, for there was much more fishing activity in the Sound of Mull.

A Blanket of Silence

From our front door it's a few steps to this track which climbs into the forestry - mostly coniferous - below Bheinn Bhraggie. Follow it for a mile and one comes to a special spot where....

....there's a gate which leads out onto what used to be glorious, open moorland with wide, unobstructed views. Along the next section of track we've seen herds of red deer as well as a fox; it's a wild, lonely place where the wind blew free.

The deer are now gone and what used largely to be coarse grass and heather has....

....been planted with serried ranks of trees - again, mostly coniferous. Very soon the views, of The Mound and....

....more distantly of Loch Fleet, the Dornoch Firth and Easter Ross, will be obscured by a wall of trees and a blanket of silence will descend on the area for....

....most of the birds seem to prefer more open habitats which include deciduous trees and shrubs.

This new forestry is there for good reason: we need the wood, these are fast-growing trees, and the trees that have been planted are native to Scotland. What is wrong is the density of the planting, and the lack of open spaces and a generous ad-mixtures of deciduous trees. However, whatever trees are planted the new landscape will never have the grandeur of what is there now.

A New View

We've been busy settling into our new house, 'new' both in the sense that it's not the house we used to live in, and in the sense that it's newly built. It had never been our intention when we came to Golspie to build another house - we'd had enough agony building the one in Kilchoan - but with no bungalows coming onto the market and time overtaking us, we took the plunge. It's been an exhausting battle, one we won mostly because we were fortunate in choosing a good local builder.

We might not have subjected ourselves to the stresses of the last two years had we not found a site with a view. It's not the best view I've lived with - the views from the last house in Mombasa and Matenderere in Kilchoan were better - but it's something to watch. It's mostly sky above an empty sea but it has land between, a distant land which very much reminds me of the first sight of land after a long sea passage.

So it's a view which evolves, which changes slowly, which lacks excitement - though it may yet surprise us - a view which seems appropriate for our ages. We can relax into it, time can slow.

At the Swimming Club, 1953

This photograph was taken at the Mombasa Swimming Club in 1953. It shows, from left to right, my friend John Solly; me partly obscured behind the yacht; Mark Solly, John's older brother; and my brother Richard. Behind us, across the waters of the Old Port, in the Old Town, which is on the island of Mombasa, while the Club was on the mainland to the north of the town.

The reason I'm behind the yacht is that I'm holding it; it's my yacht and I'm intensely proud of it, for it was made for me by an engineer on one of my father's Harrison Line ships. It had a dark blue hull and a small metal plaque on its deck with it's name - Defender - engraved on it, so called because that was the name of my grandfather, Ernest Haylett's last command.

What is so remarkable about the photo is that, over seventy years later, I'm still in touch with John, Mark and my brother. John I last saw at a Mombasa European Primary School reunion in, I think, 2013, Mark and I still 'see' each other in occasional FaceTime sessions, and my brother and I exchange emails.

Sadly, the Swimming Club didn't last as long: its site was developed as a housing complex.

A Warning

The southeastern sky just before nine this morning gave a clear warning of what is in store for us, not only Storm Isha which is due here in the early hours of tomorrow morning but also a series of depressions which are scheduled to follow through the week, all these hard on the heels of....

....last week's snow which, while still blanketing the higher bens, hasn't fully melted at sea level, leaving some nasty patches of black ice.

With the snow making walking difficult and a huge amount to do in the way of unpacking and sorting our possessions into our new house we've hardly been out for a walk in the last ten days so took the opportunity of this morning's sunshine to wander along the coast path towards Dunrobin Castle seeing....

....precious little in the way of wildlife along this shattered shore other than a grey heron, a couple of cormorants, a flock of a dozen or so redshanks, some gulls and a few rock pigeons, and....

....a handful of oystercatchers. Our feeling that the wildlife population has declined drastically in the last couple of years was echoed by the village's librarian, whom we met along the path and who is also a keen bird watcher.

That we have more windy weather to come in the next few days isn't good news for the beasts that are already struggling to survive.