A perfect pitch

It turned out that our day could and did get better!  The camping spot we'd originally planned on was a few more kilometres up the coast, and given the wind direction we realised that it would be right in the wind.  So when a flash of white sand backed by bright green woodland caught our eye at the back of a small bay, we had to take a look.

Landing near low water we found ourselves in an enclosed bay, sheltered from the wind and in full sunshine.  A few folk were enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, indicating that the bay was fairly accessible, but it did look very promising as a wild camping spot.  Our preference is for fairly remote areas which are little used, but never look a gift horse in the mouth!

As the day visitors started to leave, we pitched our tents, Donny and Douglas pitched on the level turf above the beach itself - where there was even a picnic bench......

Allan and I chose spots in a beautiful wood of birches at the back of the bay which was alive with birdsong.  At the time and in the memory, this felt a perfect pitch.

Once we'd pitched up we wandered the bay, just enjoying the sunshine and the location.  We came across this lovely piece of beach art which must have taken both patience and real creative talent to produce.  Transient and perfect, it would be washed away by the evening's high tide.

Much of the beach was covered in pieces of white "coral" - actually Maerl, a corraline algae which when living is a purplish colour.  When they die, the calcereous remains of Maerl are broken and crushed by wave action, then bleached in the sun to form dazzling white "coral" beaches such as this one.  

A rare and fragile environment, Maerl beds have comprehensive protection, but are at risk from scallop dredging - one pass by a scallop dredger's bottom gear can destroy a bed which might be hundreds of years old.   Loch Carron has some of the best examples of Maerl beds and as a result is protected by designation as a Marine Protected Area (MPA).  

In the wood, Primroses were in flower on sunny banks - perhaps my favourite of the early Spring flowers; such a cheery sight at the back of a long winter.

After dinner we wandered over to the edge of the bay and climbed a rocky outcrop to photograph the setting sun - it was a really lovely evening.

Our fire below the Spring tide mark was lit to get going while we took our photographs and brought snacks and drinks down from the tents.

 Across the sea, beyond Skye and Raasay, the setting sun slipped down to the horizon to end a truly great day on the water.  We sat with a dram by our fire and chatted into a glorious evening.

Note: Since we camped here, the bay and its beach have been featured in a national newspaper and on a well known travel website as "one of the most beautiful and accessible in Scotland".  This is undoubtedly going to increase it's popularity and perfect as it is, we will avoid camping here for the foreseeable future in order to go a small way to reducing future pressure.

One good thing - 30th April 2020

The last two days of April have brought the type of weather usually associated with the month, heavy pulses of rain and sunny intervals.

When the showers passed through in the evening the lighting effects were really intense, changing by the second.  The rain has really brought a spurt of growth to Spring flowers....

Wood Anenomes (Anenome nemorosa) are at their peak, tens of thousands of lovely white stars in the Birch woodland.

On an area kept as a natural wildflower meadow there's been a sudden flowering of Cowslips (Primula veris) - soon the whole meadow will be studded with yellow flowers.

In the woods again, and the first of the late Spring flowers are beginning to appear, the delicate bowed heads of Wood Sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) are appearing.  Both flowers and leaves of this plant fold in the evening, perhaps an inbuilt frost protection measure.  The leaves, if chewed, have a zesty lemon flavour from the oxalic acids thy contain - a great natural freshener for the mouth.

Rain is not often something to relish in Scotland where we usually have it in an overabundance - but at the right time, in the right amount, it's a good thing.

A flash of gold

By early November most of the glorious pyrotechnic shades of autumn are off the trees, but there's a last flourish from one tree.  Larches (Larix decidua) are a slightly unusual tree, a deciduous conifer.  They aren't native to Britain but have been planted here since the 17th century and have become very much part of the woodland scene.  Here, small saplings line a forest track on the lower slopes of Bennachie with a flash of gold.

In early spring larches form "flowers", the male flowers a cluster of creamy anthers and the female variety a striking pink, which eventually will become the seed-bearing cones.  The needles form on the twigs, first as bright lime green shoots which mature into dark green needles.  In late autumn, after most other deciduous trees have started to shed their leaves, the larches moment to shine arrives......

In a matter of days the needles turn the most dramatic golden shade - against a flawless blue sky the trees make a striking sight.

All too soon the needles will drop, covering paths, tracks and the banks of watercourses with a carpet of gold.  Even in November, commonly perceived as a grey and lifeless month, there's colour aplenty in the landscape.

A touch of autumn in Morrone Birkwood

We spent a pleasant afternoon walking above the village of Braemar last weekend.  To the south west of the village on the lower slopes of Morrone is the Morrone Birkwood ("Birk" is the Scots name for Birch).  Although named for the Downy Birch (Betula pubescens), the wood has been designated as a Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of the good amount of Juniper Juniperus communis) in the understorey of the wood.

Climbing from the village, a road goes up past a duck pond and becomes a track which climbs to a viewpoint. There's a good view back to the village, which sits in a hollow above the River Dee at 340m/1115 ft.  The relatively high site in a bowl between big hills is part of the reason that Braemar has (twice) recorded temperatures of -27.2 degrees Celsius (-16.9 Farenheit) - a record low for the UK.

The viewpoint has an indicator post mapping all the summits which can be seen - near at hand the main Cairngorms massif looms large.

THere's a definite touch of autumn colour on the high ground now; the heather has turned to rich brown and patches of bracken are bright yellow. 

On the birks, the first sprinkle of gold is among the leaves as this lovely tree starts to colour up towards its climax in early October.

On the woodland floor fungi are numerous and some make for patches of vivid colour such as this Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria).

Poisonous and hallucinogenic as it is, the Fly Agaric is quite beautiful in its own way - and an early sign of  the purple of late summer beginning to give way to the reds and golds of autumn.

This short walk is about 5km in distance with 120 metres of ascent and takes a couple of hours.  There are sign boards in the village and some waymarking along the path itself - a good short walk with great interest and super views.

Strangeness in Paradise

This autumn seems to have a great one for fungi - and on a walk through through a wood next to a quiet stretch of the River Don we came across a whole range of mushrooms and fungi in all sorts of strange, wonderful forms.

Paradise Wood is a mainly deciduous woodland on the south bank of the river and on a north facing slope.  As a result it gets much less sunlight than the woods on the opposite bank and is almost always cool and damp.  Wonderfully untended, there's lots of standing and fallen dead wood, leaf litter and the proximity of the River Don - all of which must favour the conditions fungi thrive in.

Fungi identification isn't my strong point -  it's been fun trying to identify the unfamiliar species we saw but I'm not sure I've got them all correct and there a couple I can't identify, so if you know your mushrooms - please leave a comment!

In the damp grass by the side of the path we came across this striking inky-purple mushroom which seems to be Amethyst Deceiver (Laccaria amethystina). 

Keeping the colourful theme going, a fallen pine trunk was home to several Yellow Stagshorn (Calocera viscosa); the colour of which was really vibrant. The Linnaean name translates as "beautiful waxy - viscous/sticky"...which neatly sums up this small fungus which grows only on rotting wood.

I think this is a Hoof Fungus (Fomes fomentarius) although it's not dark grey like most of the Hoofs we see on Birch trees. 

On the stump of a fallen Beech tree was this strikingly white fungus.  I can only tentatively guess that it's one of the Pleurotus species; I've never seen a fungus quite as pure white in colour.

This group of large mushrooms emerging from a split in the bark of a tree is one of the ones I can't identify.  The fruiting bodies seemed to be climbing over each other to get to the best spot......

This Birch Polypore (Piptoporus betulinus) had grown on a Birch trunk after the tree had been blown over; it was at ninety degrees to both trunk and the other, older Polypores on the tree.

I think this is a group of Sulphur Tufts (Hypholoma fasciculare), again on a fallen Birch tree.  These mushroom specialise in consuming the cellulose content of the wood, and die away after a few years once the timber is reduced to a lignin core - then other lignin specialists in the fungi world move in.

This priapic fellow is another mushroom I can't identify, just a single specimen which seemed to be growing from a buried tree branch under the leaf litter and moss.

This I think is Artist's Bracket Fungus (Ganoderma applanatum), so called because the white underside can be scratched with a sharp point to leave brown marks.  It's a specialist on fallen hardwood branches and that's exactly where we found these two.

Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) are edible and cultivated varieties can be found in supermarkets - but I'm not confident enough to eat any wild fungus I can't absolutely identify given the toxicity of some of them!

Perhaps the most spectacular fungus we encountered were these golden yellow, fleshy, almost alien-looking large fruiting bodies growing on a felled Oak trunk -  I think that they may be Hairy Curtain Crust (Stereum hirsutum).  Given that it was Hallowe'en on the day we took this walk we thought that they looked suitably otherworldly!

It had been a fascinating walk and a real treat to encounter all the strange fungi....but after all the strangeness in Paradise it was nice to walk back up the track and out into the autumnal sunshine!

In the bleak midwinter - hearts of oak

After lunch we set off back along the shores of Loch Sunart towards Strontian.  The shoreline is generally rocky and wooded to almost the tide-line with a mix of mainly oak and birch with some holly, rowan and hazel.

The oakwoods here are of international importance as they are one of the largest surviving areas of Atlantic Maritime oak woodland - Scotland's very own rainforest.  The oaks are not the huge English oaks, but Sessile oaks (Quercus petraea) which grow smaller and can tolerate high rainfall.  Rainfall is what really makes these woods so special, the very wet climate favours luxuriant carpets of "lower plants"- mosses, liverworts and lichens - covering boulders and fallen branches in a green profusion.  Clearings within the wood are home to flowering plants and moor grass which in turn provide food for butterflies; the Ariundle woods are among the few sites where Chequered Skipper and Pearl Bordered Fritillaries can be found in Scotland, both species requiring the specialised conditions and food plants found in an Atlantic Oak wood.

Of course an oak wood is one of the most productive of forests.  In Spring and Summer the wood bursts into life and is full of the hum of insects and with birdsong.  This area is also a stronghold for scarce mammals such as Wildcat and Pine Marten; in fact Simon and Liz have a Pine Marten regularly visiting their garden.

It's perhaps in Spring and Autumn when these woods are at their most vibrant and full of colour and life, but winter is by no means a "dead" time in a wood.  These most special, most Scottish woods - the Atlantic rainforests- are a delight all year and it's intruiging to think that at one time most of the western sea-lochs would have been wooded just like this.

Precipitation is what sets the oak woods apart, and as we paddled along we were precipitated on by sweeping snow showers which trailed curtains down the loch, but it was by no means cold.

Between the showers occasional patches of sun enhanced the contours of the hills near the head of the loch; this is Garbh Bheinn, the other flank of the mountain which we'd seen so well a couple of days previously

Part way up the loch Mike noticed a tiny sandy beach exposed by the ebbing tide.  This was too good to pass and we pulled in for second luncheon, this time accompanied by a rather fine dram of Jura.  Malt whisky is of course matured in oak casks, it was very appropriate to be sitting below the living relatives of the casks which contained the spirit that so warmed our hearts!

 Photo: Simon Willis

 

Simon suddenly laughed and pulled out his camera - his snapshot caught Mike, Douglas and I looking very much like the three characters from the TV series "Last Of The Summer Wine", though perhaps "Last of the Winter Whisky" might be more appropriate.........  :o)

Suitably refuelled we got back in the boats for the last few kilometres to Strontian.  The wind had died completely and a luminous mist lent an ethereal quality to the light, it was a very relaxed paddle.

Approaching Strontian we had a most marvellous view ahead.  The mist had put a lid across Loch Sunart and the eye was drawn to the only clear air, through the trench of Glen Tarbert to the brilliantly snow-covered hills of Glencoe across Loch Linnhe.  It had been great to catch up with our friends Liz and Simon and the day had been winter at its most gentle......heart-warming among the oaks.

Spring in Aberdeenshire

 After the best part of five months spent away from home, it's good to be back.  Waking up to sunny and warm mornings has been a bonus; often there is lying snow at this point in April.  Spring is everywhere - the first sounds heard on waking are birdsong; the wild bubbling call of Curlews and the metallic "kleep" of Oystercatchers which come inland to breed on higher moors and farmland add to the more usual garden birdsong.

Spring flowers are much in evidence too...

The woods alongside the River Don are carpeted with beautiful drifts of Wood Anenomes (Anenome nemorosa)

By the riverbank and in the damper areas, Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) makes a cheerful sight, the bright yellow flowers set against the glossy green of the leaves.

Amongst the banks of Celandines is a patch of Butterbur (Petasites hybridus), a plant found mostly near rivers and unusual in that the cone-shaped inflorescences develop well before the leaves, in fact it often seems to flower when everything else is dormant.

Back into the woods and the first of the Wood Sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) is flowering in sunny open areas.  The leaves of this plant can be chewed to freshen the mouth, they have a pleasant lemon flavour.  Like the Wood Anenomes it's an early Spring flowering plant, taking advantage of the light before the spreading canopy of the trees puts the woodland floor into shade.

Wood Sorrel flowers are things of delicate beauty, and it has one of the loveliest and most descriptive of Gaelic names - Feada-Coille; "Candle of the Wood".

On sunlit banks, Speedwells are beginning to brighten the grass.......

......while above them, Birches in full sunlight are just starting to open brilliant jewel-green leaves less than a centimetre long from the buds which have blushed the wood with purple throughout the winter.

Returning along the riverside, a meadow area is covered with Cowslips (Primula veris), more common here than in many parts of Scotland where its close relative the Primrose is abundant.

Even our garden has small Spring flowers - Cuckooflower (Cardemine pratensis) - also known as Lady's Smock, has sprung up from newly cut grass.  Most years the snow shovel is a more useful garden tool than the lawnmower in mid April!

...and if the frosts stay away for a while, the abundant blossom on our Plum tree bodes well for late summer fruit.

There will no doubt be some harder weather to come before Spring moves into early Summer, but the new growth and life everywhere is so uplifting.