Nigel and Will- probably the last dip of the year

It’s not just the south of England that can enjoy playing in the sea in Autumn (admittedly it was ten degrees cooler here).

Autumn Diary

Just now nature is busy ensuring its survival into next year. I came across a red squirrel the other day, so totally absorbed in hiding its horde in a tree root it didn’t notice me behind it. But it’s the clamour of the rut that dominates Lochranza life in early October. The stags are in such a frenzied state guarding their herds that they don’t eat. These red deer are wild and roam the northern hills of Arran, but belong to the Laird, and are managed, that is to say some are culled each year to maintain healthy stock and sustainable numbers. One year when culling did not take place, many deer starved to death. It’s the stags that are being culled at the present time; later in October it will be selected hinds. Out on the golf course you can regularly hear the creaking, clacking and clattering of entangled antlers as young stags practise battle. They have also gouged out new hazards for golfers in the form of round wallows: muddy pools they like to bathe in, in order to rise out of them looking dripping black and scary.

There is a dramatic shift of focus in our lives at this time too. As only the hardiest visitors come to the campsite and golf course in October, it is time to get on with hefty outdoor maintenance tasks: clearing the ditches to drain winter floods, cutting back hedges and mending fences. Like the animals, as one year comes to fruition for us, it’s time to start working towards the next.

The Mountains of Arran in September

Ticket to Islay

A motorbike, a little tent, and a Calmac ferry ticket….. what more do you need to be happy?

Nigel and I have just returned from a two day motorbike tour of Islay – an island we missed out on our sea kayaking tour of 2009 because we got distracted by Arran. So many of our visitors travel on to Islay from here in Lochranza that we felt we simply must go and see the island for ourselves.

Getting to Islay involves crossing by ferry from Lochranza to Claonaig, then a seven mile journey across Kintyre followed by a two hour sailing to Islay. The route takes you through West Loch Tarbert and into the racing tides of the narrow Sound of Islay. On the brand new ferry, the Finlaggan, large, light windows frame the picturesque island-scapes as you travel.

Negotiating rough island roads on a motorbike is never easy but it’s always worth it. Little used roads take you through out-of-the-way places and give you glimpses of island life: highland ponies dozing; cows paddling at the edge of the sea; fields of geese, and seals singing on rocks. Islay is lovely in an understated way, with whitewashed villages huddled round harbours, and farms and fields that seem little changed in many years, though the island used to support a far greater population than it does now. On a motorbike you smell the whisky distilleries before you see them. You feel the place, you don’t just see it.

Islay was an important political centre in medieval times when the culture of Dalriada, which included the more southerly Western Isles and Northern Ireland, was a powerful influence in Scotland. If you think of the sea as the main highway it becomes comprehensible why such a now remote island should be a busy cultural centre then. Today Islay still has a thriving Gaelic culture and takes pride in traditional skills such as peat cutting, evident from the public notices in village shops.

Islay has two campsites- one at Port Charlotte, and another at Kintra Farm where we camped amongst the dunes, and watched a radiant pink setting sun tumble from a low grey sky. We ate our favourite camping meal of corn beef hash cooked on a Trangia. Later on, when it was dark, we watched lighthouse beams sweeping the sky.

Happiness.

Exploring Glen Catacol

Arran’s mountains are amazing. When you first see Arran across the Clyde, the mountains look too impossibly big to be on an island. And when you first look up into Glen Sannox, the jagged mountain ridges look straight out of a Lord of the Rings film set.

Arran’s glens are awe-inspiring too. To the west of Lochranza you come to glacier-scoured, U-shaped Glen Catacol, home to golden eagles, adders and the unique Arran whitebeam trees. As you walk up the glen there is a powerful sense of natural forces sculpting the landscape here and now. Wherever you are you can hear water. The burn glides over flat granite rocks into pools descending to the Kilbrannan sound. As you head higher towards Loch Tanna, the landscape is almost reminiscent of the Alps with recent gorges carved out by heavy rain, clear water and white rocks. The most striking feature up here is the long slide of the burn and the giant Allt nan Calman waterfall plunging to join it. With its steep hillsides and lush climate, Arran is an island of waterfalls and the Allt nan Calman has to be one of the most spectacular.

Eventually you arrive at a broad, boulder strewn col overlooking the expanse of Loch Tanna. Routes from here lead to Coire Fhion Lochain, down to Loch Iorsa and Dougarie, or over Beinn Tarsuinn to Lochranza. It’s rocky and heathery terrain, but whichever route you decide to take you will be sure to have these wonderful mountains and glens at the north end of Arran all to yourself.

Loch Tanna and Glen Catacol is one of the routes offered on this September’s Arran Mountain Festival programme. Have a look at: www.arranmountainfestival.co.uk

Arran’s Flowers

Driving to Brodick can be a dangerous business, and I don’t mean because of the infamous potholes. The trouble is that the scenery’s so distractingly lovely that it’s positively hazardous. The other day it was the spectrum of colour on the roadside that snatched my attention, with red fuchsia, fiery montbretia, creamy lace meadowsweet, golden honeysuckle, and spires of purple loosestrife, all tumbling in luxuriant.disarray

The glorious vegetation of Arran can sometimes be overlooked because it’s easy to have close up encounters with wild creatures here, but there are not many parts of the British Isles where you are likely to find so much variety so easily; you can find me consulting my wildflowers book on most days. Seeing the common wildflowers in abundance is, for me, like meeting friends from my childhood, when they were often integrated in my outdoor games:-

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Ten Activities for Children with Flowers, Weeds or Grass

(Before intensive farming methods in many places made flowers less plentiful.)

1. Make daisy chain necklaces.

2. Test if someone likes butter. Hold a buttercup under their chin. If there is a reflected yellow glow (there always is!) they like butter.

3. Make rose petal scent by squashing them in a jam jar with some water.

4. Impress others by grasping a nettle in your bare hands. (Make sure it’s actually a deadnettle, but the other person doesn’t need to know that.)

5. If you get it wrong and get stung, find a dock leaf to rub on the sting and soothe it.

6. Tell the time with dandelion “clocks”. Every puff to blow the seeds away is equivalent to an hour.

6. Make grass squeal by holding a split blade between your thumbs and blowing hard.

7. Stick strands of chickweed onto someone else’s back secretly.

8. Have a battle with sticky burrs.

9. Pick some grass with dangly seeds then chant “Here’s a tree in summer, (show the grass) here’s a tree in winter, (push the seeds off between thumb and fingers and hold them like a bouquet), here’s a bunch of flowers, (throw the seeds in the air), here’s your April showers”.

10. Pick buttercups and daisies, clover and forget-me-nots, on the way to school so that your teacher can put them in a jam jar on her desk.

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Arran also has some fascinating areas of ancient woodland. It’s not widely known, but I learnt from Scottish Natural Heritage recently that the twisty, wind-swept oak woods on Arran’s west coast are truly rainforest: the Celtic rainforest. A high proportion of European mosses, liverworts, lichens and ferns can be found in these woods. In addition, the island is home to three types of unique whitebeam tree. So if otters and eagles are proving elusive, remember that Arran has lots of amazing wildlife that might be hidden away, but won’t hide from you.

Hefted

“Nigel, there’s a deer outside the window eating your canoe boot.”

Two years ago we would never have thought that this kind of remark would become the stuff of our everyday conversation. You certainly experience nature at close quarters when you come to Lochranza.

One evening last week Nigel and I went for a dip in the sea near Dougarie. The beach was covered with moon jellyfish waiting for the tide to rise. The water was warm and we swam in the reflections of the sunset.

Arran is such a natural paradise it is easy to understand why many Arran folk say that they are so strongly attached to the island that they cannot bear to leave it.

This made me think of the term “hefted” which is used in Northern England. It describes the way that sheep and cattle, which come from stock bred in the same area for generations, will stay in that place without fences and return instinctively to it. Maybe people can be hefted too.

The red deer of Lochranza must be hefted to the locality. They head up onto the hilltops at times but they are just keeping an eye on the place from higher up I suspect. Most summer days find them snoozing in some cool marshy spot on the golf course; most summer nights munching grass around the tents.

The hill sheep of Lochranza seem also to be hefted. After lambing, Sandy the farmer takes them off the golf course onto the open hills. One particular ewe though, along with her two lambs, is particularly attached to the golf course. She bleats pitifully when sent off and has many secret strategies to get back in, including sneaking in behind cars when campers arrive. She is instantly recognisable by her exotic set of four curving horns and she has taught us not to underestimate the brains of hill sheep.

Okay, it’s probably the juicy grass that bonds the deer and sheep to Lochranza, but who’s to say that they aren’t aware that, like us, they’re lucky creatures to be alive in a place like this?

An unhappy sheep- separated from the golf course.

Deer photos by Lance Ostler and Les Gibbon

Meeting the Neighbours: CalMac’s Five Ferries Ticket

Arran’s nearest neighbour is Kintyre- a long protective arm of land to the west- and it is mainland. At Lochranza we also look out over the Kilbrannan Sound to the Cowal peninsula, which is mainland too. On maps it looks like a fist of stubby fingers about to nip the Isle of Bute. However Bute is spared by the narrow channels of water around it that are named the Kyles of Bute.

Nigel and I have an ongoing debate about whether you can tell if you’re on the mainland or an island if you can’t see the sea. Cal Mac’s Five Ferries ticket was a means to explore this question as well as to get to know the neighbours.

The early ferry from Lochranza took us to Claonaig on Kintyre- an area marketed as “the mainland island” due to its atmosphere of remoteness and the fact that the sea is always in walking distance. But road signs show the mileage to Glasgow and remind you that you’re on the mainland and can travel in straight-ish lines instead of circles. Tarbert (where you catch the next ferry to Portavadie) has a lively atmosphere of comings, goings and passings through, with brightly painted houses round a busy harbour. West Loch Tarbert and East Loch Tarbert almost connect the Atlantic and Loch Fyne here, but a low rocky ridge remains firmly in place keeping Kintyre attached to mainland Scotland.

We stopped at Tigh-na-Bruaich on the pretty, wooded Cowal peninsula (marketing slogan: “Argyll’s Secret Coast”) and explored the Kyles of Bute in our kayaks. This is sailing country with boathouses of all shapes and sizes tucked in along a coastline of little rocky bays and islands.

The next ferry crossing from Colintraive involved a three storey vessel to Rhubodach on Bute. From mainland solitude we found ourselves in island bustle and urban traffic at Rothesay, which is like a little Glasgow afloat in the Clyde, with its stolid Victorian architecture making the moated medieval castle look small. The splendid Victorian toilets at the pier have won awards. However, Bute, like Kintyre and Arran, has contrasting east and west sides, and lonely beaches with views of Arran’s Sleeping Warrior mountain skyline weren’t far away.

Finally, the ticket took us to Wemyss Bay. We had enjoyed getting to know the neighbours and stopped in Largs for Italian icecreams at a ridiculously early hour, before heading homewards on the Ardrossan to Brodick crossing. As we drove up the coast to Lochranza we surveyed the now indistinguishable mix of long lochs, islands and mainland where we had just been. There was as little traffic on the Lochranza road as usual and certainly no traffic lights, no roundabouts, no white lines, no advertising hoardings- in fact nothing that reminded us of anywhere else.

I get excited about journeys on Calmac ferries and seeing different Scottish ports (sometimes just a slipway and a heated Portaloo!) but the distances we covered were not large and certainly do-able by sea kayak. Alternatively you can cycle or even walk the route using the ferries. Don’t hurry though- you’ll find a lot of unique places to explore along the way.

The photos show:

Tarbert

Kayaks in the Kyles of Bute

View of Arran from Bute

The Storm

Hard on the heels of my last blog about The Humming Tree, came the destructive face of nature in the shape of violent storm-force winds that bombarded West Scotland on May 23^rd. The trees, in full, lush summer leaf, suffered. At Lochranza, for most of the day, the gales funnelled down the loch from the north-west and and down Gleann Easan from the south-west , sounding like approaching express trains, and colliding on the golf course, whirling and gusting. Occasional explosions were the crashing down of trees. The deer lay as flat as hearthrugs, chins to the ground. If I see them behaving like that again I’ll know it’s time to worry about what’s heading over the Atlantic.

The trees which bore the full brunt of this battering are now brown and even bare from the burning salt spray. However, I am assured by Rab Logan from the Forestry Commission that they will compensate for this trauma by going into frantic seed production to ensure their future survival. And the blackened bracken will actually allow for more diverse new growth on the hillsides.

After a year of extreme winter temperatures, followed by an April that saw us outdoor swimming, then an unseasonally wild and windy May, I wonder how future historians will regard our time now? Are these just wobbles in the weather or the harbingers of significant climate change?

Better weather arrived for our Texas Scramble, sponsored by Arran Distillery, on the Bank Holiday.