Ben's Holiday on Arran

Someone recently pointed out that we do not have many  pictures of dogs on our website, so when Marie O'Brien shared photos with us of her holiday here last September with her husband and Ben the dog, it gave us an opportunity to put matters to rights. 

Here is Ben enjoying his holiday, captured by Marie's fabulous photography.

 

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Spring dates, events and news

Today the sun is shining! We’re getting outside work done and enjoying its warmth on our faces. What a relief after the relentless succession of winter storms we’ve endured in the British Isles this winter.

The start of February is traditionally marked by Candlemas and the Gaelic festival of Imbolc as a halfway point between winter and spring. The first of the month is St.Brigid’s Day. Her name is embedded in many Scottish place names. In fact, the site of an ancient chapel known as St.Bride’s lies just above the campsite: https://canmore.org.uk/site/39781/lochranza-ballarie-saint-brides-chapel

The campsite will open on March 21^st but in the meantime here are some dates for your diary, and information that may interest you.

Firstly, the Arran GeoFest geology festival will be held over the weekend of  18^th-20^th March with walks and talks for all. See:

http://www.scottishgeology.com/arran/

The Lochranza Field Centre is now the Lochranza Centre CIC (community investment company). If you’ve stayed at the campsite before you may well have enjoyed their summer ceilidhs. The centre offers simple, clean accommodation, good food and outdoor activities, particularly for groups. This is what the Geological Society 100 Great Geosites project said about them:

“The Isle of Arran, and particularly the well-known Loch Ranza Field Studies Centre, offers some of the best opportunities to study the geology of the last 600 million years”.

Find out more at:

http://www.lochranzacentre.co.uk

This year’s Arran Mountain Festival takes place over the weekend of 13^th- 16^th May. I know that places are filling up fast already. It’s a great opportunity to take your walking to the next level under the guidance of experienced and qualified leaders. It’s also an opportunity to benefit from insider knowledge of Arran’s lesser-known hills. Find out more at:

http:// www.arranmountainfestival.co.uk

If you’re interested in birds and you are planning a visit to Arran, you may find the following links of interest. We are lucky enough to have Mr Jim Cassells on the island, who keeps us all informed about the birds that live here or pass through and keeps detailed records of them. He is always interested in your sightings.

On the Arran Birds website http://www.arranbirding.co.uk/index.html you can find these sections:
Monthly news http://www.arranbirding.co.uk/monthly_news.html
Recent sightings http://www.arranbirding.co.uk/recent_sightings.html
Short walks http://www.arranbirding.co.uk/finding_birds.html
Notes on Arran birds http://www.arranbirding.co.uk/arran_bird_notes.html

N.B. The photo shows Chalmadale Waters- the name of the burn that runs by the campsite

Arran - End of October 2015




The New Year is well underway but I just wanted to share some photos taken by my sister Isobel Robinson at the end of season last Autumn. Arran turned bright orange for a while!

 

In the Heavens and on the Ground

Last night (October 7^th) we witnessed the strange shape-shifting spectacle of the northern lights from the campsite. Out of the brilliant green glow in the northern sky tall pillars of green light appeared and disappeared. Four shooting stars sped overhead whilst we watched. All the time, the weird and wonderful roars of the deer orchestra resonated in the still night air. 

 

It’s that time of year again when Lochranza is anything but peaceful thanks to the red deer rut. This is the seventh year I’ve had the privilege of witnessing its rituals on my doorstep, although it does leave me sleep-deprived.  The top stag of the past three years – known to us as Brutus- is holding on to his position as I write this, but there are plenty of younger stags peering in over the golf course fences and moving in ever closer.

(See my blog of October 2013 for more about the red deer)

Last Thursday (along with the rest of Britain I believe) we experienced temperature inversions causing strangely dense patches of fog. The Brodick ferry was unable to manouevre into Ardrossan Harbour and the Lochranza ferry had a crew member hanging over each side of the boat and peering through the mist to see Lochranza Pier.  However, you only had to be above rooftop height to find yourself in golden sunshine looking across the fog to Kintyre.

Another strange weather phenomenon from earlier in the summer was a startling explosion of thunder as the Arran Distillery roof got struck by lightning. It came without warning. Phones and the Internet were down for a while and it certainly upset the dogs that were staying here at the time.

On a more routine note, a main Autumn task for us each year is to get the ditches cleared out before the weather turns cold (it’s a wet job!) The ditches criss-cross the golf course draining into the burn which empties into the loch. As soon as we close on October 25^th we’re going to be busy demolishing the existing reception building, which is past its best in terms of leaks and draughts, and installing its replacement. The new building will have an office, a laundry, a campers’ room and disabled facilities just as before.

As always, we remember the season for the people we meet – it’s the great pleasure of being campsite wardens. 

Wishing you a warm, happy and healthy winter

From the Lochranza Campsite team: Alan and Carol, Kev, Kema, myself and Nigel.

 

So Long Wet Summer

RET (reduced ferry tariff) has meant that we have had a busy summer despite a distinct lack of summery weather until recently. It’s only in the last couple of weeks that I’ve been able to enjoy an outdoor swim or two in Gleann Easan Biorach. A consequence of RET is that it really is important to book your ferry ticket in good time and also to book your camping- we have not been able to guarantee space for anyone who has just turned up this summer. The Arran Farmers’ Show, held at Lamlash on the first Wednesday in August every year, was still a great traditional day out despite rain clouds which kept turning up the volume. There were plenty of kids there running around encased in mud from head to wellies, all looking a lot like Morph, the clay TV animation character. 

Thank you as always to Chris Traill and the Lochranza Geology Field Centre for organising the weekly summer ceilidhs in the village hall. From later on this year the Field Centre is to be managed as a community initiative- an exciting development for the village. If you haven’t been to one before, a ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) is a traditional Scottish get-together comprising music and dancing. Ceilidhs are welcoming, fun and essential to an understanding of Scottish culture where people in close-knit communities in remote places have always had to be adept at making their own entertainment. Both the music and the dancing can get very fast indeed. At the Lochranza ceilidhs music is provided by the talented Arranach Ceilidh Band. Alistair Paul, a member of the band, has recently compiled a book of music from Arran Gaelic culture: Arainn Nam Beann. “Arran, like other parts of Scotland, and particularly Gaelic Scotland, was a musical place where music was woven into the tapestry of people’s lives”, he explains. You can buy a copy for yourself in various Arran shops. Last year, I took up playing the concertina as something easy to pick up when I had spare minutes to while away and I’m looking forward to learning these Arran tunes.

Northerly winds kept midges away for much of the summer. This was not good news for the swallows which nest in our sheds. They produced two broods this year, compared to three last year. So, if you’ve suffered a few bites lately, console yourself with the thought that you’re contributing to biodiversity and saving swallows! When the weather finally warmed up in August we experienced midges that were very hungry indeed! When Nigel and I went camping our midge defences involved keeping the inner tent firmly zipped, going to the pub for the evening, and when we returned to the tent to get in it and have it zipped up again in less than two seconds.

For an amazing wildlife picture from this summer, have a look at the Arran Natural History Society page on facebook. My friend Sue Archer has posted a terrific photo she took of a basking shark breaching in Brodick Bay on August 31^st. The ANHS is now on Twitter (Arran Nature). Another friend, Hilary, who runs a B and B in Lamlash told me how she sent some of her guests to see the wild red deer of Lochranza and they returned saying they’d only seen the pet ones behind the fence.! As you know if you’ve stayed here before, the wild deer are free spirits who jump over the golf course fences as they please in order to enjoy the juicy green golf course grass. I take it as a compliment that the wildlife round here (red deer, squirrels, rabbits) doesn’t regard us as a threat and seems happy to share the space with us all.

You don’t tend to find the hooded crow on wildlife-spotting wishlists but we have plenty of them round here and I have come to recognise their intelligence. One day whilst I was washing up I spotted a hoodie eyeing up a large crust under the window. I watched the crow and it watched me. It was determined to get that crust but I was a bit too close for comfort.  It decided to go a circuitous route round Nigel’s boat which would bring it within snatching distance of the crust. I had to laugh because it wasn’t clever enough to realise that I could see its legs under the boat all the time. Still, it got its reward.

Time to enjoy the sunshine- better late than never.

Canoeing Northern Ireland

Although this isn’t a blog about Arran, it is about a place that is not far away as the seagull flies: Northern Ireland. Ties of culture, tradition and language between Northern Ireland and south-west Scotland go back to the days when all the lands around the North Channel made up the Kingdom of the Dal Riata. Ferries nowadays sail regularly between Cairnryan and Belfast, and also between Troon (just a short drive from Ardrossan)and Larne in summer. 

Last week Nigel and I were lucky enough to get time out to travel to Northern Ireland, thanks to Carol and Alan Haddington looking after the campsite for a few days. Specifically, we wanted to reconnoitre canoe trails which had come to our knowledge through Joe Byrne who stayed at the campsite back in 2012, having sailed over in his large RiB boat from Cushendall on the lovely Antrim coast. We were looking forward to the pleasure of back-to-basics camping again, as well as doing a couple of canoe journeys. Arran gives us plenty of opportunities to sea kayak but not so many to open canoe (canoes are most suited to river and lake travel).

A short journey from Belfast brought us to Kinnego Marina on the southern shores of Lough Neagh (pronounced Nay) which is not only the biggest lough in Northern Ireland but the biggest by area in the British Isles. A 90 mile canoe trail circumnavigates the Lough, with the River Blackwater Trail entering from the south-west and the River Bann Trail exiting in the north. Accounts differ as to whether the legendary Irish hero Finn McCool scooped out the hole now occupied by Lough Neagh in order to throw the earth at Scotland or England but he certainly created an inland freshwater expanse so large that, from Kinnego, you cannot see the edges to the east and west, just the broad mauve silhouettes of the Sperrin mountains to the north. Here, we had a rendez-vous planned: a paddle and a picnic with Joe, his daughters Hannah and Joanna, and Paul the site manager, our guide, who in 26 years at the site has gained an intimate knowledge of the nature and history of the area. Swallows swooped around us in the golden evening sunshine as we nibbled strawberries, and the sound of busy distant tractors haymaking filled the air.

Next day we canoed the lower tree-lined parts of the wide River Bann towards Coleraine and the coast- something humans have done for many thousands of years. The pretty rolling countryside was so vividly green it looked like a lovely painting on which the paint hadn’t yet dried.  A kingfisher darted past us in a flash of electric blue.  Further downstream we had another close encounter with a bird: a mute swan imitating a warship. He puffed up his chest and wings like billowing sails as he slid towards us broadsides. He didn’t look ready to parley so we accelerated our paddling thanks to fear-driven adrenaline. Just when we thought we’d left him  we heard the powerful beat of wings behind Nigel’s shoulders: we were being pursued. It must have looked like a scene from Lord of the Rings 4. 

We sought sanctuary at the next lock where a notice warns not to intimidate swans! We considered our options for getting back to the campsite at Drumaheglis Marina, as we definitely didn’t want a repeat performance, when Nigel got talking to a friendly passer-by called Mervyn, who, on hearing of our predicament, offered us a lift. It turned out to be just one of many small acts of spontaneous kindness from strangers that we experienced during our short stay. On our return to Lochranza when we asked Alan and Carol what they had most enjoyed about the week, they unhesitatingly replied “the people”. It seems that, on both sides of the North Channel, however lovely a place may be, the greatest pleasure in any place is the people in it.

If I’ve whetted your appetite to find out more about Northern Ireland’s canoe trails you can find comprehensive user-friendly information about routes, local facilities, campsites, and access and egress points at: www.canoeni.com/canoe-trails/