Here be Dragons

If you take the road from Perth to Dundee, you skirt the edges of an explosion of geological delight known as Kinnoull Hill. Sheer cliffs soar up from sea level on your left. In autumn they are swaddled in the glorious golds and browns of beech woodland at the base; in spring and summer studded with the gold of gorse and broom. Dilapidated towers seem to teeter on the edge of the cliffs looking like something Germanic from a Grimm fairy tale (they were put there fore that very purpose).

These dramatic cliffs are the result of volcanic activity some 400 million years ago when a monstrous intrusion of magma elbowed its way through the older rocks in an enormous seam and solidified. Much later, the Kinnoull Hill geological intrusion was part of other monster-scale earth movements – the folding which left us with the Sidlaws on the north side of the Tay and the Ochil hills on the other (it’s called an anticline; think of a rainbow….). Subsequent faultlines and erosion removed the top of a rainbow and created the deep valley through which the Tay now marches triumphantly to the sea.

If, however, you approach these cliffs from the other side, the ascent is appreciable, but mild and steady, the slow, back-door rise of the escarpment. I went that way in April, and parked in the Corsie quarry, where volcanic dolerite and basalt is exposed, and from which it was taken for building for centuries. Up a steep bank, and a variety of paths are on offer, taking me first to the trig. point on Corsie Hill and fine views north over the small city of Perth and the vast breadbasket of Strathmore, to the mountains of the Angus glens to the east and the Obneys, marker-hills of the Highland Boundary Fault, slightly west. Up through roads and sheltered by woodland I went on winding tracks. Oak and birch dominate in places, in others, beech and non-native conifers stake a much-contested claim. Areas of heath and rough grassland house woodland sculpture in this popular spot.

Sometime between all that geology and now, we are told, a dragon arrived on Kinnoull Hill. It glided along the unassailable cliff edges until it found a crevice, leading into a large enough cave for a small dragon to set up shop. This cave, called the Dragon Hole, is high on the cliff and allegedly could hold a dozen adult persons, so it wasn’t luxury accommodation for a dragon. What the dragon got up to, to upset the people of St. Johnstoun (as Perth was then known), I have no idea, but as is the way with relationships between human animals and animals either good to eat or a tad scary, someone was said to have “slain” it. It could have been St. Serf (what IS it with saints and dragons??), commemorated as a dragon slayer in the old church at nearby Dunning.

But my bet is Serf made it up, and the dragon’s still about, somewhere. There is a record that in the late 13th century (first) wars of independence, none other than William Wallace “pressed by the foe, occasionally betook himself to the retreat of the Dragon’s Hole.” In the 16th century, it was the local custom for a procession of youngsters from the town to clamber up to the Dragon Hole on May 1st (the pagan feast-day of Beltane), with garlands of flowers, musical instruments, and what may have been a Green Man. Or was it a dragon, representing the sun god, Bel? Whichever, it certainly cheesed off the local minister. In 1580, the congregation of the Kirk were forbidden to “resort or repair” to the Dragon Hole, on pain of a £20 fine (quite a fortune in those days) and repentance in the presence of the people.

You might think that was the end of it, and the Dragon Hole, together with its occupant, faded and disappeared from local knowledge. I used to teach about landscape character and interpretation, among other things, to Countryside Management students at the local college, and used Kinnoull Hill as a case study. One year, a couple of the lads got quite excited about dragons (can’t think where they got that from), and vowed to find the Dragon Hole. But here’s the thing: their colleague Arlene, a local girl, told us she used to go there as a child and had been let into the secret of its location by an older relative. She also had the good advice that they should not attempt to climb up to it, but abseil down. They went off in cahoots. Term ended before I ever heard if Ryan and Hamish were successful. Knowing them, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Back to my walk. I came out to the viewpoint on the edge of Kinnoull Hill cliffs, where the ground suddenly ends, and bunches of flowers tell sad stories and remind us of human misery. The views downriver, with Dundee sparkling in the distance, and across to the greens and golds of Fife, with it’s own matching quarries and volcanoes, were more than worth the uphill slog. Everything, especially life, seemed precious to me then. I remembered the tales of the dragon’s hoard of treasure, the enchanted “dragon-stone” which James Keddie found in the Dragon Hole in 1600, the “Kinnoull Diamonds” that are said to sparkle by night. And I came right back to geology. Around volcanic intrusions, mineral-rich deposits hold many semi-precious and maybe precious stones – on Kinnoull Hill, it’s garnets and agates that are best known.

Back down to Earth, in every sense!

Tayport, Tentsmuir, & the Dance of Death

Three days of Christmas torpor, punctuated by food, beer and Irish cream liqueurs, two days of damp murk – what happened to the pretty snow that began falling so seasonally on Dunkeld Cathedral at midnight Christmas Eve? – then Tuesday dawned with clear-ish skies and a watery sun. Finally, an opportunity for a decent walk, and a collective itching for sea air drew us like a magnet to Tentsmuir Forest.

I consulted my knee, which has been challenged by non-specific pain since I fell onto it while raspberry pruning at the end of October. My knee said in no uncertain terms that those strong anti-inflammatories from the doctor had worked miracles in the preceding week, and it was quite sure any torn ligaments, lumps of cartilage etc. were virtually mended. It also said forget the looming possibility of the onset of osteoarthritis, let’s not even go there. The beach calls. So we drove – no, I drove, another possibly poor decision – to Tayport and marched across Tayport Heath with a head-clearing north easterly behind us, and the sun making Dundee all sparkly. Tide was out; wide sands, gleaming waters, massive blue skies splashed with the long brush-strokes of brazen clouds.

Getting to the forest, we saw many of the pines that cling to the edge of the sand had been toppled by recent storms. In a hollow of dunes, the trees had fallen in to the centre. The upended roots, with the sandy soil washed or blown off them, were a fierce tangle a-top the weathered trunks and skeletal remains of earlier storm victims. It became clear that the parallel forest track inland, which would have been our easy and shorter return route, was blocked.

Rowan spent an age taking black and white photos with an antique film camera, unloading the film and loading a new one. I took photos of the camera on my phone in an instant, and was glad to wait and rest a slightly uncomfortable but not yet painful knee, while reflecting on the different mental input and rewards of each method.

Afternoon light on the estuary emphasized the form and movement of the bare birches and broom in silhouette, as the tide turned. When we reached Tentsmuir Point, the knee was starting to think maybe it should not march on to Kinshaldy Beach as planned, but turn around now. After all, that would still be 5km of exercise and fresh air in total, though I dearly wanted to paddle in the distant, sparkling waves. Pausing to decide, I stepped down a 45cm bank, bad leg first.

There was an audible explosion in the knee, and I was no longer standing up. Actually, I couldn’t. We sat for a while, till I felt the pain might just be away, but that I should definitely head back. When I tried to walk, that became “we should all head back”. Various efforts at walking supported by one or both of my familial companions were not very successful on the uneven, up-and-down path – someone was always either the wrong height or moved at the wrong time, and any sideways movement, flexing or bending of the knee was pretty agonising. We minimised such movement with my new Christmas walking socks and a filthy and disreputable Tay Landscape Partnership buff, belonging to Andrew. (I wash mine.)

There were lots of folk out on that path (all others being closed off), and many of them were wonderful. Jolly Fifers and Dundonians with sympathy, but a strong sense of the ridiculous kept my spirits up with their black humour and all kinds of offered help and advice. To the lovely man who had collected a polished peeled pinewood stick and surrendered it to me before going off to see if there was any way he could get his car into the forest to pick me up, my grateful thanks. That stick (pictured above, behind) was a real help and enabled me to avoid the shifting sands of human support. People, so often, are just brilliant, something we forget too easily, confronted as we are by insensitive, heartless, mindless acts – not infrequently by politicians.

However, light was starting to fade, and progress was slow. I had to keep stopping to recover. One long stop was by a heart-searingly beautiful birch tree on which I leaned. Tucked between its twin trunks was a little pine seedling. I wished it every success, while Rowan rang 999 and Andrew marched off to meet the emergency services back at Tayport.

Getting an ambulance in to where I was proved impossible because of the windthrown trees. The ambulance people called on the fire service who have the keys to the gate at Lundin Bridge, and on their colleagues in Edinburgh to come up to Fife with an all-terrain vehicle to get me. Meanwhile, two paramedics and 4 fire-people set off with a narrow-wheeled stretcher trolley, while Rowan kept everyone updated with a brilliant App called Three Words which can pinpoint location accurately.

It took a long time. Wistfully, I dreamed of a helicopter air-lift (which was considered, I learned later, but they said it couldn’t land on the estuarine sands) or a Bond-style speedboat rescue. The tide was visibly rising and although still a way off I knew that at high tide the sea washes the track. And it was getting cold. So, when I could, I kept moving on, in the crab-walk sideways step I’d almost perfected, leaning on the stick for dear life in front of me, dragging the damaged right leg up to join the poor, put-upon left. (It was ever thus.) We noticed that the movement was in waltz time, and tried humming the Blue Danube by Strauss for encouragement. That was too corny, so Rowan found Iron Maiden on her phone and I crab-danced along quite the thing for a good while to Dance of Death…..

“Feeling scared I fell to my knees
As something rushed me from the trees
Took me to an unholy place
That is where I fell from grace”
(lyrics, Iron Maiden)

Appropriate, or what?

When we met the brilliant team of combined emergency service people (yes, I know, but they bloody were), I opted to be carried on the jolting trolley (apparently a wheel came off at one point) till we met the ATV. The ATV got lost (“Edinburgh folk” tutted a Dundee fireman, as if he’d not really expected anything better), so didn’t arrive till we were out, but I enjoyed passing under the overhanging pine branches, set against a darkening sky, and the vivid sunset over the flat and increasingly wet estuary. There are worse settings for being a casualty.

The two Edinburgh paramedics transported me to the car and thence off to A&E. Five hours later, and more hats off to the NHS, I left, with a pair of crutches, a fractured or chipped shinbone in the knee joint encased in a massive Velcro-assisted immobiliser, and a probable torn-asunder lump of cartilage called the medial meniscus. Which came first, and whether one caused the other, I hope to learn next Wednesday at the fracture clinic!

Fringe benefits: 1. Gas and air! Happy memories (?) of childbirth! 2. From the Xrays, my knee “is like that of a young woman” said the doctor. No osteoarthritis yet! 3. The kittens like tight-rope walking on the crutches more than I like using them. 4. Time to write my blog, which I signally failed to do before Christmas. Too late for Christmas greetings, but have a good Hogmanay and new year when it comes…..everyone, but especially two doctors (one of Philosophy with heavy metal expertise), all the happy walkers in Tentsmuir Forest, three firemen and a firewoman, four paramedics, innumerable NHS staff from the reception desk to the porter, one man with a stick (which I’m keeping unless he wants it back), and a partridge in a pear tree……(imagined.)

Not for Eating. Nor Collecting

There are different kinds of walks-with-mushrooms. My first, fifty years ago, were cataloguing walks, an academic exercise that became an obsession. A specimen of each would be removed and bagged (no smartphones then, and my Kodak Instamatic didn’t really cut the mustard, though I did try), taken home, pored over for hours to try to identify it, and then a spore print taken. This was all in the cause of a college Rural Studies project that I somehow never grew out of.

When I began to differentiate the ones I could eat from the poisonous ones, foraging AND cataloguing walks happened – a basket for the ones I knew I could eat, and another for the unknowns. Many remained – and remain – unknown, something which used to really bother me. However much later when I was regularly leading foraging walks, I realised that so long as I could recognise the “edible and good” fungi and the poisonous and dodgy ones, most people were happy if we could pin the “small brown jobs” down as far as a genus.

I still take huge interest in identifying weird or remarkable specimens that I’ve never seen before, but these days I’ve discovered the pleasure of walks-with-no-purpose-with mushrooms. This walk, meandering along the River Tay from Dunkeld, had no particular object but to be captivated by the surprise and beauty of the fungal kingdom – so often misrepresented, under-valued, the importance of which is not understood by the majority of humans.

First came a phenomenal display of Fly Agarics, the mushroom of the shamans, too exquisite to pass by, shouting their wares, nestling in ground which was once birchwood. Their mycelium is always entangled with the roots of birch; from the beginnings of plants on dry land they have needed each other. They start as big white crusty buttons, the red skin of the cap breaking through the veil to leave those fairly-tale white “spots”. The cap expands, the spores fall. One was nearly as big as my head.

Troops of Bonnet mushrooms, various types, marched over fallen trees and gossiped in crevices of stumps, glistening in the sunlight. Shiny black excrescences of Witch’s Butter erupted from dead wood. Amethyst Deceivers – which I could have picked for eating but didn’t – showed all their colour range from vivid purple to washed-out grey. In the leaf-litter, the Destroying Angel, related to the Fly Agaric but far more deadly, glowed purest white. Such a potent name for a poisonous mushroom!

Across the track lay a small segment of a huge fairy ring of an enormous mushroom commonly called the Giant Funnel Cap (check the size 8 boot in the photo for scale). This took me immediately back to those student Rural Studies Days, when I first saw this mushroom in local woods, in a ring that was actually measurable. From the fresh fruiting bodies came a strange, un-mushroomy smell. I took one home, identified it easily and, as the book said edible, fried it in slices. It tasted like its smell – like nothing I’d ever encountered. To this day, I’m still trying to work out if I actually like it! But size-wise, they are easy pickings, and it’s fun to estimate the equally astounding diameter of their fairy-rings and plough through the woods to try to find the mushrooms on the other side of it.

This walk wasn’t for foraging, for worrying about what I was looking at, and I haven’t bothered to tease apart the various fairy bonnets. Old habits die hard, but really, I don’t need to know!

Aliens invade Tayside?

I wanted to walk from Cairnie Pier near St. Madoes west to Inchyra on the Tay estuary. My old map (old being the operative word) said there was a path, but it says that about a lot of stretches of the Tay along the Carse of Gowrie that it would be nice to walk, and it’s often mistaken. Google Maps hinted that if you got really, really close to the ground, there might even be two paths, but it wasn’t committing itself. At Cairnie, the existence of a small car park looked promising, and I found the great river hiding among its own reedbeds as usual, lapping quietly at a little inlet whose stones oozed mud. Fishermen’s paths trailed off in both directions.

It was drowsy-hot, an afternoon of hoverflies and docile wasps, intent on the many flowers that lined the path. The river is a conduit for all kinds of unexpected vegetation, which thrive in the tidal mud and lovely untidy, unsanitised, hedgebanks and verges. The yellow buttons of Tansy pop up everywhere along the Tay, together with the silvery Mugwort, a long-ago Roman introduction, allegedly a cure for sore feet. Warm and spicy, the scent of Himalayan Balsam over-rode the scents of native flowers, and its spectacular flowers trumpeted a welcome to pollinating insects. This “alien invader” has been around a good while, anywhere near to water, and it’s a Marmite plant. Speak to any beekeeper and she will wax lyrical about the “ghost bees” who return somnolent and satisfied to the hive, covered in its dense white pollen. Speak to most mainstream ecologists and they will say it’s invasive, outcompetes “our” native flora and has no place in “our” countryside. I love its other name – Policemen’s Helmets – does anyone remember when policemen wore helmets? The top and bottom lips of the flower are encased in a helmet-like fusion of the other petals. I’ve happily pulled it out of ancient oak bluebell woodland, but I can’t say it bothers me too much today. I munch a couple of the peppery-pea tasting unripe seedheads, out of duty.

But then arise the forbidding, towering structures of a harder-to-love alien. Giant Hogweed, introduced by gullible and novelty-obsessed Victorians to adorn their fancy gardens. Apart from its spectacular, H.G. Wellsian-Martian structure (still being extolled by lecturers when I learned garden design), it is low on redeeming features. It is truly rampant, flowers and seeds everywhere and delivers serious burns to anyone brushing against it in sunny weather. It’s a property called phytotoxicity, and today the sun was shining and I passed gingerly.

Far more attractive, and indeed glorious were the bright yellow, sunny Monkey Flowers, coated in tidal mud, and the clumps of tall Rudbeckia, both garden escapes, that sway gently in the breeze up the river. They are dotted all along this stretch of the Tay. I remembered another sunny day talking with David Clark of Seggieden – a great botanist and a man who so loved this river – about whether they “should” be there and what exactly was native anyway, since both of us could be labelled aliens ourselves. We agreed that neither of us were fanatical about racial purity in plants or anything else, but weren’t fond of Giant Hogweed, nor the next invasive alien to show its face on my walk, the Japanese Knotweed. This monster would out-compete the miles and miles of Norfolk Reeds themselves…..oh wait, did I say Norfolk Reed?

Yes that’s right, the incredible Tay Reedbeds, home to rare marshland bird species and a complex, life-affirming ecology, are the result themselves of the introduction of a “non-native”.

My fishermen’s path had petered out, and an attempt to reach Inchyra along the edge of a field also met with failure, so I drove back towards St. Madoes and took a side road left. Thus I reached Inchyra, a beautiful little village of low houses, pretty gardens and derelict farm buildings looking, as they always do, as if a quick afternoon’s work would put them back into service. From this hamlet, crouching among tidal lands as if in terror of sea-level rise, I found a wild garden overlooking the estuary and across to Rhynd, and small moored sailing boats bobbing in the rising tide.

Here was a seat, to the memory of a daughter of a local family, and I sat in complete peace among the reeds, with flowers – native, non-native and all the gradations in between – blessing the air with scent and colour. Even the busy tractor across the water hummed to itself. Rain was forecast; I watched silver-lined thunderclouds pile up on themselves, shift and mutate, and then dissolve again into the blue sky. It was so good to be here.

When it seemed the clouds were getting serious, I found a path that ran beside Cairnie Pow, giving me a good circular walk back to the village. The pow is a local name for a drainage channel, often of ancient origin, that was created to free the fertile soils of the Carse of Gowrie from being marshland. They litter the Carse, and give a sense of being neither quite on dry land nor in water. This one tracked parallel to the path I didn’t find earlier from Cairnie Pier, and then swung left at the point I’d almost got to, where a host of overhead power lines had got together for a gathering. They sky darkened, and the air, hot and still full of the damp scents of flowers, smothered the senses. Young trees, planted by the nearby farm, gave welcome shade. A big, old house rose out of the marsh with no obvious gateway or entrance. It looked dark, empty, full of tales and secrets. I wondered, made up stories in my head, began hearing things and holding imaginary conversations with people who did not exist. Perhaps it was as well that heavy, ponderous raindrops deterred me from more exploration that day.

Finding Ferryden

Ferryden by William Alexander Burns (1921-1972) Photo: Glasgow Museums

It’s often the places you didn’t mean to visit that become the ones you will always remember. It happened to me this weekend. Dropping our daughter off in Arbroath for a summer school gave us the perfect opportunity for a weekend mooching around Angus, camping overnight, visiting favourite haunts and exploring ones we didn’t know so well. So, out from Arbroath (reluctantly missing one of the favourites, the pie shop, on account of a planned visit later to another, the chippie) and a bask and paddle at Lunan Bay, my number two go-to beach for restoration of equanimity and sea watching. The tide was higher than I’ve ever seen; words were spoken of exceptional lunar activity sooking the sea up high then dropping it again, along with torn up seaweed and the corpses of seabirds. Less beach than usual then (and therefore more people per square kilometre); the dog confused by reaching the water’s edge so soon, but gratified to find long tangles of bootlace weed which he proceeded to bring to us to hurl into the surf. Heaven knows how much seawater he guzzled retrieving them, but he was happy.

Heading vaguely towards Montrose, because that’s the way we always go, unravelling a dog-eared and out of date Ordnance Survey map and checking the terrain on Google maps, we took a notion to go to see the Stevenson lighthouse at Scurdie Ness. To get to the coastal path which would take us there, we decided to park at Ferryden. Lying on the estuary of the River South Esk, opposite the unappealing industrial sprawl of waterside Montrose, it wasn’t a place we’d ever bothered to visit before. But what a lovely surprise – who knew!

Crouching three or four deep, back from the harbour wall were the small, varicoloured and practical houses that once belonged to fishermen; front doors on the first floor and accessed by stone stairways up the sides or fronts of the cottages. The roadway between the first row and the water was a free for all – someone was in the middle of chopping wood, children played and neighbours gossiped. Pots and planters of flowers and vegetables spilled out from house to road, and there was clearly some neighbourly competition in the landscape design and artistry of the stretches of wall belonging to each house along the harbour. Almost every house had a seat, table, bench or furniture of some kind marking their spot. Ramshackle sheds and crumbling huts rubbed shoulders with homes and bits of old boats. From the wall, washing lines extended out over the water, children’s clothes, bright towels and lines of smalls bouncing like bunting in the sunshine. The washing was reeled out and later retrieved by a pulley system which I’m guessing was once used to dry nets, and I suppose they have sturdy storm pegs to avoid knickers blowing out to sea in a gale.

If we’d been in the East Neuk (of Fife), or a Cornish tourist honeypot, I suppose I’d have taken photos. Ferryden doesn’t present as “quaint” or a tourist attraction, despite the inevitable interpretive boards, and it would have felt rude. So sorry, no pictures! We guddled our way up to the coast path and had a lovely walk to and beyond the lighthouse, which got bigger and bigger as we approached until it was overwhelming. The hot sun released the scent of thistles, while ragweed and clumps of Keeled Garlic jostled in flower. Down on the little rocky beaches, my mother joined me in my head to exclaim, as she ever did on seaside holidays, at the winkles, periwinkles, limpets and small darting creatures in rock pools, and to gently tempt the waving tentacles of plump sea anemones and feel them sucker briefly onto my little finger. I collected pocket stones, which I did not add to the wonderful collection of painted and decorated stones on the wall by the path, left by residents and visitors.

Back to the old fishing village of Ferryden and its quirky charm, we had a campsite to find and it was past six o’clock. Was that really the smell of salt and vinegar wafting over the South Esk? Montrose this time for the fish suppers!

In the Far East (of Fife)

Sometimes it’s good to change your mind. Guardbridge lurks interestingly at the head of the tidal section of the River Eden. There are sweeps of marsh and mudflat. Having an affinity with mudflats and salt creeks since my youth in Essex, I wanted to walk along this estuary to St. Andrews. But the coast path apparently hugged the main road tediously all the way, so I drove into St. Andrews instead, spent a happy hour in the Botanic Gardens and another meeting up and drinking tea with a fellow blogger (https://threewheelsonmywaggon.com/), talking gardens and travellers’ tales. Then I set off on another section of coast path, starting well south of the town and uninfected by tedious miles of golf course.

I’m so glad I changed course!

Stepping out from the village of Boarhills towards the sea and the cool onshore breezes felt like entering a far and distant land, echoes of the west country of England in the sunken lanes and low-slung cottages, bat-squeak reminders of the Low Countries, and little bits of many parts of Scotland, all rolled up together.

I reached a river, gurgling in a deep valley, heard long before it was seen. Into a wood, the scent of bluebells, another kind of river, blue and shimmering, lithe ferns stretching curled fingers to the far away sky. A riot of vegetation, clambering around rocks and slabs: the relics of buildings, maybe a mill, maybe haunted, reeking of untold stories and secrets. Here and there, dark openings that could have been windows, or tunnels, or perhaps caves in the cliff-like rocks. As I walked and clambered, it became hard to distinguish in the imagination what was human masonry and what was the masonry of geology. Huge tree trunks erupted alike from broken walls and natural crevices.

On and on, the path tagging the rattle and song of the river as it twisted and turned, trees closing overhead, veiling the bright sky with their shimmering new leaves. I began to wonder if this river led, not to the sea, but curiously inland, if perhaps it was one of the anomalies of Fife (there are a number!). Then, it hushed, grew calm, and through a gap in the woods was the open sea. Suddenly I was reminded again of a south Cornwall estuary.

The river subsided into a quiet bay, and the path began to follow the rocky coast; great sandstone pavements hugging small beaches, the excitement of salt and seaweed in the air. Jed, my collie raced off at every little beach, I stretched my steps to embrace the fabulous wind and sky and sea, arms wide, feeling as if I were meeting once more a great and long lost friend. I sang. Luckily, I was alone, bar the dog, who refrained from comment.

This was the far east of Fife, nothing, bar sea on my left. Cowslips, thrift, ribwort plantain, campion, dandelion – all rampaging like banners and bunting along the path. The heron, ever my companion, in a bay, black-backed gulls skulking on the sand, and skylarks over the barley fields to my right.

Along a bay which began with the curious black of an exposed coal layer and ended near Cambo, I joined Jed in the water and gave my feet a treat. The walk back to Boarhills in the evening sunshine combined new familiarity with repeated exhilaration. This is a fabulous and unique part of the Fife Coast,. I could have walked on and on, but for the appetite all that salt air had given me……

The Long Way Round to Taymount Wood

We met up at the Taymount Wood car park, Linda and I, put on our boots and turned away, not into the gate. This was to be the long road to the woods, a circular walk via the disused railway line which once ran as a ponderous branch from Stanley across the River Tay to Coupar Angus. The embankment is reached from the Taymount Mains farm track, and you then head towards Kinclaven and Ballathie, across open country, under disused bridges and past a little railwaymen’s shed made of sleepers with a brick chimney still in place. Although today’s challenge for us was to find and walk the narrow path through the northern finger of the wood, the line itself offered a few challenges – a chilly wind and stretches of water where the rains of March hadn’t percolated the poorly-drained soil.

You turn north-west away from the line before you get to the grounds of Ballathie Hotel, crossing the road and continuing north up a rough track beside the Old Smiddy. The track goes past several houses and in the past, we’d stuck to it, until it vanishes at a farmhouse. Then we’d scrambled witlessly through fields and fences and bits of scrub till we arrived, somehow, on a track in Taymount Wood. This time, we were determined to find the “proper” path. So, we left the comfy track when it turned the bend and continued up to the edge of the wood. People had been this way, but not many, and it wasn’t clear how far in we should go before we turned left. Google satellite was remarkably unhelpful.

Dogs have many uses. Everyone thinks of companionship, protection and exercise machine, but an intelligent dog is a wonder at Finding the Path. While we stood wondering and wafting around, Jed set off into the unruly herbage with a look of collie dog purpose, nose to the ground. Sure enough, when we followed, there were the vestiges of a footpath. It doesn’t take many human footprints – and barely one canine print – to inform Jed this is The Way to Go. We continued, scrambling after him, and he didn’t lead us into any blind alleys. At times, we were on the point of losing faith, but then the path would reappear, on the other side of a boggy stretch or a tangle of bramble and brushwood.

Wind-throw had put up many of the barriers that challenged us. I discovered I’m at an age where I’m a bit stiff for limbo-dancing under fallen trees, and my sense of balance (never my strong point) for climbing over them was precarious to say the least. There were points when we even doubted the dog, but then to our great surprise we encountered someone going the other way – an ecologist doing a survey of small mammals for West Stormont Woodland Group no less – who assured us that a. we were on the path and b. it was passable, if a tad wet in places. Well, we certainly found the wet places and finally stumbled out onto the hard forestry track that would eventually take us through the main wood and back to the car park. The challenge wasn’t quite over – several metres of scratchy, mean-minded gorse had colonised the track to meet in the middle, and we suffered quite a few scratches and tears before we were through it – noting jealously how impervious the coat of a collie dog is just about anything.

Common Chiffchaff (photo Bishnu Sarangi, Pixabay)

And the gift from today’s walk? There were lots – newly unfurling larch leaves, frogspawn in a drowning bit of track, skeletons of last year’s ferns, the beautiful vertical grandeur of the trees that hadn’t blown down, some chestnut brown bracket fungi left from the autumn. But as soon as we entered the wood on our optimistically rediscovered path, we heard the chiff-chaff call nearby. The earliest of our summer warblers to arrive, this is a small brown job of a bird, indistinguishable from willow and wood warblers unless it keeps still and stays a metre away from you. This one didn’t – they never do – but the call, exactly like the bird’s name, sets it apart. We never saw our little warbler, but the mocking “chiff-chaff-chiff-chiff-chaff” was never far away. It was, I am sure, laughing its little head off, but we chose to find it encouraging. When we found ourselves safely “out of the woods” and into the wood, it went off to scoff at something else. It made us appreciate all over again the wide range of habitats the woods provide for many bird species, residents and summer or winter visitors. I look forward to more birdsong in Taymount Woods this spring.

Find out more about WSWG and out hopes for community ownership of the woods at weststormontwoodlandgroup.scot

Circular Walk, Spring Morning

A night of light snow, followed by clear-sky freezing has left
The ground hard and white.
Rapidly the sun, heroic, overcoming all, climbing high,
Melts snow to iridescence at every margin, every edge.

On a single hill, snow is held in thrall. Like a crumpled Mount Fuji, but
No blossom, no art,
The hill holds its ghost-clothes, despite the sun’s triumphal progress.
Magisterial old beeches sun themselves among old walls and
Moss-covered stones, dripping, wet, full of temptation.

Birds call, fluting, piping, chameleon-coloured, slipping away like lizards.

I’ve never understood the detritus of forestry. The wind cuts and dives
In and out of the shambles of stumps and trenches, where startled pines left behind
Look half-naked and vulnerable, hesitantly beginning to stretch arms to the sky,
To each other, united in the icy wind.

I follow the wind. I leave the wreckage, the small shelter
Of self-seeded spruce erupting from glossy gorse and broom. Ahead
A vast and dreary vista of huge, brown and empty fields,
Unpunctuated by tree or hedge-bank, meticulously ploughed and harrowed.
The dust rises, faintly reeking still of the abattoir, that small, derisory recompense
For decades of soil inevitably lost and life precluded.

Back by road, the first wood anemones
In the deep and shady gulf where children once played canyons,
And a rising stir of sound comes up from behind. Suddenly
A thousand geese are shifting and snaking in the blue, blue sky,
Withering the last frost with their joy.

Gimme Shelter!

This post was written for West Stormont Woodland Group as part of the Gift and a Challenge series. To find out more about WSWG, go to weststormontwoodlandgroup.scot

To begin with the challenge – it’s March. The month that can’t decide whether to ally itself with winter or summer, blows literally hot and cold – but blows anyway, more often than not. This March, temperatures have veered spectacularly – almost hot at times when the sun is fully out, only to evoke shivers and a sullen quest for shelter when the sun goes behind the never-far-away bank of clouds.

The track in Five Mile Wood is set high around the hill; the clearance of the windthrown central forest has left only bare, angular, dead or dying thin trees, leafless and affording no windbreak. The wind skitters over the gorse; the tall grasses and herbage of summer still skulk in the earth. Between the grey and ghastly yellow of dead wood, last year’s vegetation lies smashed and parched, husky and brittle, desiccated by months of ice, snow and frost.

There is nowhere to hide. Nothing to distract, punctuate or alleviate the March winds and the wreckage of a long winter.

And so to the potential gift from the woods – one that might, with time, give some respite from the challenge of March. We have few native evergreen trees; apart from the magnificent Scots Pine (which can be poor shelter when most of its branches are way above our heads), there are only holly, box and yew. Holly is an important food source for many birds, especially the blackbird family and the robin from the Christmas card, and into any suitable habitat those birds will pass the seeds from all the berries they devour. Thus, holly will start to appear in snatches of clearing or under bigger trees, the seedlings going unnoticed until the taproots are impossible to get out. It was a relief to see, on the margins of the cleared gap in Five Mile Wood, a couple of well-established young holly bushes. They may have grown from seed from a mature tree decked with twining stems of honeysuckle, that grows beside the track, on the edge of the wood.

Hollies are dioecious. You get male trees and female trees, and only the females have berries. In March, there are just a few berries left, lurking behind the armoured leaves, while a thrush skulks in the greenery, hunting them out. He is just beginning to try out his repetitious mating call. Aside from shelter from March winds and berries for birds, holly is one of the most valuable wildlife plants and a real gift to have in a wood. Wood mice and other small mammals also feed on the berries, and deer enjoy a prickly snack of holly shoots. The holly by the track is already playing host to the Holly Leaf Miner – an invertebrate recognised by the squiggly patterns of its tunnels, between the upper and lower surfaces of the leaf. They have co-existed with the holly tree for a very long time, and do little real harm to the tree, although the texts of horticultural imperialists will make them sound like the devil incarnate and command the use of an army of chemicals to destroy them.

There is a very beautiful butterfly, the Holly Blue, whose caterpillars in spring feed almost entirely on shoots of holly, and later broods move onto ivy. It’s not common in Scotland, although it has been seen dotted around. The looper caterpillars of the holly tortrix moth, as well as many other insect larvae, seek refuge in this prickly tree too.

And like all evergreens, it provides impenetrable debris for hibernating hedgehogs and is a formidable cosy shelter tree for roosting or nesting birds. Not to mention windblown humans in March.

Here comes the Sun

The mute swans stand in the middle of Stare Dam loch, looking at their feet in puzzlement, as meltwater sluices over them. They bend round to look beseechingly at me as I stand by the wooden jetty, as if to ask why this strange divinity has been bestowed on them, and why they cannot swim in water as usual. Then with determination they undertake a rather slippery swan take-off from whatever the surface of the loch is, and wheel around the trees in the reassuring sky.

The sun roars through into the morning like a rocket. Speed of light. It burnishes the bare trees and their wavering reflections in the loch, shrieks and shatters the shards of once indomitable ice. Water trickles unseen, seeps from frozen ground, sings in quiet rivulets.

An old song burrows its way into my head, and will not leave. The ice is slowly melting. I stand, eyes closed to the sun, and feel the breeze that no longer lacerates with coldness. I hear the whirring of the bemused swans, the first territorial song-stakes of the woodland birds. It seems like years since it’s been here.

Back at the house, the speculating rooks are at home, sitting in their parliament in the sycamore and debating which of last year’s nests have foundations sufficiently stable to re-use. Twigs start dropping. I think there are more rook members than last year.

Not all of the calamities and sorrows of the winter will disappear with the snow. But some will diminish, I think, and some will be easier to face. The snow has retreated from bits of lawn. The winter aconites open, and dazzle.