River Tay, January

Early morning, sunny and dry. Silence, save for the mutterings of a river almost out of its banks and racing to reach the sea. Ground solid, unyielding – the type of hardness where you trip up on embedded clods and frazzles of vegetation hiding in the whiteness of a fourth consecutive deep frost – on ground already frozen solid by over a week of snow-half-thaw-freeze again.

Walking along the south shore of the Tay on a winter’s morning kind of ensures you won’t be in the sun very much, no matter how it dazzles the eye. In any case, the river has merrily engulfed the lower fishermen’s path that hugs its margin, so we walk, me and the dog, on the higher ground beneath the limes of the castle drive. Where are all the birds? I wonder. Not even the ubiquitous wood pigeons are out braving the cold. We pass an eroded river gulley and went down the steepish bank to the lower riverside path, joining at the point where it rises above water level and becomes what must once have been an elegant stroll for visitors to the castle. Fishing on the Tay is big business, and not affordable by ordinary people (unless you live in Perth and have the right to fish the stretch within the city boundary). We pass fishing huts on both banks that would make acceptable homes for small families. All locked up, today. No one but me and the dog.

Now I’m closer to the water, I start to notice a large number of white birds swimming rapidly downriver. What are they escaping from? Then I realise the white birds are actually lumps of ice, breaking away from the frozen banks and joining the ice and snowmelt that, with extended periods of rain, has made the river so massive today. A couple of gritty black-and-white ducks obstinately battle upriver, against the flow. What strong legs they must have! They veer off into a little eddying backwater on the opposite bank, and I see other water birds lurking there, taking a break from morning chores.

Beaver have been along here recently, but I struggle to fathom their purpose in felling one solitary tree, up the beach from the tumbling water. Maybe just hungry, or doing a bit of coppicing for future regrowth food supplies. I think the water birds could use a few more beavers to create respite backwaters.

Skirting a long curve round the back of the castle, I pass between forbidding walls of rhododendron bushes. Although they provide some shelter and a small stretch of unfrozen path. they block the view. I spend too much time trying to eliminate them from an ancient oak wood to appreciate their aesthetics. I guess they may provide good roosts for birds, though I still don’t see any.

The core path takes a long, curving route by a bend in the Tay, high above the river and nearly to Birnam before it joins the castle main drive which will take me back to the start if I go left. Closer to the castle, the trees are less scrubby and include many spectacular examples of exotic species, such as Noble Firs, Coast Redwoods and towering Pines. It becomes a landscape of avenues – tottering rows of limb-dropping beeches, stately Sequoias in orderly, sentry-like placings, frowning yew trees in sombre ranks, new avenues planted in recent decades to replace older ones that refuse to lie down and die. Best of all, to me, are the ridiculously shaggy and spreading avenues of old lime trees – each hiding in its own twiggy skirt of epicormic growth. In spring, they provide me with juicy, tender leaves for salad, and intoxicatingly sweet-smelling flowers in summer to dry and make into a sleep-inducing tisane.

As I walk between and under these vibrant specimen trees, I suddenly realise birds have started to chatter, and mixed flocks of finches, secretive tree-creepers and purposeful, hopping blackbirds are awake and accompanying me. Gazing up through the close pine trees, I can just see avian silhouettes flitting busily.

There are paths that could be taken to make a short-cut through the castle garden. Scottish access laws, some would say, give walkers a perfect right to take them, and no doubt some do. I’ve lived in a tied house on an estate where summer visitors frequently asserted this right to take a short cut to a beach through our garden, where we had small children playing and hens free-ranging – and on at least one occasion, hens were killed by loose, uncontrolled dogs. So personally, while I’m proud of our access laws, I think we should respect the privacy of residents and remember those laws also require the walker or cyclist to act responsibly. I’m fine with taking a long way round. The core path eventually passes in front of the castle at a distance (more avenues!), and I note the large, standing stone nearby, like an iceberg itself in an open, frost-enveloped field. It has no name. Does it link with other, less ancient perhaps but curiously-named stones in the area? One day I’ll hunt down the Witches’ Stone (well, this is Macbeth country!) and the Cloven stone….. but not today.

Today, I dawdle back under the limes to the gate, salute the mighty Tay with its miniature ice-packs, and begin to think about breakfast.

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.

By Riverside to Denmarkfield

There’s this story in Scottish folklore: A king (Scottish or Pictish) and his army were engaged in a long campaign to repel the Danish invaders who were terrorising the east coast. The Vikings knew that the only way to gain free access to the rich breadbasket lands and the treasures of the religious houses was to defeat the king’s army, which was camped, exhausted, by a river, thinking itself safe for at least a night’s sleep. The Viking spies located the army. and to gain advantage by stealth and secrecy, the warriors began to creep up on foot, swords drawn, and surround them. Thinking their boots made too much noise, the leader ordered his men to go barefoot. Their goal was in sight, until a skull-splitting screech and an unrepeatable Scandinavian oath filled the air. One of the Vikings had trodden on a well-armed Spear Thistle. The kings army were thus warned, and sprang to action to repel the invaders. Since when, the thistle has always been the emblem of Scotland.

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Last Sunday was the first of the seriously cold days of this winter. It will get colder, but we will have adjusted to it. Nevertheless,it was still warmer outside than in our currently challenged-in-the-heating-department house, so we decided to go for a walk to warm up.

As we sauntered along the footpath from Luncarty to the River Tay, almost a hollow lane, beads of frost and frozen droplets of moisture clung to any material they encountered. Ephemeral, discarded threads pf spider gossamer waved like chilly bunting. Touch one, and it evaporated. Frizzy, curled husks of ice-tipped willow herb seedheads towered as if frozen.

A haar descended. Generally the haar creeps upriver from Perth; today it seemed to come from all directions. Its gloom, exacerbated by the knowledge that somewhere behind it the sun is weakly shining, has the coldest feel imaginable. With wreaths of steam-like fog and mist flowing above the surface, the Tay resembled an Icelandic hot spring.

The river path proper starts at the site of the old Waulkmill Chain Ferry – once the only convenient way to cross from one side to the other. It closed as late as 1964, but I think this must have been a crossing point for many centuries before the chain ferry and pontoons were in operation. We headed in the direction of Perth City, watching gigantic pylons loom up from the cold dense air, bringing to mind the Martians from H.G.Wells’ War of the Worlds.

And then we came to the derelict bulk of old buildings beside Denmarkfield Farm, and the unmarked stone that stands in the weedy, thistle-infested ground just above the river. Here, locals say, is the site of that momentous battle that propelled the Scots thistle to prominence, and the stone – called the King’s Stone – marks the spot. That’s why the place, and later the farm, have been called Denmarkfield ever since.

There are plans to build yet another road, the Cross Tay Link Road, from here to Scone on the east bank. The land around the King’s Stone (actually far older than the 10th century) is under a compulsory purchase order. As people speed over the new bridge that will cross the river, congratulating themselves on the ease and convenience, will anyone remember the Waulkmill ferryman, the king who slept by the river, or the Viking with a sore foot?

Tree as Furniture

There’s a little wood nestling by the River Tay that I love to walk in, partly for its vibrant and eclectic flora – an amalgam of native plants and garden escapes which get washed in when the river gets out and established over centuries, that curiously resembles my garden at times.

Set back from the river, and maybe in a sort of line, are some colossal and ancient beech trees. Why they are there is a mystery. Clearly, as non-natives, they were planted, possibly something to do with the nearby castle, though they look older than that. I’d like to link them to the mediaeval abbey at Dunkeld, whose land I believe this once was, though there is the small matter of a river in the way.

The trees were clearly pollarded or even coppiced, the resulting shoots from the trunk growing into valuable, renewable firewood. Now each “shoot” forms a huge trunk in itself, because they’ve not been cut back for centuries. This leaves the structure unstable, and every so often a tree loses one or more of its trunks, leaving hollows and torn timber crags. The exuberant flowers and grasses of the wood quickly colonise and make them into miniature gardens.

As little will grow directly under beeches, they provide a flat, open and sheltered site for wild campers, and there is very often a tent or two under one of them. Recently having witnessed the idiotic post-lockdown behaviour of people who like to think they are campers trashing and littering lovely places, I am admiring of the most recent wild campers in this little wood, with their orderly, careful fire pits and unobtrusive behaviour.

Some years, it’s looked as though the campers (who I never see) are using their chosen tree as a kind of holiday caravan, setting up for a season. It makes sense not to have to cart everything to and fro. One of the beeches in particular is like a gigantic cupboard or merchant’s chest, with cubby holes in which to hide folding seats and tables, and lofty shelves where firewood and kindling can be stacked to dry. Washed up boards from the river can be balanced across knobbly projections, useful for everything from preparing food to changing nappies.

It’s a comfortable, homely tree, nearing the end of its long life and home to so many plants and animals. I hope it always has special memories for its seasonal human residents.

Not a Tay Bridge Disaster

taybridge1 In a fright of frustration and indecision you stream from the house. Too much time alone, too many choices, too many restrictions, too much procrastination – poring over maps in search of something new, too much squinting at Google Satellite to find new paths, no decisions made, no enthusiasm kindled.

Just the need to get out, though the day is grey with bubbling clouds and the threat of rain.

Aimlessly through Perth, getting a few messages on the way. Drifting, still without destination, towards Dundee. Missing the road to the towering volcanic hill where the dragon (probably) still resides in his Hole, squatting on his bed of garnets and Perth May maidens. That would have been a good walk. Too late.

Abruptly turning off the dual carriageway to Errol and the Carse – but let’s not repeat the same old paths twisting in and out of the reed beds. Look out for a new sign, somewhere different, something – anything – new. Oh, missed one, wonder where that went, too late, never mind. Suddenly, you’re skirting the edges of Dundee – how about Riverside Park? What all this way for a semi-urban park? Maybe… oh, too late, you missed the turn-off. Guess what, the sun is out – that’s Dundee for you, Sun City, Yes City, smiling streets and sparkling water, and the V&A looking glassy and coolly remote as it strains toward the ocean.

Woops – and you’re on the Tay Road Bridge, heading for Fife. Desperate to walk and you’ve been driving for an hour, so you stop trying to choose and roll up in Wormit, under the shadow of the rail bridge, that eternal prompt for disaster. It’s mid-afternoon, and you skirt the narrow estuarine beach and climb onto the breezy, sunny cliffs of a hitherto unexplored stretch of the Fife coastal path towards Balmerino.

taybridgetrees
And the rushing, crossness, dissatisfaction and sense of time wasted starts to recede. You slow down. You breathe more deeply. The dog potters. Through twisted, moss-covered trees, tangled with ivy, ruined boathouses and animal tracks are glimpsed. The city twinkles at you from across the Firth, as wide and blue as the clamoring, exulting East-coast sky.

taybridgeseal

A mysteriously stranded and petrified seal basks on the grass, making a seat for warm and heady contemplation of how beautiful the world is, how long the day, even in September, and how fortunate the indecision that led you here. Steep coast-path steps, down and up; a hedgerow heady with honeysuckle; crackling of dry grass and the twang of boot on stone. Trickling burns through the undergrowth, ferns and moss and fungi in the gloom, then out, out again into the laughing sunshine, up through meadows, down to the lucky houses clutching at the shore.

Later, a forest, a young woodland of oak, rowan and sorry-looking ash, nudging the older trees, and the pines and firs of previous plantings. Shadows flicker between them; dogs explore, accompanied by knowing locals on paths uncharted by Google maps; Kirkton and Balmerino are near.

You circle the village, fine and high above the Firth, and now as you return the sun is cooler, the air relaxed, the forest empty, chilly and very slightly intimidating. You pick up pace. After all, you started late and the nights are drawing in, and the sun is being sucked back west of Dundee.

taybridgememorial Back at the estuarine beach, nearly under the bridge, you notice the memorial to those killed in the Rail Bridge Disaster. You were in too much of a hurry to see it before. And you stop, and rock to and fro on the tiny jetty, as the dog paddles and sniffs at stones and seaweed.

There was no disaster here today.

Midstream

river trees

In the past ten days, two friends have died. Not unexpectedly, no shocks. A couple of weeks ago, when they were both still alive, everyone and everything around me seemed painfully mortal, and this poem is what I wrote then.

I cross the bridge, but
Midstream, I stop.
So much water, passing under.
I cannot hold it back.

Midstream – upstream – a dipper,
Mischievous, concealed among stones and ripples,
Bobs, and waits.
Midstream – downstream – a fisherman
Casts and retrieves, over and over,
Silent, focused, amid swirling water.

I, too, have cast,
Over and over.
But now my line diffuses and is lost in movement
And what, now, is left to retrieve?

By this great river I sit
Beneath the fiddle-tree,
A gnarled and feathered oak, gashed
By storm, decay and distant ghosts of song.
Riverbank trees, like frozen statues, arch and crane,
Their token reflections broken
Like dreams in the midstream of sleep.

On dark ripples, tiny sounds of water on water,
Midstream, the undercurrent
Chases the rain from highland to lowland
Into deeper water yet.

Midstream, unseen fish bestir
And battle homeward. But I
Am snagged, log-jammed, midstream
Watching lives flow on and vanish into river,
Slippery, elusive as salmon, impossible to hold,
Passing, on unfathomed journeys, beyond my sight

While I stand helpless and wait
Midstream.