Wet Day Walk

Low cloud and almost constant drizzle this morning kept us off the hills so we walked through the village and along Pier Road to inspect progress on the new offices and storage facilities for Marine Harvest's Maclean's Nose fish farm which operates off a site near Mingary Pier. The building itself is due to arrive next week, so the project is heading for a quick completion.

This is the view back from the pier, with the current offices housed in portakabin-type buildings to the left and some of the houses in Pier Road just visible to the right.

We then climbed the fence into Estate land, working our way northwestwards along the coast. This is a view of Glas Eileann, with the tide out - it's full moon tonight, so we're approaching spring tides.

The Estate land is separated from Kilchoan township by a wall which probably dates back to the 18th century if not earlier - it's marked on John Cowley's map of 1734. The only way across it is by this stile, which leads directly out onto the marshes, the grass just beyond the stile being flooded at spring tides.

The marshes alternate between grassy areas underlain by peat and these sandy, gravelly areas which are cut by small streams. On one of the sandy areas....

....lie the remains of a vintage car. It seems an odd place for it to be dumped but perhaps someone was driving it across the sand and it became stuck.

As we followed the Millburn upstream to the road we noticed the arrival of a shepherd's hut. While this one is for private use, there's one in Kilchoan which available for holidays - here.