Kilchoan Drought Breaks

This part of the Highlands has just come to the end of an unprecedented period without Kilchoan Sunshine.  Since the end of June we've had a mere 20mm of rain, just enough to keep the crofters' sheeo in feed while providing the more leisured classes with masses of real sunshine.  So we are currently sporting a very un-Highland tan.  Many people down south, where it's been a bit wet, don't believe this.

As with everything here, such a sunny record ended spectacularly, with 25mm of rain between about 11.00pm last night and 8.00am this morning, with a further 6mm by midday.  Not that the burns are rushing torrents as they would normally be after such a deluge: it'll take several days of this to even wet the sponge-like peat enough for it to start to release water.

The photograph above, of the CSL Thames passing us this morning, gives some idea of how the day started.  The mournful sound of its foghorn didn't help to cheer the day.  It also happened to be a day without electricity - again - an outage which seems to be caused by the work on our new, improved, electricity-dependent water supply.

Not that we were left without amusement.  The Scottish Fisheries Protection vessel Minna moved slowly eastwards along the Ormsaigbeg shore around 3.00pm, while....

....its RIB came close in, with a man in the bow poking around with a long stick.

They continued poking around as they went into Kilchoan Bay, before suddenly giving up and speeding back to their ship.  They're obviously looking for something.  Fish?

Lochan an Dobhrain

Lochan an Dobhrain, the small loch of the otter, is special in several ways.   It's one of West Ardnamurchan's more remote lochans; it drains into two burns, one at either end; and it is, in our view, the area's most beautiful lochan because of its many little islands and very ragged outline..  It can be reached either from Fascadale by walking westwards along the coast and then cutting south into the mountains; or, as we did the other day, by walking northeastwards across the old fields from Achnaha, and skirting south of Sgurr nan Gabhar.  Either route is fairly hard, but this lochan is well worth the trouble.

The picture above shows it from the west, looking towards Meall an Fhir-eoin.  The lochan sits high in the hills, in a bowl of land in a break in the great ring of igneous rock that circle the flat land around Achnaha.

The islands are formed of lumps of rounded rock upon which vegetation has, somehow, managed to grow.  Mostly it's heather which, in a month or so's time, will be a blaze of colour.  Because of the lochan's name, we keep hoping that we'll see an otter swimming eating a fish on one of the islands, or swimming in its clear, peat-brown waters.

The last time we visited it, the month was April and the surrounding vegetation had the colours of a long winter - yet a small yacht was already making its way through the passage between Ardnamurchan an Muck.

What we hadn't noticed before, but spent some time puzzling over on our recent visit, was this structure in one of the shallow inlets.  Someone has spent a great deal of time building this low wall out into the lochan.  That the water is very shallow and rocky on either side suggests that it can't have been a small harbour or shelter for a boat.  It might have been a fish trap, but it would have been a very porous one.  What can it have been?

A map of the area is here.

Staffa

Staffa, which, in Old Norse, means stave or pillar island, is famous for its magnificent basalt columns and Fingal's Cave. It was certainly an impressive sight as we approached it from the west, though we were surprised that, from a distance, the island seemed much more low-lying than expected.

Staffa is the creation of a series of geological events. Sixty million years ago, a volcano erupted where Mull now is, centred on Beinn Talaidh. As far as Staffa was concerned, the first event was explosive - the laying down of a layer layer of red-hot ash, called tuff, visible in this photo below the columns. The volcano then poured out vast amounts of runny basalt lava - in a similar way to the great volcanoes of the Hawaiian chain today. When this huge flow stopped moving, it cooled very slowly.  

The cooling took place along equally spaced vertical axes, these columns tessellating as hexagonal prisms, which contracted, leaving the separated columns. Hexagonal structures like this occur often in nature, such as in the honeycomb of bees. This lava flow was followed by smaller ones, which formed smaller columns, some of which folded as the lava continued to run. The columns are not all perfect hexagons, varying from three to eight sided, but hexagons are most common.

The final events were severe erosion of the volcano and its lava flows, mostly during the ice age, followed by a rise in sea level which drowned much of the area, leaving Staffa an island. The sea then eroded Staffa's coast, exploiting the weaknesses in the columnar jointing to gouge deep caves, of which Fingal's is the largest.

Fingal was the 3rd Century Irish hero Fionn MacCool (Gaelic fionn na ghal - chief of valour), who defended the Hebrides against the early Viking raids. It was Sir Joseph Banks' visit in 1772 which made the island famous, with the result that the first tourists flocked to see it - including Sir Walter Scott, John Keats, William Wordsworth, Queen Victoria, Jules Verne, David Livingstone and Felix Mendelssohn, who was inspired to write his Hebrides Overture.

The island supported a small population - as little as one in 1772, though this rose to sixteen by 1784 - but it was a dreadful place to live during the great winter storms, so it was abandoned by 1800. The only building we found, shown here, was built to offer some protection to Victorian visitors.

The wildlife on the island seems very limited in comparison to Lunga (see earlier blog here) but, when we visited it in mid-May, we found a pair of eider duck near to the jetty. The female seemed unafraid of us, moving off slowly as we approached.

We travelled out to Staffa on Staffa Tours' MV Islander, which offers a new service to Staffa and Lunga, departing daily at 9.45am from Kilchoan Pier. Islander is a catamaran, very fast and stable, an ideal boat for these waters. The picture shows the Islander at the landing stage at Staffa.

Staffa Tours' website is here.

Wonderful Wildlife

We think the wildlife of West Ardnamurchan is absolutely wonderful - but there are limits.  Our gooseberry crop was doing just fine until a passing moth or butterfly laid a few eggs, and the resulting caterpillars began work.

Not content with stripping the bushes of almost all their leaves - so quickly we didn't notice what as happening - they set about eating the gooseberries as well.

Does anyone recognise the species?

Unwelcome Tenants

The trouble with unoccupied houses is that unwelcome tenants can move in and, once established, they're the devil to get out again.  This extremely desirable property is a nesting box on Gael Cameron's property, and it was her daughter, Holly, who pointed out that....

....it had been invaded by a swarm of wasps, who have blocked up most of the entrance hole and filled the interior with their paper-like nest.

Not the sort of neighbours you want, particularly when you think about the hundreds of baby wasps that are being reared inside.

Many thanks to Gael Cameron for the pictures.