A Walk at Ockle - 1

Ockle is a tiny village on Ardnamurchan's stunning north coast, and it's a starting point for some of the finest walking on Ardnamurchan - see map here.  This particular walk was taken on an overcast June day when the bracken was already high in the Ockle glen, but once one moves away from the burn....

....the landscape opens up and the views look across miles of Ardnamurchan - the houses in the mid-distance are at Swordle and the more distant headland Fascadale.  From here on, there's miles of rugged moorland to be explored, and a wealth of wildlife there to be found.

Only a few days before we had come across the first examples of this sundew, Drosera anglica, above Ormsaigbeg - see post here.  This seems to happen often - one finds a new plant and, suddenly, it's all over the place, as this sundew was in the boggy patches above Ockle.

There were moments when we were wading through fluttering clouds of small moths, all of them too quick to photograph, but their caterpillars weren't.  This one, unidentified at the moment, was about 20mm long and intent on his meal of heather leaves....

....while this smart chap, also enjoying heather, was a little longer, perhaps 30mm.  He looks like the caterpillar of the emperor moth, though the exact arrangement of the colours seems to vary.

The area has plenty of red deer, at this time of year moving around in small groups, all of them - sadly - a little shy.

This was our objective, a small un-named lochan about 2.5km to the southeast of Ockle.  Beyond it stretch more miles of walking across truly wild countryside, an area which we've explored several times yet hardly begun to get to know.

Ockle Holidays has houses for rent at Ockle.