White Lines

A great deal of work has been done on our roads over the last few months by Highland Council's Highways Department.  Long stretches of what used to be appalling road have been resurfaced; a coating of rock chippings has been laid through most of Kilchoan and on the newly-surfaced roads outside the village; and they've added white lines.

We had some white lines before, but they were only at 'major' road junctions.  Now they've put them long the edges of all the roads, taking great care to reduce the solid white line to dashes by field gates, so the crofters know they can cross them to access their fields.

The main purpose of this is probably to try to stop people driving off the road onto the soft shoulder when they meet a car coming in the opposite direction.  This makes a mess of the grass verges and undermines the tarmac surface.  It's a laudable idea, but it'll be interesting to see if it makes the slightest difference: there are drivers on the roads who have yet to discover reverse gear.

The white lines are very neat and purposeful but the consensus seems to be that they don't do much for the scenery, even though they do match the 'traditional' white of the local houses.  But we shouldn't complain: it's just great to have had our roads upgraded - but please, please can they now be maintained at this standard.

Early Morning

 Kilchoan Early Bird was living up to his name this morning, sending in pictures of this year's spectacular heather....

....and of a large spider who has spun a web with a view.

The Diary recognises the location of the first photo, but where was the second taken?

Many thanks to Kilchoan Early Bird for the pictures.

Five Lochans and a Beinn - 1

Continuing with what may be becoming a Diary obsession, we set out on Sunday to visit another remote lochan.  This one is some three kilometres, as the crow flies, to the east of Ockle (see map at bottom of this entry).  Since walking along valleys is usually easier than a bald-headed bash across the hills, we approached it by following the Allt Ockle upstream to the ford across a tributary, Allt Eas a' Ghaidheil, which might be translated as the stream of the Gael's waterfall, and then turned to follow that burn eastwards.

Its lower reaches are wooded and flanked by bracken-covered banks, but the landscape....

....quickly opens up, first the trees falling away, then the bracken, until we were out into the open hills we so love.  To add to our pleasure, the Ling was just coming into flower and, with the warmth of the day, the insects were busy, particularly Scotch Argus butterflies and crane flies.

Cresting a rise in the ground, we put up a red deer mother with her fawn.  The mother, having run some twenty metres to get clear of us, then stopped, her young against her flank, to watch us, as if quite disgusted that her morning siesta should have been disturbed.

The higher we climbed, the more the view back towards the west opened up.  The nearer white buildings are at Swordle, the further ones are the Ardnamurchan Estate's cottages at Fascadale.  By this stage we were walking across open moorland, an increasingly bleak landscape underlain by billion-year old metamorphic rocks, their tops smoothed off during the last glaciation.

The lochan that was our objective sits in a natural bowl in the northern flank of Beinn Bhreac, the spotted hill.  Its deep, dark, silent waters were stained with peat, the only movement the ripples lifted by an increasingly brisk wind.  In the distance are the islands of Eigg and, beyond it, Rum.

Our object reached, we should have turned back, but, as seems to happen so often, something else drew us on: the looming peak of Beinn Bhreac, at 357 metres, was too great a temptation.

Beinn Bhreac is a relentless climb, but well worth it: for the first time since we've been climbing the beinns of West Ardnamurchan we looked over the high ridge formed by the metamorphic rocks onto a panorama of the eastern end of the peninsula.

This view looks due east.  In the foreground, across the top of the triangulation point, are the beaches of the Singing Sands.  To the right, beyond the forestry, is Kentra Bay, with Kentra itself visible on the far shore.  In the distance is the western end of Loch Shiel: the furthest point visible is some 20 kilometres from Beinn Bhreac, so the mountains on the horizon are far more.

Turning a little further to the north, we could see Ardtoe with its neat little bay and, beyond it, the mudflats of Loch Moidart at low tide.  Just visible in the centre distance is Castle Tioram, but....

....by cranking up the telephoto lens, it was possible to get a better view of it.

Part 2 follows.
For anyone keen to explore this wonderfully wild area, there are cottages at Ockle, owned by Ockle Holidays, website here.

Pigs by Number

These days pigs, like everything else in life, have to be registered with the Government and, therefore, have to have numbers.  Metal tags, with their Owner's Unique Code printed on one side, and a Personal Pig Number on the other, must be inserted into the ear of each pig, rather like an earring.  It won't be long before the same is expected of us humans.

The other day Hughie, who, as owner of the Kilchoan pig herd, has a OUC, came along Ormsaigbeg to put new tags into the ears of his boar and sow.  They, close readers of this blog will recall, occupy the field immediately opposite our house.  It being a perfect evening, The Diary went down to record the fun.

Hughie came well prepared with bribes, in the form of sweet words and food - not that the pigs were too interested in the latter as they had already been fed by about six different visitors on rather better better fare than Hughie had to offer.

Of the two, the sow was more interested in the food than the boar: she's rather bullied by her mate, so gets second pickings at the dinner table, and she is, of course, eating for eleven or more.  So, with her distracted, Hughie managed to get the job done quite quickly.

Banging a hole into the ear of a half-ton boar wasn't quite so easy.  For a start, he'd seen it done to his mate and knew how painful it was going to be, so a merry dance ensued in which Hughie chased him round the field until, finally, the boar stopped long enough....

....for Hughie to do the deed - though both Hughie and the machine that clips on the tag nearly went flying into the nearby Sound of Mull.

The sow seems rather pleased with her earring, the boar less so.  Perhaps it is that she got the Personal Pig Number 0001 and he got 0002, but it's more likely that he would have preferred a nice three-carat diamond in his ear rather than a piece of cheap aluminium.

Nursing several bruises and, in The Diary's opinion, lucky to be alive, Hughie went off with the rest of his tags to do the eight piglets.  They too must have taken strong exception to what he did as, the following day, they escaped from their run and rampaged across the gardens on the Old Golf Course - see Sandra's story here.

Walking near Ockle

Sunrise was officially at 6.07am this morning, and this was the view across Kilchoan Bay at about 6.50.  So, from where we live, the sun is rising just to the left of Ben Hiant.  As the year ages, it'll rise further and further up its northern slopes, across its summit, and then steadily down its southern side until it's rising out of Loch Sunart.

The beautiful sunrise heralded a warm day, and the sun stayed out for most of the morning.

We were out exploring new territory today to the southeast of Ockle, in the wild and empty country that is formed by the ancient metamorphic rocks of the Moinian - schists and gneisses with veins of quartz.  We were out for over five hours and exhausted when we finally returned to the car, but it was super walking, mostly up small river valleys filled with masses of butterflies.  Some of them were showing their age: this tattered Scotch Argus was unwilling to move from his nectar sipping on a Scabius flower.

The Ling, Calluna vulgaris, is coming into flower, the Bell heather, Erica cinerea, is already out, and the hills are covered in them, so this is the best time of year to be walking along the lovely path that leads from Ockle to Gortenfern.