Christmas Walk

On Christmas morning we set off to climb Meall an Tarmachain, ptarmigan hill, one of the higher points on West Ardnamurchan and one which offers great all-round views.  The weather forecast had been for a clear, frosty morning with little wind but, in the event, there was no frost, and the biggest problem turned out to be low mist which was blowing in from the east.

We set off along the track that leads from the Kilchoan-Sanna road to the Kilchoan waterworks, heading past it along the banks on the Abhainn Chro Bheinn - a name which seems to mean the river of the sheepfold hill - until....

....we came to a tributary which joined it from the north, which we followed up a steep section with several pretty waterfalls until we came out into open, boggy land, in which lies the burn's tributary....

....this little lochan, Lochan a' Choire Chruinn, which means something like the lochan of the crown corrie.  Tucked into its little glen, the waters of the lochan were like mirrors.

From it, we could just about see the summit of Meall an Tarmachain some 200m above us, but the mist that was still rolling in made us think twice before climbing higher.

We were glad we did venture upwards as the mist cleared and we were treated to fine views - this one looks northwest across the hills around Sanna towards Muck and, beyond it, Rum on the right and the flat land of Canna along the horizon to the left.

This was the view looking slightly more to the west, along the ridge which we had followed, with Lochan a Choire Chruinn far below us, while....

....this looks to the southwest, almost back the way we had come, towards the Sound of Mull and the flat land around Kilchoan, with the mist still lingering in places.

We made our way back to the car by dropping down the east side of the hill until we hit the Estate fence, and following it south until we were back on the Abhainn Chro Bheinn.  By this time we'd been out three hours and, as Mrs Diary commented, had broken a record - the latest we'd ever managed on a Christmas day without having a celebratory drink.  We made up for it.

Christmas

Christmas Weathers

We've had just about every sort of weather in the last few days, everything, that is, except hot and dry - well, that would be asking too much.  Friday saw near gales and cancelled ferries - except the little local ferry, the Raasay, which ploughed boldly through everything. Yesterday seemed more like an October day than late December, with its cumulus clouds, sharp showers and vivid rainbows.

Today we're back to a strong northwesterly which is bringing us hail showers, thunder, lightning and plunging temperatures, but it's forecast to draw in yet another weather for tomorrow - clear skies and frosty sunshine.

There's another sort of weather forecast as well - space weather.  The aurora was showing in the skies to the north of Ardnamurchan last night, briefly, between scudding clouds, and there's a moderate chance of more in the next 24 hours.  However, the Russian site, Tesis, is forecasting something more serious in the first few days of January.

Adventures of Algy 2015 Calendar

Algy knows that some readers of A Kilchoan Diary also follow his multimedia Tumblr blog http://adventuresofalgy.tumblr.com, which has been running for nearly three years now and documents the unique adventures of a fluffy bird in the wild West Highlands of Scotland. Algy has thousands of followers online, all around the world, but he also has some good friends closer to home, and this post is especially for them.

Each year Algy creates a deluxe A3 calendar, with a large photo of one of his adventures for each month. This year he has made a few of these calendars available for sale in The Ferry Stores in Kilchoan. Algy believes that the price is £12.99. There are only half a dozen available locally, so if you live in the area - or are visiting for the holidays - and would like one of Algy’s unique calendars, please be sure to ask in The Ferry Stores. The calendars were last spotted hanging on the end of the stand near the till, but they may wander….

Here’s a preview of the calendar images, much smaller than their actual size:

Every purchase helps to support Algy’s continuing adventures, and to fund the production of his forthcoming series of children’s books, "Tales from the Adventures of Algy", for which he is currently running a crowdfunding campaign at http://www.sponsume.com/project/tales-adventures-algy

Algy wishes all his friends a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and sends you all lots of fluffy hugs

An Achateny Walk - 2 - The Clachan

We were - honestly - set on sticking to the road on yesterday's walk, but it was this that drew us off it - the extensive sheep fank to the west of the road used by the shepherds who worked at Achateny Farm.  We had never visited it before, it was close to the road, the ground didn't look too boggy, so we took a look.

It's an impressive structure, built when Achateny Farm was developed some time after the mid-1840s.  Prior to that, all this land was part of Achateny clachan, one of the twenty-or-so traditional settlements scattered across West Ardnamurchan.  This clachan, like so many others, was cleared in the first half of the nineteenth century to make way for the more profitable - from the landlord's point of view - sheep farms.

This was one of the few clachans we hadn't found.  From William Bold's 1806 map, we knew roughly where it was, within the oval on this Bing satellite view, on a low ridge beside the Achateny Water, but we'd never walked the site.  So, boggy or not, we set off to find it.

This picture, taken from Achateny Steading, looks across the Achateny Water to the low, rocky ridge close by the burn on which the clachan once stood....

 ....and this, to our considerable excitement, is the first of the clachan's dwellings we found.  All that's left is the rectangular outline of the stone walls of the house, on a low mound a few metres from the burn, a truly lovely site.  Within minutes....

....we'd found two more, this one on top of the ridge, again consisting of no more than a few rocks where once there would have been a stone-built house.

When the clachan was cleared, probably in the early 1840s, the buildings were destroyed to prevent the people returning, and it's not difficult to see where the rocks that had once formed them went.

As can be seen from the Bing map, there's a high stone wall which runs from the ford just by the Steading to the sea, probably built using the stones from the houses.  The material may also have gone....

....towards building the fine house which the sheep farmer could, by 1866, afford, now one of the letting houses on Ardnamurchan Estate.