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A midgey day with heavy rain at the early stages. The explorers
were: Charlene, Claire, Iain, Karen, Laura, Kirsten Conacher,
Margaret and Robert plus Stuart.
The expedition started from the church at Kinlochmoidart and,
after examining the bench mark, we walked along the road to
the West Lodge and down the drive to the big house. John spent
some time pointing out the trees and the different leaves.
We passed the big house and walked to the back of the garden
where the explorers examined the old yew trees, one of which
was sick. We measured the girth of the trees but could not
record the measurements since we had no pen with us. In the
centre of the garden was a small nude male statue which was
the cause of considerable interest.
The expedition then passed the Prince's Well and down the
Prince's Walk to St Finnan's Church, where they looked at
Jemima Blackburn's stained glass windows, the First World
War wooden cross and the plaque to Andrew Smart. We returned
to the car after examining the timber of a cut Western red
cedar outside the church.
We then drove a hundred metres or so to Kinlochmoidart Farm
where many of the explorers found themselves in need of the
facilities of the farm house. They heard a short story about
the Smith family who used to live at the farm before they
moved on to examine the names written on the joists of the
steading in the 1920s and 1930s by young people like themselves.
Then another short car trip took the expedition to Kinacarra
where the explorers saw the site of the old fire brigade hut
and the wych elm used by Alan Kinacarra for lifting engines
out of the cars.
We all walked across the field to have a close look at the
beech trees known as the Seven Men of Moidart and finally
came back to scale the hill above the lime kiln to look for
old buildings.
The Pictures
This time the explorers were encouraged to put pens to paper
in earnest and they turned out some good records: three explorers
concentrated on the Seven Men of Moidart and showed pictures
of the trees - Margaret wrote a series of notes on the appearance
of the trees and lain showed the trunks since the leaves were
only just appearing. Robert showed the seven trees diagrammatically
with his 'trademark tree and owl' on the left and the lime
kiln on the bottom right. The other two objects are the car
and the little statue on its plinth. Karen made a sketch of
the Kinlochmoidart Farm archway showing the joists above which
had the names written on them; her sister Claire showed the
Kinlochmoidart church with its bell. Charlene and Laura did
pictures of the stream we climbed past to reach the old settlement,
Laura adding a bluebell. Finally Kirsten did sketches of the
leaves we had seen on the walk.
John
Dye
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