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It was the week before Christmas and very little was stirring:
several of the team were rehearsing for the School Christmas
Show and others were away to the shops. We ended up with just
four explorers, plus Mairi. The team was: Jack, John Donaldson,
Iain and Robert.
Once again, our projected trip to Three Old Maids was considered
to be too risky, so we covered a 'fresh' area north of Salen,
recently made accessible by a new forestry walk.
The first part of the walk was not too successful - John tried
to take the group to a cairn and some walls high up in the
woods but he missed the way among the cut spruce and it was
quite a scramble to even get back to the path. Then we carried
on down the path and looked at the new water supply machinery,
powered by a solar panel and a wind turbine. Further on down
the path we saw prints of a dog and a deer and possibly a
cat in the muddy surface of the path. We went to the end of
the path but decided to take an easier route down the stream
and retraced our steps to the water supply area.
Crossing the boggy ground using several old deer tracks, we
soon came to the old mill reservoir and its big stone-built
dam. This was a good place for a stop so everyone had a chocolate
wafer.
Then we walked down the stream towards the site of the old
mill in Salen. We had some difficulty in this section since
it was difficult to reach the public road without going across
people's gardens and we had to climb several forestry fences
before we eventually found the right way.
We came out of the forestry gate near High Croft, a place
Jack knew quite well. Then we walked down to the road and
looked at the site of the old mill and tried to find the site
of the original hotel which was nearby. We looked on the beach
for old bottles and found several pieces of pottery, a few
bits of bottle and some tiles.
Then we returned to the road and made our way back to the
cars, stopping to look at the old store and hearing about
its stock and staff in the old days.
The Pictures
lain did a drawing of how he imagined the old Salen Hotel
to look, John Donaldson did a view of the rocks of the dam
plus the leader peering through a mass of branches, plus a
Santa hat for seasonal effect, Jack showed the dam and two
of the paw prints on the path, Mairi showed a rickety footbridge
we had to cross and Robert, in a somewhat imaginative style,
showed the water supply unit with its wind generator and solar
panel, the dam represented by a heap of stones and several
other features nobody could identify.
John
Dye
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