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This was another visit to a favourite area, but most of the
explorers had never seen it before. We had eight explorers,
Alexander, Caleb, Caulay, Fern, Frederik, Jan Hendrik, Rowan
and Sam, and ten helpers, Andrew L., Averil, Claire, Corinne,
Howard and Johnny; plus Honey to keep bring us useful sticks.
We started from Ann Henderson's house, thanks for the use
of the car park Ann, and carefully walked round the dangerous
road corner to the start of the real expedition. The first
part of the track is getting very wet but everyone managed
without problems and the boys went running up the path like
greyhounds. However, they all came back and listened to details
of the wood and the fence strainers, or perhaps they pretended
to listen.
They were starting to break away again and had to be called
back to see the waterfall, which was a fine sight, probably
the best view we have had with the burn in spate and no leaves
on the trees. Then we took the right fork to follow the path
up the hill (this was not clear in the calendar). It was quite
steep and the boys were back in the group for the rest of
the outing. Finally we reached the top of the path, among
the old oak woods next to the plantation. This was our highest
point.
We set off straight down the hill towards the sea and found
a recessed platform next to a rock outcrop with was a good
place to stop for our wafers. We stayed quite a while here
while a squall of snow swept across the hillside. Finally
we got a clear spell and went straight down to the side of
another burn beyond some old peat workings. Once we reached
the burn we were back in the shelter of the wood and it was
a bit warmer. We followed the burn down to the road, looking
at an old still site on the way and using an ancient path
probably made for taking the peat away.
When we reached the road it was easy to see the old gateway
and we crossed and went across some rough ground with the
remains of old houses before we stopped again at the big oak
on the dyke. I mentioned how we had taken a core and found
this oak to be over 150 years old, so the dyke was probably
out of use when it started to grow. We even found the little
hole where the core was made. From the oak it was a few steps
to be big stone heap, which nobody can properly explain. Everyone
climbed over the stones and then we pushed on across a bit
of bog to the top of the beach.
Some of the boys climbed the rocks by the beach and I went
to the low tide mark to look for old oyster shells but I didn't
find any. We were getting a bit cold at this stage since the
wind was blowing down the loch so we walked fairly quickly
round the beach back to the road, pausing only to look at
the stone piles with the bit of limestone.
John
Dye
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