| Having found the first one and
got a distant view of the second, we were back on the Salen
hills again. Once again, a small expedition, Fern and Rowan,
assisted by Maris, Sandra and Sharon with Jamie getting his
first outing after being stuck in for ages in the hot weather,
it was a bad time to be a black Labrador.
This time we set out from the start of the forestry walk between
Acharacle and Salen. I gave Rowan and Fern the map and a compass
and they worked out where we had to go and followed the map
quite well all through the trip. The first task was to cross
the road and then get over the fence. This was quite tricky
since we had to find a place a big Labrador could get under
and then use the camel skin to cover the barbed wire for the
rest of us to get over.
From there on it was a matter of following the forestry fence
to the middle of the hill and cutting across the bog. It was
a warm day with a nice breeze to keep the clegs and midges
away. We saw a deer fairly close and it seemed to be too hot
to run far.
It was a hard climb to the top of the ridge but then we could
see the dam and it was fairly easy to get down to it. Fern
and Rowan went to the downstream side and couldn’t find
an outlet tunnel like the first dam. This dam was covered
in thick bracken and was more difficult to see than the first
one. The top of the dam had a deep groove which was difficult
to cross since the bracken covered a lot of tumbled rock.
After eating our wafers we climbed down to the upstream side
of the dam and Rowan found the iron penstock valve just under
the water.
There seemed to be a wooden box channel just like the first
dam but it was hard to see.
We were in good time so we climbed back to the highest part
of the ridge. On the way up, Sharon spotted a large oil beetle
in the grass and I got a picture of it standing on the map.
There was a good view from the top of the hill, but we soon
started down again and had some fun finding our way through
a very high patch of bracken, only Jamie knew where he was
going.
Once we reached the plateau, it didn’t take us long
to get back to the fence and cross once again.
John
Dye
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