Devil's Elbow

The Cormorants are nesting!

 

Wednesday, 15th  May, 2013.

 

The weekend walk email from Dorothy read "The plan from Trevor is that we start from the Devil's Elbow and make our way down the train track and have a look at the Cormorants on our way.     ( I plan to fetch my proper camera.)           When we drag ourselves away,   I think we then go back a short way to the bridge where we go back to the coast road and take the road with the very long steep climb that goes towards the Staarvey.     Then turn left up the track past the Very Big Posh New House and back to the Glen Mooar.   Back to the railway line, with a look at the Cabbal Pherick chapel and buriaL ground.      We had a slide show/talk about things Manx and spooky and it included a photo of this ancient site.   Which looked well worth a visit. 

   

"The plan from yesterdays weather forecast.  Thinking Monday and Tuesday had showers.  So a Wednesday walk looked a bit better.     Well, now the Weather Forecast has changed, and Tuesday looks not too bad.       Shall we keep to the Wednesday plan and hope for the best?"  

    Well, we walked on Wednesday - but all three mornings were good, which will surprise those who think we live in a land of permanent grey skies and drizzle.  I didn't take a dog because dogs and birds are not a good combination - and, although I found the route difficult to decipher, it sounded as though the walk might involve a bit of trespassing. 

     At this time of year, part of the pleasure of the walks is the drive to the meeting place.  Spring 2013 has been more miraculous than most - probably something to do with "a pleasure deferred".  Last time we drove down to the DIY shop, south of Douglas, I regretted leaving my camera at home.  The flowering cherries at Sulby and Ballaugh were a mass of blossom and the new leaves on the trees alongside the road were variations on shades of brilliant green.  On Wednesday we started along the same route and I tried snapping as we drove along.  The Sulby cherries were slightly past their best but as we passed the turnoff to the Glen Wyllin camp site, we drove through a pretty green tunnel.

The Devil's Elbow, where we met, is a kink in the coast road between Kirk Michael and Peel where the road turns sharply inland to traverse a little glen, Glion Cam.   There is a picnic area and parking on a flat area where the valley has been filled in to take the road; and an old slate quarry on one side. 

We started off along the coast road in a northerly direction, heading for the steps down to the railway line by the bridge.  This was a great relief to me.  After reading Dorothy's message, I had a horrible premonition that Trevor planned to climb down the extremely steep side of Glion Cam and scramble on down, through fields of sheep, to the old railway cutting below.

After leaving the road we walked south along the railway line for at least a mile and a half.  The mud wasn't too bad, we were sheltered from the wind and the banks were lined with gorse and blackthorn blossom.  There are new leaves on the hawthorns but they are not flowering yet even though they are sometimes called May flowers.  Everything is late this year.

This is the part of the west coast of the Island which suffered worst in the late snow.  There were reminders along the route.  Branches on willows and gorse had been split and twisted, making me think of the expression "greenstick fracture", and the weight of the snow had peeled the ivy from this old bridge.

Our attention was diverted for a while - trying to identify a small white butterfly.  I have seen orange tips in this area before and thought it might be a female.  Cuckoo flowers (aka lady's smock or Cardamine pratensis) a main larval food source grow in the marshy ditches at the side of the path.  Eventually our butterfly settled and we got a good view of the underside of the wings.  It was a green veined white.

We reached a gate into a field and turned down towards the sea.  This part of the coast is a series of isolated coves with steep grassy banks above the rocks and deep indentations where little streams run down to the shore.  Trevor was unsure about the exact location of the nesting colony of cormorants so we did a bit more up and down scrambling than was strictly necessary.  When we reached the right grassy headland there was a fine view south to Peel.  The birds had moved back to the cove where they nested in the spring of 2009, the first time Dorothy took us to see them.

Tim's camera isn't as good as mine for zoom shots, so he decided to wait in a sheltered place while the rest of us struggled across to an exposed ridge where we had a better view of the birds below.  Most of the nests were on the large rock at the bottom of the slope on the left of the next photo.  We lay on the grass, bracing ourselves against the buffeting gusts of wind and trying to keep our cameras steady while taking zoom or telephoto shots of the birds below.

This was my first photo of the cormorants.

In the distance they look black but close-up, and with the sun shining on their feathers, you realise how colourful they are.

One mother appeared to be a bit absent-minded!

But I liked this devoted couple.

It was hard to leave the birds.  They were perfectly relaxed and seemed to be oblivious of our presence.  It will be tempting to return when they are more active.  Perhaps when they are feeding their babies . . .  although Dorothy says that cormorant nestlings are extremely ugly.

We returned to the railway line and turned inland - up the Cronk-y-Voddey road to the junction with the Staarvey Road (Dorothy's " very long steep climb") - and then walked north.  There were violets and primroses on the grassy banks by the road.  Also lambs in the fields - but they are half-grown now and no longer as cute.  Then we saw some calves but they were just sunbathing - not a very photogenic occupation.  We were debating whether to continue to Glen Mooar or to take a short cut down to the coast road near the Devil's Elbow.   We decided on the short cut but got distracted by a brief sighting of a red admiral butterfly . . .  and the views across the north of the Island towards the Scottish coast in the distance . . . and missed the turning.

There was another footpath down towards the coast before we reached Glen Mooar and we decided to try it.  We had never walked down this path before.  I had been told in the past that it was not a "recommended route".  It wasn't as bad as I expected.  May was probably the best time of year to use this path.  It could be too boggy in winter and too overgrown in summer.  We were intending to join up with the railway line near the ancient site which Dorothy wanted to visit (which wasn't Cabbyl Pherick but turned out to be the standing stone at Ballacarnane) but we must have taken a wrong turn at a junction in the path and ended up walking south instead of west, first along a defined track between hedges and then along the edge of fields . . . anxiously searching for the next footpath sign.  We lost the path when we reach the old Ballacarnane Beg farm buildings, but Trevor was interested to see an old, abandoned chapel.  He has lived on the Island since he was a child but had never come across this chapel before.

Most of the windows were boarded up but we found one at the back of the chapel which was partly broken and we were able to look inside.  The old pews and altar table were still inside with a jumble of other old furniture.  When we got home, I searched for information about the chapel.  The only clue was the date 1833 on the front of the building and the fact that it was very close to Ballacarnane Beg.  I had no luck, although I did manage to find some information on the old stone that Dorothy wanted to visit.  Then I tried using the name of another farm, to the south of the chapel, in the search and struck lucky.  It turned out to be Kerrowglass Wesleyan Methodist Chapel.  According to the internet "It was built by John Cannell (who was trustee) on his farm land and would appear to have remained private property as on closure (c.1963) his family locked the doors leaving it just as it was left at the last service.  According to the 1851 religious census it would seat 92, average attendance 60 with 36 Sunday School scholars."  The same article also said that the chapel was closed in 1932.  Perhaps there was a period of about thirty years between the last service and when it was officially closed.

The good news was that while we were snooping around the back of the chapel we found some more footpath signs at the side of a gate.  We continued on through more fields, one occupied by cattle.  They tolerated our presence in their field but we were glad to find this little bridge across a stream, and only one more field to cross before we reached Lower Skerrisdale farmhouse and the right of way down to the coast road.

Back at the Devil's Elbow we were greeted two even more colourful birds.  They seemed disappointed that we were not planning a picnic.  They weren't there earlier in the day - perhaps they are only on duty at lunchtime.

It was a memorable walk even if it didn't go exactly to plan.  The cormorants lived up to expectations.  And even though we didn't pass the "Very Big Posh New House" which wasn't actually on our planned route, and we didn't find Dorothy's ancient site  . . .  we did walk along a "new" path and we did find an interesting old chapel.