Archallagan

Damsels and Dragons

 

Monday 29th July, 2013

 

On Friday I got an email from Dorothy saying that she was ". . . off to Archallagan this morning with a club member who says the pond area has Damselflies".  So we were excited when she wrote again on Saturday evening  and asked "Are you OK for a Monday walk.     Meeting at Crosby . . .  to go up the hill past Marown Old Church on the Millennium Way.    Making our way to Archallagan Plantation to see the little lake with hopefully some Damselfly still there."  Attached to her message was an amazing photograph she had taken of a large red damselfly. 

 

I had a look on the internet.  I was curious to find out why these weird and wonderful insects are called damsels.  I wasn't successful but I did find some interesting facts.  Apparently damselflies and dragonflies are one of the oldest types of insects and the only thing that has changed since prehistoric times is their size.  Fossils have been discovered in North America and Siberia with wingspans of about thirty inches! 

 

They have many different folk names like "devil's needle", "water witch", "goddess' horse", "devil's horse", and "snake killer" in Germany; "devil's darning needle" and "horse stinger" in England and "hobgoblin fly" in Sweden.

 

I couldn't wait to leave for the walk on Monday morning and was ready in good time when Danny nearly scuppered the whole plan.  He has occasional fits of loud sniffs/snorts which don't usually last long - but he gets very distressed and once had a nosebleed after a really bad bout.  It seems to be caused by an irritation in his nose.  Anyway, he started sniffing just as we were going to leave.  I waited for a bit to see whether he would recover but he carried on.  We decided that we couldn't leave him . . . but we couldn't stay at home and miss the walk . . . so the only alternative was to take him with us and carry him if he got tired.  I rushed round packing his equipment and we let him out of the front door.  He promptly stopped sniffing and when I went to pick him up to put him in the car he trotted up the steps and sat outside the front door waiting to be let in again.  The dog had more sense than me.  He knew he wasn't fit enough for a long walk.   

 

After the dog panic we had a further short delay because the rubbish lorry was coming up our narrow road and we had to wait until it was past our gate before leaving.  But we did manage to get to Crosby in the end.

 

We started up the very steep road towards the church.  This is part of the Millennium Way route from Ramsey to Castletown and is the last of the hills if you are walking south - not a nice prospect after walking for hours.  But not so bad on a cool, damp and slightly misty morning at the beginning of the walk.  We passed a colourful patch of Rosebay willow herb - a very pretty wild flower but not one that I welcome in the garden.  As well as having wind-borne seeds, it spreads by underground runners and forms dense, invasive patches.

We stopped at the Marown Old Church before turning up the farm road towards the plantation.  I thought of asking Tim to stand by the entrance to the church to show how low it is and forgot - but he had the same idea and took this photo of me.  I was reading the sign that we saw on our last visit - asking visitors to close the door in order to keep the pigeons out.  It would have been a more impressive photo with Tim standing there because he is about eight inches taller than I am.

I wandered around and found this Red Admiral resting on one of the gravestones.

Before we left we discussed why there was an old stone step stile at the side of the entrance gate and decided that the stile must predate the gate.  I suggested that the stile might have been built to keep sheep out of the churchyard but Dorothy said that she thought agile sheep would be able to climb over it.

We walked up the road through the farmland.  Most of the fields are used for grazing but we saw a large field of barley just before we reached the plantation.  There were a lot of butterflies around - mainly Meadow Browns and Green-veined Whites.  We did see one which was more colourful but it sped off into the barley field before we had a chance to identify it. 

 

Then we turned down the track through the plantation.  For a while, the track follows the edge of the plantation and we had a view of the surrounding countryside.  This field near the old farmhouse hadn't been intensively grazed or cultivated and we wondered whether it had been deliberately set aside.  There were large numbers of small white butterflies flying low over the vegetation.  They were too far away to identify but I thought they might be Green-veined Whites (Pieris napi) because we had seen so many on the walk.  I wondered whether they were feeding or planning to lay eggs.  When we got home I checked the UK butterfly site.  There didn't seem to be any listed larval food plants in the field but there was a lot of bird's foot trefoil and that is listed as a preferred source of nectar for the Small White (Pieris rapae).  So perhaps they were Small Whites. 

We turned off along the path through the trees towards the pond.  The path divided when we reached a rather artistic wooden sign attached to a tree.  The path to the left seemed to be going in the right direction but the sign pointed to the right - so we tried that path.  Eventually we realised that the right path went the wrong way and we forced our way through the conifers until we reached another path that led back to the pool.  

 

It is a very pretty setting and the damselflies were still there although we didn't see a Large Red.  The best area for spotting them was in that grassy patch on the far side of the pool.

The first one that I photographed wasn't actually a damselfly.  It was a dragonfly - a Black Darter (Sympetrum danae) 29 - 34mm.  It took me a long time to identify it because it is a female which is more yellow than black.  I wouldn't have been able to identify any of them accurately without a short-lived blog "Isle of Man Dragonflies" which provided a species list of confirmed sightings on the Island - just four types of damselflies and ten varieties of dragonflies.

Then I found a Common Blue damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum) 32mm.

 

And finally, saving my favourite photo for last, an Emerald Damselfly (Lestes sponsa) 38mm.

We were reluctant to leave the pool but eventually made our way down to the entrance to the plantation near the old Cornelly mine.

 

In the middle of the path down from the plantation I noticed a Small Tortoiseshell sunning itself on a stone.

We turned down the road to get a better view of the remains of the mine buildings.  The Cornelly mine produced lead.  It was first worked in 1837 but its productive period was between 1874 and 1884 and it closed in 1886.  Tim noticed a ragwort plant growing on the top of the tall chimney.  It is a very tenacious plant.

I was interested to find a big patch of Yellow Loosestrife near the mines because I have only seen this plant in gardens before.  It was a bit too bright and glary to get a good photo so I was delighted to find another patch down by the railway line in a suitably shady position.

It was getting hotter and hotter as the morning progressed.  I was feeling particularly hot because I put on an anorak before approaching the pool because Dorothy said "horsefly protection" was advisable.  Then I couldn't take it off again because the zip stuck fast and I didn't want to hold up the walk while I unstuck it. 

 

We took a narrow path, strewn with loose stones, down towards the old railway line the valley.   It wouldn't be a Manx walk without at least one or two ruins.  The remains of this old cottage were set amongst a little grove of trees which gave some brief but welcome shade.

  

Then Tim took this photo of us.  Hot and tired and looking carefully down at the path ahead to avoid tripping over stones.

The last leg of the hike was the long walk along the railway line back to the cars.  It must have been nearly three miles but at least it was level, and shady most of the way. 

 

PS  Danny was full of bounce when we got home and had obviously forgotten all about his earlier attack of "the sniffs."  He made the right decision about not coming.  He would not have enjoyed meeting four very boisterous Labradors in the plantation and the last part of the walk was too hot for a little black dog.  

Snaefell

The very top of the Island

 

Monday 22nd July, 2013.

 

Yet another dry day - but possibly the last.  Thank goodness.  Thunder showers are predicted for Tuesday.  I am getting irritable about the emotive use of language by the weather forecasters.  The other day we were informed that the temperature would be "near to 22 Celsius at best" and that there was the "threat of a showery burst of rain on Tuesday".  Anyone would think that the only desirable weather is hot and dry - and the hotter and drier the better.  Maybe their idea of paradise is living in the middle of the Sahara.

 

We met at Bungalow, one of the confusing points on the TT course which are named after something which no longer exists.  The Bungalow Hotel was a wood and galvanised iron building which also served as the station at the junction of the Tholt y Will road and the mountain road, where the Snaefell Mountain railway crosses the mountain road.  It was demolished in 1958.  Apart from the name, all that remains is a convenient parking place for people who want to climb Snaefell, the highest mountain on the Island.  We have a lot of other hills that we call mountains but apparently you have to reach at least 2000 feet above sea level to be an official mountain.  So Snaefell - all 2036 feet of it - is our only real mountain.

 

There was a surprisingly cool breeze when we got out of the car.  I thought I might be inadequately prepared with just a cotton shirt and sunhat but I rather enjoyed the sensation of being slightly too cold after weeks of feeling much too hot.  We set off through the gate leading to the "path" up to summit.

The building on the right of the previous photo was built by the Ministry of Defence and after the war it was taken over by Murray's Motorcycle Museum.  The Museum closed a few years ago but Peter Murray has kept part of the collection in a private museum at his home in Santon where visitors are welcome.

 

The weather forecast had warned that the air would be very hazy but as we climbed up the path it became quite foggy.  Tim took this photo as I approached the hotel near the summit.

There is an often quoted old saying that, from the summit of Snaefell, one can see six kingdoms, those of Man, Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales and Heaven.  Some versions add a seventh kingdom, that of Neptune.  I started wondering what our local Celtic sea god, Manannán mac Lir, would think about a foreign sea god being named as ruler of the Irish Sea . . . and what would those inhabitants of Ireland living south of the border, think about being called a kingdom . . . and whether the women's libbers might prefer the word "queendoms", though probably not because most actresses want to be called actors these days.  I sometimes think language is becoming more and more of an obstacle course.  It is almost impossible to say anything without someone being offended.  But all that wondering was beside the point because when I got to the top all I could see was the hotel.  It was impossible to see the bottom of the hill, let alone the multiplicity of kingdoms.

We walked across the top of the hill to the trig point and suddenly the fog blew away and we could see down to Druidale Farm above the Sulby Dam on the west side of the hill.

But our route was to the east - towards Black Hut, on the mountain road between Snaefell and the North Barrule ridge of hills.

This was not the best of walks for wild flowers so I was tempted to photograph anything which was even slightly interesting.  This single head of cotton grass was growing by the path.  It is probably common cotton grass  (Eriophorum angustifolium)  but I have read that there are 25 different species so I may be wrong.

Trevor had suggested walking along the road for a while and then turning down towards the Millennium Way which crosses the Block Eary stream and then skirts the eastern edge of Snaefell.  We decided to walk across the rough ground below the road instead, rather than face the traffic, and set off towards the source of the Block Eary stream.  The ground was firm underfoot after the long dry spell of weather, but it must be very boggy for most of the year.  I was delighted to find a few flowers of bog asphodel (Narthecium ossifragum) among the clumps of rushes.  I was slightly less delighted when I read that these pretty flowers are poisonous for sheep and cattle - but there were very few of the plants in the area so I don't suppose they were too much of a problem for the mountain sheep.

We crossed the stream and followed it down towards the Millennium Way but it was quite heavy going through the rushes which were waist-high in places.  We decided that it would be easier to walk on the Snaefell side and crossed the stream again.  I think it turned out that distance had lent enchantment to the view because there wasn't really much difference between the left and right banks.  Tim took this photo of me taking a photo of the stream.

We set off on a diagonal route hoping to join up with the official footpath above the steep climb up from the bridge and were rewarded by the sight of this first sign post.

We continued on the path which traverses the hill before joining up with the forestry road which leads to the road from Tholt y Will up to the Bungalow.  From the forestry road we had a good view across to the Cleigh yn Arragh a very old defensive ditch and bank - its origins and purpose and even its name are obscure.  The best guess is that it was constructed during the later iron age - possibly in the first millennium AD. 

 

According to W.Walter Gill who published A Manx Scrapbook in 1929  " Cleigh yn Arragh, . . .  also called Cleigh Mooar, is a long and now much attrited bank of earth separating a stretch of the lower land of Sulby Glen from the Western slope of Snaefell. Its dimensions as recorded in Lioar Manninagh, vol. i., pt. i., 1889, are as follows. It is about one third of a mile long, twenty-five feet through, and five feet high in the best preserved portions, with a ditch of exactly the same dimensions. Rather surprisingly, there seems to be no legend about it. Its construction may have been due to the need of keeping destructive animals, such as the Lord's deer, the " purrs " or mountain swine, and half-wild cattle and goats, out of the cultivated land, to which end the bank may have been surmounted by a superstructure of thorns, gorse, etc., or stakes forming a rough palisade. It would thus form a " fell-dyke " of a size proportionate to the scale of the landscape." 

 

I was interested in the "purrs" - probably because they had such a silly name - and managed to find a little information about them.  Thomas Quayle wrote this in his 1812 General View of Agriculture in the Isle of Man:   

The Isle of Man had also its peculiar breed of pigs (known to the locals as 'purrs'), now totally extinct.  In summer they ran wild in the mountains; were lank; of a sandy or grey colour, with black spots, and, as tradition reports, partook of the wild-boar flavor. Their number was, in former days, sufficiently great to attract the cupidity of the tithe-owners.

As for the name, Cleigh is easy enough.  It just means hedge, but this can mean more than just a row of shrubby plants on the Island.  According to a consultation paper by DAFF "The vernacular Manx sod-hedge can also be considered similar in structure to a Cornish hedge which is defined as ‘generally a built structure or bank with or without a stone facing. Frequently, these are topped with woody trees, plants and shrubs and, sometimes but not always, form hedgerows’"  The arguments start when we get to Arragh which usually means Spring (the season) in Manx.  But this doesn't make sense although someone suggested that the purpose of the dyke could have been to protect the lambs which graze on the hillside in spring.  Another version is that Arragh is taken from Gaelic root ar, and means tillage or ploughland - and this is considered more likely by the experts.

 

We turned up the Tholt y Will road and walked the last mile and a bit back to the cars.  There were some different thistles growing at the side of the road.  One was incredibly spiny and I think it may be a welted thistle (Carduus crispus).

And here is a photo of one of my favourite insects - a little hairy bumblebee which just happened to be sitting on another thistle.

While we were taking off our boots by the cars, one of the electric trams crossed the mountain road en route to the summit.  A much easier way of enjoying the view from the top.

Staarvey Road

A Scottish walk?

 

Monday 15th July, 2013

 

The Sunday email read "We think a start from St John's car park and a Staavey Rd, ruin walk to the Switchback and back." 

 

It was still reasonably cool when we met at Tynwald Mills just before nine - but it promised to be another hot day so we set off quickly hoping to climb the hill up to the Staarvey Road before the sun got too high in the sky.  This summer has been totally different from last year.  There has been no rain so far this month and the five day forecast threatens more dry weather and even hotter days. 

 

"The Staarvey Road" illustrates the rather casual approach to language and spelling on the Island . . . being a mixture of Manx and English.  It really should be The Road of the Shallow Ford - or the Bayr ny Staarvey.  Variations in spelling date back a long time - to when the Manx language was rarely written and most of the population were illiterate.  The English officials must have battled to transfer the strange sounding Manx words to paper before the first dictionary was published in 1835.   By the way,  I am not sure where the shallow ford used to be - the stream probably runs through a drain under the road now.

 

We turned off the road at Staarvey farm and headed along the right of way, which follows the edges of the fields, until we reached the first ruin.  Tim took this photo of the remains of the farmhouse nestling in the dense shade of an overhanging ash tree.

There were also  the remains of farm buildings and an old horse mill.  I am always impressed by the way the old builders were concerned with the beauty of their buildings.  The stone mason who worked on this old barn must have taken a pride in his work and interspersed the the grey Manx slate with blocks of white quartz.

 

The last time we walked this way we were wading through mud and taking care to avoid the herd of cows (one of which Trevor thought might be a bull).  On Monday the cows looked very placid in the heat - even though they had calves in the field with them.  It was rather nice to see that there are still some traditional farms where the animals enjoy a more or less natural existence.

My attention was attracted to this patch of creeping thistles (Cirsium arvense) when I saw a small tortoiseshell butterfly.  But my luck wasn't in and the butterfly flew off before I got it in focus.  

So I am going to cheat a bit - taking my cue from the cookery shows where they put a cake in an oven . . . and then whip out another while proudly announcing "And here is one I made earlier!"  Here is one I took earlier!  A small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) in our garden on Sunday afternoon.

We approached the second ruin along the edge of field of oats.  Nearly all the cereal crops that we saw during the walk were oats - and they were growing very well.  Perhaps the other cereals need a longer growing season and oats were planted because of the snow at the end of winter and the late onset of spring.

 

On the bank above the old farm buildings we saw some harebells (Campanula rotundifolia) - the first of the season.  They are called bluebells in Scotland.  I had heard that before, but when I read about them again I discovered something new . . . that the Scots call the English bluebells wild hyacinths!   The harebells were much bluer in real life than they appear to be in the photo - and they had been chomped by something.  I thought of substituting a harebell photo from last summer but resisted the temptation.  This is not a good photo but at least it is authentic.

At the edge of the next field of oats we passed some spear thistles (Cirsium vulgare) - also known as Scottish thistles.  The walk seemed to be taking on a Scottish theme with oats and thistles and Scottish bluebells.

Just before we reached the stile into the lane down to the Switchback Road, we had a good view of Peel and St Patrick's Isle.  Peel always looks as though it is posing for postcard photographs.  In the fields you can see that this has been a good summer for haymaking.  The hay has already been mowed, dried and baled and the fields are greening again.  And it is only half way through July.

Opposite the stile there was a gate and some rather impressive cows.  We asked them if they felt silly wearing yellow earrings.  I suppose the ear tags are less cruel than branding.  It can't be too painful because most girls (and some boys) seem to get their ears pierced voluntarily.

 

We walked down the stony lane towards the Switchback Road and were joined by some flies.  I wasn't sure whether they were just ordinary annoying flies or the more sinister clegs - another less welcome addition to the Scottish theme.  I had already been bitten once up at the second ruin.  Although Scotland is renowned for midges and clegs, the Island isn't doing too badly either this summer.  For those of you lucky enough not to have encountered either of these little pests I should explain.  Midges are tiny biting flies - about 1mm long - rather like microscopic mosquitoes.  You don't feel them bite but the bites itch.  According to the internet, a cleg is a "large swift fly the female of which sucks blood of various animals" - and we were painfully aware that hikers are included in "various animals".  Their name is derived from an Old Norse word kleggi - so they must have been around when the Vikings invaded and probably for a very long time before that.  They are also called horseflies.  Clegs are sneaky.  They approach silently and you often don't notice them until you feel the painful bite.

 

We crossed the Switchback Road at Lherghydoo farm and walked down the road towards the old railway line.  I had always thought that bush vetch was more common than its more colourful relation the tufted vetch - but tufted vetch (Vicia cracca) seemed to be dominant in this part of the Island.

 There are no steps down to the railway line from this bridge so we had to scramble down a steep bank, overgrown with brambles and nettles.  It adds a bit of excitement to the walk but always reminds me of a walk when Sarah was with us.  She flatly refused to climb down the bank - saying that her silk petticoat would be ruined!  I had to walk down the road with her and we joined up with the others later.

The centre of the railway cutting had been strimmed which was just as well because the bracken and hogweed at the sides were taller than us.

 

The warm sheltered path was unfortunately an ideal environment for the clegs which pursued us down the footpath with great enthusiasm.  They weren't too bad if we kept moving fast but they targeted me every time I stopped to take a photo.  But I couldn't miss the chance to record this interesting example of recycling.  There was an old gate here which has recently been replaced but the old device for keeping the gate closed has been preserved!  The horse shoe is hinged so that it can be lifted over the bar . . . and it must have belonged to a horse with very large hooves.

When we reached another road bridge, we climbed up some civilised steps to the Poortown Road and then walked up the road before turning into the lane which crosses the River Neb and leads back towards Tynwald Mills.  I was interested in identifying a cottage garden on the banks of the Neb which is described by Richard Adams (who wrote Watership Down) in his Nature Diary.  He wrote the diary while he was living on the Island and it was published in 1985.  Unfortunately the cottage garden seems to have disappeared - maybe under the new garage block built alongside this cottage.  The cottage has been renovated recently and the neatly clipped hedges have been allowed to grow so high that the garden is no longer visible from the road.

 

And the last photo is one of Tim's  - a view of Slieau Whallian.

Maughold

Saints and Dolphins

 

Monday 8th July 2013

 

This week Dorothy suggested "How about a Port Mooar, Maughold walk on Monday.   A nice sunny coastal walk again, always good for photos and not too long a walk in the heat."   She was right about the heat.   It was sunhat weather - with a vengeance. 

 

There were only three of us walking.  Tim stayed at home to arrange for the heating engineers to fix a minor leak from the outlet of our new hot water cylinder - so I drove on my own to Port Mooar.

 

Jack's Lane, our usual route up to the Dreemskerry Road, was still closed so we decided to take the shorter route back to Port Mooar at the end of the walk - up the main road through Maughold village. 

 

We started along the coast and I kept a look out for seals and flowers.  I was worried about the battery in my camera.  I checked before we left home and it was only indicating one third of the charge left - so I took the old camera as back-up.  Of course, as soon as I turned my camera on to take a photo of some bindweed growing on the shingle, the red battery warning symbol started flashing - so I switched to the old one.  It was a pity because it turned out to be a walk where the extra zoom on my newer camera would have been a great help.

 

Trevor saw a common blue butterfly settle on the path but it had its wings upright so we could only see the underside of the wings.

And there are patches of white daisy-like flowers growing on the shingle in one little cove.  I had always assumed that they were scentless mayweed because that is the only illustration in my little book "Wild Flowers of the Isle of Man" which matches their appearance.  But life is always more complicated than one expects.  When I looked them up on the internet, I discovered the almost identical sea mayweed (Tripleurospermum maritimum) which is a more likely candidate.  It is a better match for location and the fact that I think these plants are perennial and the scentless mayweed is an annual.

We found a couple of seals - but they were right out at the edge of the rocks.  The little camera couldn't cope with the distance - but here is proof that they were there.

Trevor walked right out on the rocks hoping for a close-up photo but the seals suspected his motives and took to the water.

Dorothy was also on a seal hunt.

I found a couple of interesting and colourful moths feeding on some sheep's bit flowers.  I think they are 6 spot Burnet moths (Zygaena filipendulae).  The hind wings are crimson so they look even more colourful in flight.

Along the shadier, north-facing, part of the path we came across some lovely orchids.  There were a variety of colours but I think they were all common spotted orchids (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) which are widely variable in colour and height.

We stopped to take a few photos over the wall of the churchyard before walking up to the car park at Maughold Head.  We passed an artist painting a picture of the view towards North Barrule.  I noticed that he had chosen to make North Barrule look steeper than it is in real life - the opposite effect to my camera which manages to flatten even the steepest slopes.  This is annoying when you are trying to impress people with the size of the hills that we climb on the Island.

 

The church, in fact the village and the whole parish, are named for St Maughold.  The story is that he was a notorious Irish outlaw who was converted to Christianity by St Patrick.  As a penance for his evil former life he was chained and cast adrift at God's mercy in a tiny coracle.  There was a padlock on the chains and the key of the lock was thrown into the sea.  The boat drifted to the Isle of Man and he came ashore and remained here.  Shortly before he took holy orders, the cook found the key to his chains in the belly of a fish and Maughold was released from his chains and eventually became a much loved bishop.

 

There is an irreverent poem about St Maughold at this link http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/manxsoc/msvol16/p220.htm   and a rather more serious account here http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/fim/fim05.htm

 

On the steep hillside below the car park is St Maughold's well.  We had time to spare because of the abbreviated route so we decided to walk down to visit the well.  My Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Isle of Man mentions " . . . the well where, according to tradition, St. Maughold was refreshed on arrival from Ireland.  In later times, people drank the waters on the first Sunday in August in the hope of being cured from their ills."  This little well must have taken over the identity and legendary powers of another earlier well which used to exist in the churchyard.  There is an almost sheer drop down to the sea below the well and it is hard to imagine how a man, in chains and after spending an alleged 20 hours in an open boat, would be able to climb up to the present well from the sea. 

 

There is an extract from Jenkinson's Practical Guide 1874 (Ramsey Section) which describes the well at  http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/parishes/md/mdwell.htm    . . . or, if you have great stamina, you can wade through the whole Ramsey Section which includes "A Walk to Maughold Head"  and even a paragraph on Glen Auldyn at http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/jk1874/p182.htm#183a

We lingered on the path by the well looking down at the seabirds far below.  It was hard to identify them from that distance but we saw cormorants flying in to the foot of the cliff and wondered whether they had a nesting site there.  Then a fishing boat chugged past towards Ramsey harbour . . .

. . . and we were amazed to see a group of dolphins swim out to join it!

 

 

We have been on the Island for 23 years and Dorothy has been here for three or four years longer than us - and it is the first time we have seen dolphins.  Trevor has lived here since 1959 and has seen them before but not for very many years.  It was an incredible sight.  They approached the boat and then split up into smaller groups and then all got back together again before continuing their journey south along the edge of Ramsey Bay.  We think they must have been bottlenose dolphins because they were too acrobatic to be porpoises and the only other dolphins which we get here are the Common dolphins which have tan patches on their sides and Risso dolphins which are very pale.

 

We continued on our way along the Brooghs towards Ramsey.  I liked the view of the distant town behind the foxgloves.  I always think of foxgloves as the iconic summer wildflower.  Snowdrops signify the promise of winter's end.  Daffodils mark the beginning of spring and bluebells are the flowers of late spring.  Then the first buttercups mean that summer is on its way - but the foxgloves are the flowers of high summer.

On the road back to Maughold village we had to stop while this large truck was being manoeuvred through a narrow farm gate - which looked about half as wide as the truck.  It never ceases to amaze me how these drivers manage to reverse through such awkward places.  There couldn't have been more than half an inch clearance on either side. 

 

There wasn't much else to photograph along the road apart from these wild white roses.  They don't quite fit the description of field roses so they are probably dog roses (Rosa canina) although dog roses are more commonly pink.

I got left behind again - trying unsuccessfully to photograph a bumble bee on some pink roses and when I got back to the cars the others were staring out to sea.  Far from the shore we could see the dolphins passing Port Mooar on their journey south.  Dorothy said they were giving us an encore.

 

PS  I am thinking of starting a rumour that St. Maughold was escorted to the Isle of Man by some friendly dolphins!