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.