Glen Mooar

A butterfly morning

 

Wednesday 7th August, 2013.

 

It rained on Monday - so the plan for this week was to meet on Wednesday morning at Glen Wyllin. 

 

I woke earlier than usual and was rewarded by the sight of this spectacular sunrise.  I thought about the old saying about a red sky in the morning and did a bit of research.  There is some truth in the prediction - but only if the red clouds are in the west because most of our wet and windy weather is blown in by the prevailing winds from the south west.   These clouds were in the east so luckily for us Shakespeare's verse didn't apply:

"Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd
Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds."

The only warning necessary for shepherds or sailors or herdmen on Wednesday morning concerned using sunscreen.  It turned out to be a hot and sunny day with just a gentle breeze.

We started along the shore from Glen Wyllin and walked towards Glen Mooar.  It was nine in the morning and we were casting long shadows in the beach.  The tide seemed to be a long way out but it was about half way between low and high tides.

It was one of those magical mornings when the sea seems to be having difficulty deciding whether to be blue or silver and settles on a compromise.  The gull which is paddling in the distant shallows is a black-headed gull.  The name is not entirely appropriate because they only have dark heads in the breeding season and even then their heads are a dark brown rather than black.  This one is "in plumage transition" - half way between its dark summer head and its white winter plumage.

As we approached Glen Mooar, we saw a man with his dogs on the beach.  He had three dogs but I had to crop the photo because I didn't line the camera up properly and my original photo had two and a half dogs.  One was returning from the sea after retrieving something and the others were waiting for him.  They were having a wonderful time dashing in and out of the surf.  Most dogs have a good life on the Island.

We walked up the road from the shore and crossed into Glen Mooar.  I stopped to take a photo of some seed heads on the valerian growing by the road.  I used the macro focus and enlarged a small section of the photo on the computer to show the feathered parachutes on the seeds.  There is so much beauty around which is almost invisible to the naked eye and only becomes apparent with magnification.

As we turned up the steep path to the railway line, I realised where we were heading.  In May - after visiting the cormorant nesting site - we planned to walk past the Ballacarnane standing stone but were thwarted.  The path that should have taken us to the site no longer appeared to exist and we ended up on the wrong path.   Trevor had planned another attempt - this time from the other side. 

 

We had been passing numerous butterflies since the start of the walk - there were even a couple on the beach.  The vast majority were whites but there was a fair sprinkling of meadow browns as well.  On this short section of railway line, from Glen Mooar to the stones, there seemed to be an even greater density of butterflies - but still mainly whites. 

 

The stones are on a small hill in a field of sheep and we climbed over the gate and walked up the short slope.

 

Nothing is known of the origin of the stones but, according to local legend, people used to leave milk in the cup-hollows on the flat stone (on the right of the photo) for the fairies.

 

"On Ballacarnane Mooar, near the Spooyt-vane, Michael, just above the railway, is an unhewn stone pillar or Menhir set upright on a little crag facing the sea. At its foot are some cup-hollows cut in the outcropping rock, about 4 in. in diameter and 2 1/4 in. deep; and, a little below, on the face of the crag, is a larger, shallow, basin-like hollow." above quote from: MANKS ANTIQUITIES-KERMODE & HERDMAN. (1914)

We returned to the railway line and the butterflies.  On a patch of brambles we found a red admiral.  I usually try to photograph the upper side of the wings, which are a dramatic black and white combined with orangey red, but the under wings are beautiful too - especially in the sunshine.

 

We also saw a small tortoiseshell and a speckled wood and then I got my first sighting of the year of a peacock.

 

As we left the railway line in order to cross the road and climb up the hill, we were confronted by a veritable plague of white butterflies.  They were feeding mainly on the knapweed and brambles in the hedge on the sunny side of the railway line.  It was a beautiful sight but almost eerie.  Tim remarked that it was like a scene from a science fiction film.  I think part of the attraction of this area was a field of crucifers on the other side of the hedge.  An ideal place for the butterflies to lay their eggs.  They were probably living up to their name - "cabbage whites."

 

We walked up the hill in the hot sunshine.  Stopping occasionally to take too many photos of white butterflies.  I thought this tatty one on the fast fading Rosebay Willow herb typified the approaching end of summer.  I liked the colours combined with the blurred background of sky and sea.

Further up the hill I saw more evidence of the changing seasons . . . thistledown.  An annoying promise of more unwanted weeds but still beautiful.

We headed up the hill until we reached a farm and Trevor called us back to take the path past the old church that we discovered in May.  We stopped to photograph some old rusty farm equipment lying in the long grass (a harrow I think) and I saw a blue butterfly.  It was a common blue.  I saw some on the Ayres but they were too fast for me.  This one was more obliging.

Once we were out of the fields, the path deteriorated.  I wrote in May that I had been told that this " . . . was not a 'recommended route'."  It wasn't as bad as I expected in late spring  but I predicted that  "It could be too boggy in winter and too overgrown in summer."  Well, now I can confirm that it definitely is too overgrown in summer.  Trevor has a friend who works for the Department of Infrastructure.  He told Trevor that there used to be a staff of 42 allocated to strimming the footpaths and that since cuts were introduced there are only 2 left!  I wasn't sure whether this was true or whether it was an example of the Manx sense of humour.  After walking along some of the footpaths this summer I am tending to believe that it might be true.

 

The "path" wasn't too bad at first . . .

 

. . . but it got worse.  I walked ahead for a bit trying to beat down strands of bramble with my walking stick.  But after a while I asked the others to walk in front.  I took this photo of Trevor trying to force his way through head-high bracken.  The bracken wasn't the only problem.  It overhung the path from both sides but we could have forced our way through if it hadn't been "knitted" together with strands of bramble.

 

It was a relief to turn onto the more civilised path down to Glen Mooar.  It is stony and eroded  - not my favourite footpath but it seemed like sheer luxury after the bracken and brambles.

 

Then we turned off again onto the shady paths down through the glen.  We passed Cabbal Pherick.  I wondered whether there were so many trees in the area when the chapel was built.

 

A sign near the site reads:

Cabbal Pherick

"Patrick's Chapel"

Ruins of early Christian chapel (8th -

10th century) with boundary wall

of surrounding graveyard.  Traces of

priest's cell remain against south-west

boundary.  Simple cross-slab found -

now at Michael Parish Church.

We walked back to the shore.  I wondered whether we would be able to get back to Glen Wyllin because it was high tide, but there was enough beach to walk along safely until we got to the granite boulders that protect the entrance to the glen from erosion.  Then we had to do a bit of rock scrambling!