Misc.

Odds and Ends

Thursday 26^th and Saturday 28^th December, 2013

No real hike this week – apart from another short Maughold walk on Boxing Day that was more or less a reprise of last week’s walk.  Less rather than more actually - because we returned from the Brooghs path along the main road to Maughold Village (where the car was parked) instead of taking the longer route via Dreemskerry.

We had hoped for a walk with Dorothy and Trevor on the Monday or Tuesday before Christmas but the forecast for Monday was anything but inviting . . . Comments: Risk of: heavy rain / flooding, coastal overtopping, some disruption or damage.  Gales, possibly reaching severe gale force for a time!  And when they forecast winds of up to 50 mph with gusts of over 70 for Tuesday morning we chickened out.

On Thursday we started off down the road from Maughold church towards Port Mooar and heard a cacophony of baaing and bleating coming from the other side of the hedge.  The first lambs had already arrived and were keeping in touch - very vocally - with their mothers.

We followed the usual path from Port Mooar to Drynane.  It was very muddy in places after the heavy rain at the beginning of the week.  And then we walked up through the fields to the road which leads to the lighthouse.

I got carried away by the effect of the clouds and the light over the sea . . .

. . . and over the hills.

Ramsey Bay was doing its millpond impression again.  The tide was out so Port e Vullen had a visible beach this week – although it looked as though some of the interesting rocks on the beach have been covered by drifting sand since we were last down there.

Friday was not a day to be out and about.  The gales returned with a vengeance.  Ferries were cancelled, flights were cancelled (including our son’s flight back to London City airport) or diverted to other airports and trees came down and blocked roads all over the Island. 

A huge elm fell across our road at lunchtime while electricity authority men were busy working on the overhead power lines, and later in the afternoon an even bigger, dead ash tree fell into a friend’s garden just as the infrastructure men finished cutting up the elm.  Luckily none of the workmen were injured and there was no damage apart from a short section of garden wall.

Saturday morning was relatively calm in the glen and we drove out to the Point of Ayre with our son and Danny.  We had forgotten how strong the wind can be out there – and the wind chill had to be felt to be believed.  I amused myself photographing the lighthouses and the foghorn.  The main lighthouse was first lit in 1818 and is now automated.

This part of the Island gradually changes shape with gravel and sand being deposited or shifted by the tides.  So seventy years later a second small lighthouse called the Winkie was built on the gravel bank 750 feet north east of the main lighthouse.  The Winkie had to be repositioned a further 250 feet in the same direction in 1950.  Its light was switched off in 2010.

Another relic of the past is the old foghorn.  It was decommissioned in 2005 because modern ships now use GPS.  It will always remind me of an incident involving Alice, the mother of our Schipperke brothers.  She was a very feisty little lady but she hated loud noises.  Once the foghorn started up while we were walking on the Ayres.  Betsy Lee, our older Schipperke and Alice panicked and tore off in the direction of the cars.  Betsy stopped when we called her but Alice kept running.  We searched for her for six hours until we finally came across her by chance on a road half the way to Andreas.

Just before deciding that it was too cold to enjoy a walk on the Ayres I noticed the battered remains of a starfish on the shingle.  When we got home I had a good look at my photo and wondered whether it had too many arms to qualify as a starfish.  Google was my next resort.  I found a multi-armed starfish called a sunflower starfish – but that was only found in the Pacific.  Then I discovered a similar local version . . . the common sunstar (Crossaster papposus) which has between eight and fourteen arms.

We returned home from the Point of Ayre to be greeted by this sight outside the kitchen window!

This particular male pheasant has been haunting our garden for a few weeks.  It spent most of the time eating crabapples in our tree in the front garden or scratching up the front lawn.  I tried to chase it away from the bird feeder but it just flew down onto the grass and walked up and down sneering at me.  This wasn’t a good move because it annoyed me enough to set my home-made pheasant trap and bait it with wild bird seed.  The pheasant couldn’t resist the food and I managed to trap him and we drove him down to the banks of the Sulby River and released him.  We have relocated at least ten pheasants so far this winter.  They fly down the glen to escape from the pheasant shoot up at Glen Auldyn Estate and then roost in the plantation and raid the local gardens in search of food.  One or two aren’t too bad but we have had up to seven regular vistors some days and it ceased to be amusing a long time ago.  They can be very destructive, eating or scratching out plants and bulbs . . .  even though they are rather beautiful .  They are not truly native birds, just immigrants gone feral.