Walks in the glen

One muddy walk after another!

Saturday 28th February, 2015.

Monday morning.

I got embarrassingly carried away with words and thoughts last week.  So this week’s resolution is “Less words and more pictures.”  A better resolution would be “More work in the garden.” . . .  but the weather is still cold and unsettled so I am not making myself any promises.  Our five day forecast mentions “Gales; coastal overtopping; ice / snow on hills; Rain, heavy at times; Risk of coastal mist.”  The best we can expect is “Sunny intervals and showers.”

We trudged up the hill through the mud again.  It was slippery in places because of the heavy rain yesterday.  When we got back I stopped to take a few photos of a victim of last week’s gales.  I am not very observant and only discovered that our old forsythia was leaning at a drunken angle when I reversed into the turning circle and hit something twiggy in a place where there shouldn’t have been something twiggy.

I wasn’t upset about losing the shrub.  It was past its best in 1991. But I did resent the time that I wasted recently when I attempted to cut off all the forsythia galls that infested the plant.  In the afternoon, I sawed through the forsythia branches about a foot above ground level.  I may get around to digging the stump out later.  

The neighbouring shrubs will benefit from more space and light.  There is the winter flowering Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn', the old hydrangea which collapses under the weight of its flowers every summer, a flowering currant and a young viburnum tinus.

I had a huge viburnum tinus at the side of the drive near the Chilean Lantern Tree but it was cut down years ago.  When I planted it I had no idea how big it would grow and it kept trying to encroach on the drive.  I cut it back for a few years but that spoiled the shape.  Besides, when it is a case of shrubs vs cars, husbands tend to favour cars  - so we cut it down and Tim dug out the roots.  I can’t remember whether this little plant came up from seed or whether a bit of root sprouted and I transplanted it.  Of course the new plant is much too close to the turning circle which gives me a feeling of deja vu. But it flowers very early in the season and the clusters of  little white flowers are pretty so I will keep it until it becomes too intrusive.  Here is a magnified image of v. tinus Mark 2’s first flower.

Tuesday, was a coming and going sort of day.  First a visit to our neighbours, then shopping in Ramsey and finally our daily trudge through the mud.  We managed some lucky shower dodging.  As we brought up the last supermarket bags from the garage, the heavens darkened and there was a downpour of heavy rain mixed with hail.  There were still a few clouds lurking around when we left again for our walk but it didn’t rain.

We reached the top of the hill at about four o’clock and were thrilled to see another hen harrier . . . a male this time. The males are pale grey, almost white, with black tips to their wings.  Their colouring is not unlike herring gulls at first glance, but their shape, particularly of the wings, is different.  Also the black feathers at the tips of the hen harrier wings. separate and spread out much more in flight than those on the gulls.

There is no photo - I just wanted to enjoy watching him soaring over Cartwright’s Glen.  Anyway I am hopeless at capturing flying birds “on film”.  The combination of pointing the zoomed camera in the right direction, focussing on the bird and holding the camera steady is quite beyond my range of skills.

On Wednesday we woke to a pretty sunrise.

The day’s forecast was for drizzle and fog in the afternoon so we walked in the morning.  We decided to try Brookdale plantation on the east side of the glen - hoping in vain for less mud.  The sky was a brilliant blue behind the bare branches of the silver birches up in the plantation when we walked up the path - but the clouds were already gathering when I took the second photo (on the right) during the return trip.

We walked up as far as the mossy pool before turning back downhill.  There was enough water in the pond to cover some of the moss and water weed and reflect the image of the conifer trunks.

On the way back we saw some interesting cloud effects with a long narrow strip of dark grey clouds and higher white clouds..

I stopped to take a zoom photo of my favourite Scots pine framed by the tops of the Brookdale conifers.  It is up on Skyhill Farm on the west side of the glen and we can also see it from our vantage point at the top south west corner of Skyhill plantation.

The clouds spread across the sky from the west and by the time we reached home the last little patch of blue sky on the eastern horizon was on the verge of disappearing.  The afternoon brought a shower of rain followed by damp cloudy conditions.  

On Thursday morning we tried the track up Skyhill again.  The mud was worse than ever.  It has been churned up into a porridgey consistency in places by a combination of hooves, boots, paws and mountain bike tyres.

I wasn’t expecting to see any hen harriers because both our previous sightings have been in the late afternoon.  But then a raptor appeared in the distance, hovering.  It was most likely a female hen harrier because it looked dark against the bright sky.  I clicked the shutter but it was so far away that you can’t even  tell from the photo that it is a bird..  Before I could zoom in on it, it dropped down into the glen and disappeared from sight.  We are lucky to get even fleeting sightings of these birds.  As well as being beautiful they are also rare.  According to a 2010 survey there were only 617 pairs in the UK (mainly in Scotland) and 29 pairs on the Isle of Man.  

In the afternoon I made a tentative start to my next garden project.  There is messy flower bed in the back garden - where the big white buddleia grows.  The bed also contains a couple of heathers, some variegated grass, the usual assortment of self-sown flowers and weeds and some sickly sedum spectabile which needs to move to a sunnier spot.  Below the bed and to one side there is an annoying grass path.  It is damp and shady and the grass is rather weedy and tries to spread into the bed because I don’t trim the edges often enough.   I plan to dig out the grass and replace it with paving slabs.  It is part of an ongoing attempt to make the garden easier to manage.  It is tiring work so I  will just try to do a short session every day.

Before starting . . .

State of play on Saturday afternoon . . . .

On Friday we walked in a different direction.  Usually we go west up Skyhill or east up Brookdale but this time we walked south along the river, through pheasant territory, and up the footpath to the pool at the old quarry.  I tried to take a photo of Cartwright’s glen where the hen harriers fly.  It is a small side glen below Skyhill farm.  I couldn’t get a good photo because the view up the glen was blocked by trees.  The entrance to the glen is behind the ivy covered ash tree on the left side of the photo.  The highest point of the hill behind is where we stop to admire the view and the hen harriers on our Skyhill walks.

After reading that juniper trees were reintroduced to Glen Auldyn last year I wanted to walk up to the place where I thought they might have been planted, on the hillside above the footpath to the pool.  

Junipers are one of only three native British conifers.  The others are yew and Scots pine.  I read that Junipers survived on the Island for ten thousand years.  They were one of the first trees to colonise the Island after the ice age.  The last wild one was dug out in Glen Auldyn seventy years ago and transplanted in order to “protect” it.  Unfortunately it died. Now fifty juniper bushes have been planted in the glen - only a few hundred yards from where the last native plant grew.

We passed one recent tree planting site but weren’t sure whether it included the junipers.  

We decided to return later in the year for a juniper hunt - when the new deciduous trees have their leaves and can also be identified.  So we carried on to the pool.  Every time we visit the pool it has shrunk.  It is gradually filling up with debris washed downstream in floods.  People used to swim in the pool but now the only deep water is at the edge below the stone face where the slate was excavated.

We walked back past the old quarry buildings.  The hillsides are still a rusty colour with last years dead bracken but they will soon turn green when the new fronds emerge.

This morning (Saturday) the sky was overcast and heavy rain was forecast for mid afternoon.  So we set off on a morning walk.  We decided on a variation on the Skyhill walk and took the track up to the gate into the paddocks.  While I was waiting for Tim I saw a hooded crow giving an unusual display of aerobatics.  It was flying along normally when it suddenly flipped almost onto its back, then righted itself, flew a little further and repeated the procedure before disappearing into the trees.  I tried to find some info about this behaviour on the internet but could find nothing which referred to crows.  Apparently ravens and choughs have been observed doing a similar trick but no one knows why they do it.  We then climbed up through the conifers until we reached the mountain bike paths near the top of the plantation.  The first part of the path was fine but after that we encountered the muddiest mud that we have walked through all week.

We paused at our usual view site.  It was too hazy for good photos but I took a couple of yesterday's walk - from a different perspective.

Skyhill and Ballure

Diary of an elderly, rather dotty woman.

Sunday 22 February, 2012.

This week I have been thinking too much - as usual.  One of my recurring thoughts is that homo sapiens is rather an odd creature.  The name which we have rather arrogantly chosen for ourselves denotes wisdom but we don’t seem to be very wise.  For instance, we study apparently inherited behaviour in other species - like migration in birds - but it doesn’t occur to most of us that we are also animals and that our behaviour may also be partly influenced by instincts originating in our distant past.

Why do we we perceive beauty the way that we do?  Perhaps we see beauty in water, trees and greenery because these things were vital for our survival in our hunter/gatherer past.

And what about our obsession with labelling people and “isms”.   Perhaps suspicion of strangers dates back to a time when we knew all the people in our group or village.  At that time we must have seen all our neighbours as unique individuals - and everyone else in a single category “stranger”.

The habit of labelling and judging people - according to their gender, age, language, skin colour, religion, political persuasion, sexual preferences, etc., etc. -  must be a fairly recent development.  I imagine it is partly due to the structure of language and partly an attempt to make sense of an increasingly crowded planet with confusing social structures where we no longer know all our neighbours, let alone all the people we pass in the street.  We tend to use labels mainly for people that we don’t know well.  Other people may see me and Tim as an elderly, white, heterosexual, english speaking, non-religious, vaguely liberal couple who live in a comfortable but not ostentatious house in a beautiful glen.   But as far as I am concerned I am just me, and Tim is just Tim.  We are each and every one of us the centre of our own universe - the point from which we perceive the world.

I started thinking about labels when I was reading Sea Fever, a book by Ann Cleeves.  One character has met a group of birders and mulls over the fact that . . . In her experience adult bird watchers were elderly, rather dotty women, who fed blue tits in their gardens and went for nature rambles.  Bird watchers can be divided into three general categories.  The ones that describe themselves as birders are serious students of birds.  Then there are twitchers who are mainly concerned with spotting rare birds so that they can increase the length of their ”lists”.  Sadly, I fall into the third “rather dotty elderly women” category.  It doesn’t have much status but we do get immense pleasure watching the birds in our gardens.

The dottiest thing I have done recently was to offer our birds some chopped up left-over macaroni cheese.  The robins and blackbirds, and even the titis, enjoy a bit of grated mild cheddar and I was curious to see how they would react to the left-overs.  I was slightly worried about about giving them the unfamiliar food but curiosity won the day.  It certainly caused a flurry of excitement in the local robin community.  It was interesting to watch the confident resident robins eating near the dish.  The more nervous robins, which came from the direction of the next door gardens, just grabbed a piece and flew away to the shelter of the shrubs.  Later I decided to throw away the remains but the plate had already been pecked clean.  I suspect the blackbirds.

We have kept up our daily walks but today will be quite a challenge.  The forecast was “Rain this morning into the early afternoon will be heavy at times and accompanied by strong to gale force southerly winds.”  and so far the forecast is right.   We are still hoping to walk later this afternoon when the worst of the weather should have passed over the Island.  

Last Sunday I walked up Skyhill on my own after we got back from Poyll Dooey.  The path was unusually busy.  I passed five people and three dogs!  One of the local dogs, Duncan, who never knows whether to be friendly or frightened or both at once, ran up the path behind me to check me out - then barked and rushed back to his owners.

At the top of the hill he repeated the procedure and then disappeared from sight.  I didn’t see him again until I got back to the road and heard someone shouting about a dog.  There was Duncan running around a garden amongst some extraordinarily composed free range chickens.  I told the owners of the chickens that he was not my dog but I knew where he lived, saw that there was no chance of catching him, and hurried down the road to let Duncan’s people know what was happening.  I assume all ended well because the next day we saw Duncan going for a walk down the glen road - on the lead.

We had over an inch of rain on Sunday night so the path up the hill is a lot muddier.  I didn’t take my camera on our Monday walk and missed the chance of photographing a robin which serenaded us from the top of the crab apple tree when we returned home.  But it didn’t matter because he was back when we set out on Tuesday - high up in the flowering cherry and still singing his song.

We walked up the cul-de-sac track that leads to the gate into the top paddock and I took another photo, from a higher vantage point than last week, of the gorse covered slope beyond the paddocks with Ramsey in the distance.

Then I zoomed in on Milntown, our local “sort-of stately” home, more visible than usual from the hill while the branches of the surrounding trees are bare.  Milntown has has had a varied history.  It was originally the home of the Christian family.  Then, from 1898, it was briefly used as a girls’ boarding school before becoming a hotel and then a private residence again.  The last owner willed the property to the Milntown Trust and the house and gardens are now open to the public.

Another day, another walk. Wednesday morning was foggy - almost drizzling but not quite.

The moss up in the plantation enjoys this type of weather.

It only grows at the side of the path under the deciduous trees near the streams because there isn’t enough light under the conifers.

Friday’s walk was later than usual which was a pity because the light was fading when we reached the top of the hill.  Tim enjoyed an impressive aerial display by two large birds while I battled to get a photo and missed most of the fun.  We think they must have been female hen harriers.  They appeared to be dark brown but were flying too high for us to get a good view of the distinctive white ring above the tail and make a positive identification.

We moved our “last desperate attempt to get photos for the blog” walk forward from today to Saturday because of the weather forecast.  This week we drove up the Mountain Road, past the Hairpin bend and turned into the parking area near the Ballure Reservoir.  While Tim was putting on his boots, I took a photo across the road to the Albert Tower.

The first part of our route was along a footpath from the parking area to the marshal’s hut at the Gooseneck.  It was less muddy than we feared, and the smell of sheep droppings wasn’t as strong as it was last time we walked here.

A little further up the path there was a lovely view looking back at Ramsey Bay and the clay cliffs between Ramsey and the Point of Ayre which are highest at Shellag Point, at the end of the Bride Hills.

Then we reached the most dangerous part of the walk - alongside the road just below the Gooseneck where someone had recently lost control of their vehicle and smashed down the rather flimsy fence.

We turned up the road that leads from the Gooseneck to the Hibernian.  Scattered showers had been forecast and the clouds to the north looked quite threatening.

The next section of the walk was along a forestry track leading down towards the reservoir.  And then we turned up the path that runs around the dam.  We were hoping to see some birds but only caught a distant glimpse of two ducks which disappeared into the vegetation at the edge of the water.

The last part of the walk was up from the dam to the car park - through a little woodland of broadleaf trees.  They look quite mature now but we can remember when they were first planted.

There are a few signs of approaching spring in the garden.  The crocuses under the elder tree are are on the verge of opening.  All they need now is another warm sunny day.

And the primroses are looking happier than they did in the frost.

And finally, a collage of this week's sunrise and sunset photos.

PS  I was browsing through some comments on the Guardian website after reading an article about motivational sayings when I came across a link to a “Demotivational” website which claimed “Motivational posters don't work. But our legendary demotivational posters don't work even BETTER!”  My favourite . . . Blogging: Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.  Many a true word is spoken in jest!

Mainly Poyll Dooey

The tipping point . . . or A vintage year for snowdrops?

Monday 16th February, 2015.

There was a dead heat for the title of the post this week.  Saturday was warm(ish) and sunny with barely a breeze - almost springlike - and I remarked to James in the supermarket “Perhaps we have reached the tipping point.”  He is a keen student of the Island’s weather and replied “But the question is are we tipping forward into spring or tipping back into winter”.  That remains to be seen.  The Island is good at surprises.  It is only two years since we had a devastating blizzard in late March.

We have some memorable years when the weather conditions are ideal for a particular flower.  The best thing about the end of summer during the year I was having driving lessons (prior to getting a local driver’s licence) was the wonderful heather on the hills.  Another vintage heather year was 2011 when I took this photo of my two Tims - up on the Millennium Way.   

This winter was ideal for snowdrops.  It must have been the early warmth followed by weather that was cold enough to make them open slowly and fewer gales than usual once they had opened.  Perhaps the warmer than usual winter last year was also a factor.  I took this close-up in the late evening on Saturday when they had opened fully . . .

. . . and this view of the numerous patches of snowdrops in the back garden . . .

. . . and this compilation, which shows their progress from Christmas Eve when the buds were just starting to show white until the beginning of February.

To get back to this week, there was very little wind until Friday but the days were dull and cloudy. On Thursday I made another “walk up the hill every day” resolution.  This is a frequent event because I never keep the resolutions for long.

Thursday (day 1)  Nothing of interest to photograph - not even any horses in the paddocks.  I took two boring photos of the glen from the top of the plantation.  A scene which I must have photographed a thousand times already.

Friday (day 2) Left the camera at home because rain was forecast.  I wondered whether there might be a photographic version of Murphy’s Law and that something exceptional would happen because I was cameraless.  Probably not.  The horses were back in the paddock but weren’t doing anything interesting. The rain held off until we were safely back home but the wind was roaring through the trees up in the plantation. It reminded me of the story about the old Manxmen of the past. It is said that they thought that the noise of the gusts of wind blasting down the glen through the tops of the trees was caused by the hooves of galloping ghost horses.

Saturday (day 3) Turned back about three quarters of the way up as we wanted to go into Ramsey after lunch.  I was getting desperate because I only had two unusable photos for this week’s post on the blog.  So I took photos of (a) new leaves on the wild garlic at the side of the road.  The glen is always green but the vibrant green of new leaves in spring is special.

And (b)  The gorse on far side of the paddocks starting to turn gold.

Then off to Ramsey where I took a photo of the work on the “archaeological excavations” in Bowring Road.  There has been a lot of progress since the beginning of February.  The road is still closed but access for pedestrians between the supermarket and the library has reopened.

On Sunday we decided to revisit the little nature reserve at Poyll Dooey on the banks of the Sulby River in search of photographs.  We used to walk there with the dogs but haven’t been back for a couple of years - apart from short visits to relocate unwanted pheasants.

Poyll Dooey - was formerly the Ramsey town tip.  The nature reserve was created in the late 1980s and the original trees which were planted are mature now.

The path to Poyll Dooey runs along above the river.  Looking back we had a good view of the upstream side of the Bowring road stone bridge.  

There are two main sections, the salt marsh area near the river which floods at high tide and the higher grassed area where the trees have been planted.  It is semi-wild. To encourage wild flowers, the only mowed areas are paths through the long grass.  

We turned down the path, towards the river and the salt marsh area, which passes this interesting stone.  Most of the the upright stones like this are surviving slate gate posts from a time when timber was in short supply on the Island.  But the diameter of the hole in this stone is unusually large.  I wonder whether it might have been used for a rope to tie up a small boat so that it wouldn’t float away at high tide.

Near the stone is the remains of the old cobbled surface of the track.

At the side of the track I noticed a group of scurvy grass plants (aka spoonwort) - probably common scurvy grass  Cochlearia officinalis.  They will have white flowers later in May.  They are obviously not a “grass” but are members of the cabbage family and got their name because they were used to treat scurvy.  I tried eating a leaf - years ago - but didn’t enjoy the taste and haven’t felt like repeating the experience.

We crossed the “marsh” which was reasonably dry in search of a small diving bird which I had seen in the distance.  It had disappeared by the time we reached the river bank so we walked upstream until we reached an area which brought back memories of the “dog era”.  The Schipperkes were impulsive little dogs and never looked before they leapt.  They loved to hurtle down the path,  jump down the river bank, and paddle in the water.  But they never remembered that the Sulby is a tidal river and sometimes instead of landing on the mud flat below the bank they ended up in deep water.  I cannot remember how often Tim and I had to kneel down on the wet muddy grass to fish small dogs out of the river.  We were lucky that we didn’t end up in the river too because the bank is undermined in places.

We walked up to the higher level.  The only wild flowers around were Winter heliotrope - a non-native garden escape which was introduced to the British Isles over 200 years ago.  There were a few small clumps of obviously planted snowdrops, some large violently purple crocuses which looked totally out of place and some daffodils.  One daff already had a flower.

We walked up to the western end of the park where the white bridge (a pedestrian bridge) crosses the river just above the old ford which is seldom used now.

On our way back to the car park at the supermarket we passed a couple of black headed gulls strolling under the trees and then a fat wood pigeon.

I climbed up a bank to take this photo across the fields towards Skyhill on the right and the cloud shrouded slopes of North Barrule on the left.

Further on we passed the pool.  This was established some years ago.  It isn’t a natural pool and a liner was laid to retain the water which trickles in from a small stream but you wouldn’t guess that it is an artificial pond.  

Another sign of the greening of spring.  Alexanders growing alongside the path.  They are the earliest of the umbellifers to flower and one already had a bud.

Below the path at the edge of the river were some mallard ducks.  I thought they were sleeping in the middday sun but their eyes were open.

They are very common ducks but the males are rather splendid when the sun shines on their spring plumage.  I wondered whether the male which appeared to be sleeping in the water had been caught by the incoming tide - but I checked and the tide was actually on the way out.

And finally, a rabbit.  While we were walking along the river bank looking for a good place to photograph the white bridge, I noticed a moorhen on the opposite bank.  It promptly disappeared but a little further up the bank this more obliging little rabbit waited until I had taken a zoom photo of it.