Miscellany

Signs of Spring and gates - past and present.

Saturday 14th March, 2015.

I have been thinking again.  It is a bad habit and one that is difficult to break.  I was wondering why people define themselves by their occupations or hobbies.  I don’t claim to be a Photographer.  I am just a person who takes photographs to preserve memories even if they are just two dimensional ones.  I am not a Writer either.  Just a person who enjoys talking to herself on a computer screen.  

I am definitely not an Artist.  I look at some paintings and think “I would love to be able to do that” . . .  but other paintings, mainly modern, seem totally pointless and make me wonder why someone bothered.  I fear that anything I created would definitely be in the second category.  Perhaps I lack sufficient self-esteem. But there is fine line between self-esteem and narcissism. A recent theory is that receiving too much praise from your parents when you are young can lead to narcissism.  Being a good parent seems to be more and more complicated with every passing year - and every new book about "parenting".

Anyway, I am perfectly content with just being a dabbler (in the original sense of the word) - although I am not happy with the way that language changes.  I wish people would think of new words instead of giving old words new meanings so that everyone ends up confused.  For instance, partner used to refer to a partnership in a business or legal firm, gay used to mean joyful, cool used to mean “lacking warmth” but has now become a synonym for hot and wicked in “youth speak”.  And there must be hundreds of words that have acquired alternative meanings that older people simply don’t know.  There is huge scope for embarrassment when trying to communicate with someone from a different generation.

But . . . back to the week that was.  Unlike last Sunday, this week we didn’t feel entitled to a day of rest.  We had too many weather-enforced days of rest last week.  I spent some time during the morning picking up minor debris that had blown off the trees during the gales.  Then we set off for a walk in Brookdale plantation after lunch.

I stopped on the way to our gate to take a photo of the “first daffodil”.  The poor thing had taken a knock out blow during the two days of gales and was lying supine on the moss . . . out for the count!  

We continued . . . onwards and upwards.  Passing this gnarled, moss-covered old hawthorn still clinging to the top of an old sod wall.  Perhaps the last survivor of an ancient hedge.  

A little further up I could zoom in on the beach at the base of the cliffs on the northern side of Ramsey Bay.  It was just an hour after high tide and there was only a narrow strip of sand.  In places the water still reached the base of the cliffs.  The Raad ny Foillan (Way of the Gull), our coastal footpath, follows the beach from Ramsey towards the Point of Ayre and this section is not passable when the tide is high.

This time we climbed all the way up to the top gate near the mountain road.  It was a slightly shorter walk than last time we walked up there, at the end of August, to photograph the bikes during the Manx Grand Prix.  This was because the gate had moved!  Or, to be more accurate, there was now a new gate about fifty yards down the hill from the site of the old one.

I was disappointed because we could no longer see the top of North Barrule without climbing over the gate - or navigating a muddy ditch and climbing up a bank.  I chose the latter option while Tim waited patiently down on the track.

I felt rather nostalgic about the old gate. It was an old friend.  I had photographed it in all seasons.  In August 2011 . . . during a walk with the two Tims, Leo and Alice.

. . . and in January 2013 when we were the first ones to walk up there after a snowfall and the only earlier tracks in the pristine snow had been left by a mountain hare.

On the way down I noticed that we were high enough to see over the Bride hills to the lighthouse at the Point of Ayre.  It was barely visible to the naked eye and I was surprised at the clarity of this maximum zoom photo.  The lighthouse must be at least seven miles from Brookdale.

At dusk I took a packet of rubbish down to the wheelie bin and was serenaded by a bird in the flowering cherry.  There wasn’t enough light to see it clearly but it looked about the right size for a thrush or blackbird, both of whom sing at night.  It seemed to be singing a duet with another bird in the neighbouring garden.  This is a wonderful time of year for birdsong.  We always hear the soothing cooing of the wood pigeons during our walks in the plantations.  

A combination of heavy rain and gales on Monday meant that we were housebound apart from an unavoidable short wet trip to the bank.   I amused myself . . . creating this slightly surreal image of out of focus daffodils photographed through rain streaked glass!

Tuesday was a complete contrast - almost summery and no wind.  For once we didn’t need to have a hand free, to hang onto our woolly hats and stop them blowing off, when we were carrying the shopping bags from the supermarket to the car.  

I saw the first two bumblebees of the year flying in the garden (or maybe  the same one twice). And the first "back garden" daffodil opened.

We walked up through Skyhill plantation in the afternoon and then continued along the sheep path next to the stone wall at the edge of the farm fields.  The sun wasn’t in the best position but I took a photo of the upper part of Cartwright’s glen in case we don’t walk along here again.  

The reason for the excursion was to see whether there was a place where we could climb into the field to visit the site of the Skyhill keeill.  We have never visited the keeill although I have located it on Google Earth and have also taken zoom photos of the little fenced area - from Brookdale plantation on the far side of the glen.  

It wouldn’t be a problem to climb over the wall - if it weren’t for the strands of barbed wire on either side.  I remembered seeing a makeshift stile over the wall many years ago and wondered whether it was still there.  We found no trace of the stile but it was a pleasant walk in the warm afternoon sunshine and there was a good view across the glen to Brookdale and North Barrule on the way back.  

After a wet Wednesday morning we drove out to Andreas in the afternoon to visit a dear friend, a fellow Schipperke lover, who adopted one of Alice’s puppies.  She has a rescue dog now, Max, a King Charles Spaniel.  He thought the visitors were decidedly dangerous and hid behind under a table.

He thawed slightly after a while and allowed me to pet him while I was sitting down.  But standing up - or especially approaching with a camera - was considered threatening behaviour so I couldn’t get any good photos.

On the way home we stopped outside the Andreas church so that I could photograph the rookery where the rooks were busy renovating the nests which had survived from last season.

I wondered why some of the birds were just sitting near their huge, messy nests.  But I found out that rooks have a tendency to pinch building material from unguarded nests so I expect they were security guards.

The nearest rookery to our house is about three-quarters of a mile down the glen road at Milntown.  Thank goodness, because they are raucous birds.  Not the type of dawn chorus that one wants. I remember walking past Milntown one spring and the rooks one one side of the road were competing with the lambs on the other side of the river to see which could make the most noise.

Thursday was another wet day - a very wet day.

I had to empty the rain gauge on Friday morning because it was close to overflowing.  Just over four inches of rain had fallen during the week.  Our stream was flowing strongly.  The  old leaves and holly twigs which had blown into the ditch had been washed into clumps and were threatening to block the flow of water.   So I spent the morning clearing out the ditch and carrying buckets of wet leaves up into the plantation.  I had nearly finished when I got a twinge in my back and decided to call it a day before my back got any worse.

We drove into Ramsey, our usual trip to the shops and library, and on the way back I saw another sign of spring . . . my first lambs of the year.

This morning my back was a bit stiff and achy.  I was feeling frustrated about having to put off any heavy garden work for a few days in case I aggravated the problem.  Then I saw a wren outside the kitchen window and ran for my camera - forgetting all about my back problems.  Our wrens are not very spectacular but they are rather charming.  They are also very shy and difficult to photograph.  The conditions weren’t great because the light was on in the kitchen and the window was not very clean.  I knew that I had to be fast so there wasn’t even time to focus carefully but at least I got two photos which weren’t completely blurred before the bird disappeared up into the Kowhai tree.

After that excitement, we walked up to the Brookdale top gate again.  The sky was overcast and grey and I didn’t intend to take any photos but I was rather impressed by this cone which looked almost metallic in the soft light.

We paused at the “view site” so that I could photograph the remains of the keeill - across the valley on Skyhill, almost three quarters of a mile away.  I am determined to visit it this year - even if it means tearing another pair of jeans while trying to climb over the barbed wire.  Most keeills on the Island are similar - usually just low grassy banks covering the remains of the walls.  But it is rather special to be able to stand in the exact place that people visited hundreds of years ago and look out across the same hills that they would have seen.