Glen Wyllin

High tides and more weather!

Monday 4^th November 2013 

The Sunday email from Dorothy read:

 “ Tomorrow looks like a good day weather-wise for the walk.        Trevor suggests a walk from Glen Wyllin.

         

I'm hoping I haven't picked up a disruptive cold.”

The updated forecast on Monday morning was more ominous  . . . suggesting “Sunny intervals. Localized showers, possibly giving some heavy rain or hail.”   The early morning view through our living room window didn’t look threatening though - just one pretty pink cloud floating over North Barrule.

Luckily the forecast turned out to be wrong on all counts – at least for the little patch of west coast where we were walking.  I suppose there were “sunny intervals”, although they only lasted for a few seconds, but  there was no heavy rain, and the “hail” was no more than a light sleety shower.

Unfortunately Dorothy’s cold was worse, so she didn’t join us.  We met Trevor near the shore just over two hours before high tide.   I was surprised that the waves were already breaking almost at the bottom of the cliffs north of the glen. 

There was one brave person and a dog on the wider beach to the south.  It would have been possible for us to reach Glen Mooar along the shore but there was a strong, cold on-shore wind and we decided to walk inland towards Cooildarry.

Trevor said that he had seen photos of a water wheel in the little village across the main road from the camping ground.  We couldn’t see any sign of it near the river but then we glimpsed the top above an overgrown hedge next to the road.

We were surprised at the location of the wheel because it seemed to be well above the level of the river and there were no signs of an old mill race.  I checked on the internet and found out that planning permission had been requested in 2006 to convert the old mill into two dwellings.  The Manx Heritage Foundation website has some photos of the exterior and interior of the mill dating from that time.  But there was no explanation of the route of the missing mill race.

We continued up the track towards Cooildarry and then climbed up the hill towards the junction with the road (from Barregarrow down towards the coast).  There is a picnic area near the top of the track and, while we paused briefly to admire the view, a little patch of sun peeped through the clouds above Sartfell.  By the time I took a second photo it had already disappeared.

The air was wonderfully clear.  It often is in autumn.  Using the zoom I felt that I could almost touch the Mull of Galloway although it was over twenty miles north of us.   The west of the Island was under cloud but at least the sun was shining on Scotland.

We continued past the expensive new mansion on the hill.  Nobody appears to be living there yet but the gardens have been immaculately landscaped.  The only signs of life were fumes from a central heating vent and a garden service van outside one of the locked gates.

The last house I would want to own is a vast and ostentatious place with three garages, plus a separate wing with an indoor pool - but I wouldn’t mind having their view.  To the north they can see the Scottish coast . . .

. . . and to the east the row of Michael hills – Sartfell, Freoaghane and Slieau Curn.

We walked down the hill and turned off the road when we reached the Spooyt Vane chapel/Mission Hall.

I found out a bit about this small building which is now privately owned.   It is said to have been built about 150 years ago with funds provided by Miss Gore Currie, a niece of Bishop Powys.  It was used as a Mission Room and Sunday School.  The building was enlarged in 1901 and the old roof was replaced after it fell in in 1999.   There is a pre-1999 photo on this site  http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/parishes/ml/michael.htm

The next stop was at the waterfall that gives this area its name – Spooyt Vane.

There was a very brief shower of minute hail stones as we climbed back up the steps from the waterfall.  I wondered whether it was going to continue a tradition, started last year, when we had to shelter from a hail shower during our first walk in November – but it was all over in a few minutes.   We walked down through Glen Mooar, looking for something to photograph.  We passed the site of Keeill Pheric but I took a photograph of the keeill when we last passed this way in August.  I am always amazed at the amount that archeologists can read into a weathered bank and random stones.  This is part of the boundary wall of the graveyard surrounding the keeill – half buried by wet leaves.  I think it might be the bit where “Traces of priest’s cell remain against south-west boundary” . . . but it all looks the same to me.

I walked on looking for interesting leaves.   This year’s warm, and very wet, autumn weather hasn’t encouraged bright colours.    This was the best of a bad lot!  The smaller yellow one is an elm leaf.  The larger leaf must be some type of maple.  It is too “pointy” to be a sycamore.

A little further on we found some interesting fungi.

We passed the huge pillars that used to support the railway viaduct over the glen.  We were impressed by the size of some of the stones used in the construction. 

The pillar on the other side of the river was completely covered with ivy.  A wonderful safe shelter for birds’ nests and also a source of valuable food for them.  Ivy is unusual because it flowers in autumn and the berries ripen in the spring.

Then we walked on down to the shore, passing a reasonably colourful young horse chestnut tree by the road.

We wanted to see whether it would be possible to walk along the beach back to Glen Wyllin but we retraced our steps back to the old railway line after we saw the state of the tide.

I walked up the rough steps from the bridge across the river ahead of the men and was so busy watching where I was putting my feet that I didn’t notice a low branch.  I knocked my head against the branch, lost my balance, and nearly slid down a steep bank into the river.  Luckily Tim was just behind me and grabbed my hand.  At the top of the steps I regained my composure sufficiently to take this zoom photo of the Ballacarnane stones on top of the small hill on the far side of the glen.

Then we found these rather nice mushrooms under the hedge at the side of the path.

After crossing the road we came across some rather contradictory signposts one either side of the railway path.   One showed a footpath sign and said No Horses and No motorcycles and the other showed a greenway road sign allowing horses and with a speed limit of 20 mph for motorbikes.  I was totally confused but Tim suggested that there might be two paths and he was right.  The entrance to the greenway road was obscured by a parked car.  Behind the car was a sign “Tramman Tree Road”.  Trevor said that he thought it led to the coast road and that we could get onto the railway path at the other end.  So we walked along it.  I didn’t notice any Tramman trees (Elder trees) and it was just a narrow path, not really a road.   But it was a better choice than the railway path as it was higher and well drained.  It is always interesting to find a “new” bit of footpath.

The last stretch along the railway path was boggy in places but it was much drier than the beach.  This last photo shows the waves breaking against the sea defences when we got back to the cars.

The Brooghs

A Windy Autumn Day in Maughold

Wednesday 30th October, 2013

This is one of our favourite circuits when it is likely to be too windy to walk up in the hills.  I was glad that Trevor hadn’t chosen one of our more challenging routes for Wednesday because I was feeling rather light-headed after a couple of disturbed nights.

As usual we started from Port Mooar and walked along the coast to Dhrynane and then through the fields to the lane past Maughold churchyard and up to towards Maughold Head.  Then we turned west along the Brooghs footpath.  The Brooghs is a long narrow strip of Manx National Heritage land along the top of the cliffs on the south side of Ramsey Bay, stretching from Maughold Head to Port e Vullen.  The name means brow or bank.

After joining the main Maughold road, we walked towards Ramsey for a short way and then turned up Jack’s Lane (named for John Kermeen, a nineteenth century carter, who lived there) which leads to the Dreemskerry Road (a dreeym is a ridge and the "skerry" part is debatable.  Either "Scarff's ridge" or "the ridge of the division".  The second version is favoured by Constance Radcliffe.)  Then, after nearly a mile of uphill walking in the direction of the coast, we turned down Dreemskerry Hill just before we reach the old quarry, and returned to Port Mooar.

I was asked why one of the recent walks was titled “Ohio”.  The short and boring answer is that part of the walk was through the Ohio Plantation.  When I tried to find out some more interesting information about how the plantation got this unusual name, I had no luck.  Trevor says that he has a friend who works for the forestry department and that he may know.  It was the fruitless “Ohio” search which inspired me to do a bit of name checking this week with slightly more success.   

I didn’t need to look up Port Mooar.  It just means “Large Port” which seems rather a grand name for a small bay – but I suppose it is the largest accessible little bay between Maughold Head and Laxey.

It was cloudy when we set out.  Rain and gales were predicted for later in the morning but the sun was still trying to shine through some lighter patches of cloud.

The tide was high and the sea was rougher than usual in the gusty wind. We didn’t see any birds at Port Mooar and very few flying around the coast.  Dorothy made a comment about it being “nice and splashy” or “nicely splashy”.  I find it hard to hear in windy conditions with a woolly cap over my ears.  I also find it difficult to time waves accurately and tend to miss the most spectacular splashes.  This was the best I could manage.

There were no seals in their favourite spot near Sheila’s bench and we continued along the path toward the lighthouse.

I tried to photograph a solitary pink thrift flower which must have forgotten to bloom in spring and then become confused about the seasons.  It was tossing around too much in the breeze - but further along the path, in a sheltered corner, I found some late flowering white yarrow (Achillea millefolium).

The next stop was Dhrynane.  I don’t know why the Ordnance Survey mappers chose the most complicated spelling.  Constance Radciffe gives no less than six variations in spelling (in her book Maughold and Ramsey Place-names) – Dunnane, Port Donan, Donnaan, Donnane, Dhyrnane and Druinnane.  She suggests that it might be derived from Dhowin “Deep Place” with a diminutive suffix.  This is a photo of the small deep place!

As I was climbing down a steep part of the path, I noticed a couple of spectators, who had found shelter from the rough sea in this “small deep place".  They were watching the progress of the other hikers who were walking ahead of me.  I waited to try to get a better photo but the seals suddenly did a rather spectacular synchronised dive, “nicely splashy”, which I missed of course, and disappeared under the water.  I waited for them to emerge and they finally surfaced near some rocks on the far side of the bay but I couldn’t get a better photo.

We walked through the fields and Tim took this photo.  Until we moved to the Island I wouldn’t have believed that it was possible for the countryside to be so green. 

In the middle of another field we saw an unusual sight . . . four swans.  When I stopped at a gate to take their photo, they took fright and flew off but I managed to get a photo of them in flight with North Barrule in the background.

We paused outside the churchyard wall and I took a photo of the foundations marking one of the ancient keeills amongst the grave stones.

When we got to the beginning of the Brooghs footpath there was a group of loaghtan sheep by the hedge, sheltering from the strong wind.  Tim’s photo was better than mine . . .  

  

. . . but I did get a reasonable shot of the disgruntled sheep moving off in a huff after being disturbed by pesky hikers.

Then the sun managed to break through the clouds and we got some nice views of  the copper-coloured bracken on the Brooghs and Ramsey Bay.  The sea in the bay wasn’t exactly like the proverbial mill pond but it was much calmer than the water further off the east coast.  I could see why Ramsey Bay was chosen as a  calm haven for the Royal yacht to lie at anchor when Queen Victoria was seasick en route from Scotland to Douglas.  That was the occasion when Albert took his memorable hike up the Llerghy Frissell to the spot where the tower was later built to commemorate the visit.

We passed one of the old quarries near the Ramsey end of the Brooghs.  I have been told that much of old Ramsey was built with slate from these quarries.

The rest of the walk was mainly along boring roads but when we were walking up Jack’s Lane) I heard the old electric tram approaching and I had my camera ready when it crossed the lane.

Manx Roads have a disconcerting habit of changing names without apparent reason.  For instance one Ramsey road starts as Albert Road and then becomes Waterloo Road before changing again to Ballure Road.  I knew that the road we were going to walk along down from the Dreemskerry  Road was a continuation of School House Road, which runs from the upper side of Dreemskerry Road to the main east coast road.  I was hoping to photograph a sign with the name of the road because it has a significance to me.  The original Manx name of School House Road was Bayr ny Geayee – the name I chose for the blog.  There were a few drops of rain as we approached the junction and I stored my camera safely in a plastic bag.  But I didn’t miss a photo opportunity because there was a complete lack of road signs.  After we got home, I found the lower section of the road  that we walked along was just called Dreemskerry Hill – so I can’t claim that part of today’s walk was along the Bayr ny Geayee.

The tide was going out when we reached Port Mooar.  There weren’t many sea birds around but a group of Mallard had emerged from their hiding places and were feeding in the shallows at the edge of the shore

St. John's

Weather on Slieau Whallian

Monday 21st October, 2013

Another walk when the most memorable aspect was the weather.

I sometimes suspect that my friends, living in other - hotter - countries think that our British weather is always cold, wet and gloomy.  We do have days like that but we also have wonderful, warm, sunny days which I wish I could show  them to prove that they are wrong to feel sorry for us.  But this last week has been a series of “days like that”.  The past week has produced a mixture of warnings about gales and localised flooding, with at least some rain forecast every day, and the island has reached saturation point.
  
We agreed to a Monday walk after getting this message from Dorothy on Sunday morning: “Monday starts off OK from this morning's weather forecast.     Tuesday is rain and I can't walk on Wednesday.     We think a walk from the car park at the Farmers Arms at St. Johns, on Monday and take the climb up the track past where the tractor fell and then back down through the woods.      Not too far if the rain comes in.     Perhaps we could extend it depending on how the morning looks.”

Monday morning's forecast hadn’t changed much:
Weather: Dry at first. Rain at times late morning / early afternoon onwards, some heavy later.
Wind: S 10-15 backing E-SE this morning and increasing 15-20, then veering S-SE 20-25 this evening.
Visibility: Good, becoming moderate or poor.
Temperature: Min. Air 11°C and Max. Air 15°C
Rainfall (mm): 10-15 but 20-30 over hills.
Comments: Risk flooding especially tonight. Strong winds.

There were a few drops of light rain before we even left the glen – soon after eight.  And a few more as we drove down to St. John’s but it wasn’t quite raining when we set out from the car park.

Warm air rising from the plantation on Slieau Whallian appeared to be creating its own little patch of mist.

We walked up the Gleneedle road and then turned onto the footpath which has been known as “the track past where the tractor fell” ever since we came across a tractor which had fallen down a bank and blocked the path during a walk in February.  No unexpected tractors this morning – just a lot of water running down the schizophrenic path which didn’t know whether it was a path or a stream.

There were a few drops of rain at times but nothing serious.  Mist was hovering over higher ground.

Then we caught up with about half a dozen cows ambling around on the path ahead of us.  They seemed quite placid and eventually most of them turned off into a field above the path.  

One cow decided to stay on the path.  I suggested that she joined her friends but she just stepped through a gap in the fence on the opposite side of the path and gave me a dirty look.  I tried to start a conversation with her and she obliged with a few disgruntled moos.  I think it was a sort of linear conversation . . . I was talking to her and she was talking to her mates in the other field . . . and they were ignoring her. 

The incident reminded me of a paragraph in a novel that I am reading (The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan).  It is written in the first person, in the character of a Scottish teenager, with a drug habit and criminal past.  Her thoughts amused me.

“I’m suspicious of silence, and reality, and social 

workers.  I’m suspicious of teachers, and police, and

psychologists, and clowns, and apples, and red meat and cows.

Cows are too big and they’re telepathic  You walk past a

cow field and they all just turn as one being, and stare.  And

they do chase people.  I’ve fucking seen them.  Bovine grass-

munching hippies – my arse!”

When we reached the service reservoir, where a couple of water department vans were parked and some “ushtey” men were mowing the grass, it was decision time.  We had thought of walking a little further along the road because Dorothy wanted to take photos of some old farm buildings in the mist. But the mist wasn’t obliging . . . it was still  too high.  So we turned up the path towards the top of Slieau Whallian, where we found more than enough mist.  Unfortunately no ruined buildings - just a pile of stones to mark the summit.  

The “view” from the top reminded me of a joke postcard which used to be stocked by the newsagents in Ramsey.  The card was plain grey and the title was “Foggy day on the Isle of Man”.  There was also a plain black one – “The Isle of Man at night”.

I was worried about my camera.  The lens was tending to mist up with condensation and I didn’t want to get it too damp.  A couple of years ago, after a cold damp walk on North Barrule, our small camera developed a couple of blemishes which must have been due to condensation on the inside of the lens. The blemishes (a couple of light spots) aren’t too bad as they are only visible against a plain background but they are annoying.  

I usually carry the bigger camera in a bag strapped around my waist.  I have heard them referred to as “bum bags” in English speaking countries but discovered that they are known as “fanny packs” in the United States and Canada (which don’t quite qualify as being English-speaking!)  I sometimes feel like a mother kangaroo with my precious baby in my pouch.  Up on the cold, wet and windy hill, I decided that I needed to keep the camera warm as well as dry so I zipped up my waterproof anorak over the camera.  This changed my kangaroo image into one of a pregnant geriatric.  Not a good fashion statement!

After we climbed over the stile on the way down the hill, the path wasn’t easy to follow and we couldn’t see the distant trees that we were aiming for. Dorothy decided that she would prefer not walk in front.  I suggested that we let Trevor lead the way so that we could blame him if we got lost.  If I have learned anything after years of watching politicians on TV, it is that what happens doesn’t matter – the vital thing is being able to blame someone else for any disasters that occur!

We had to pick our way carefully down the slope because the ground was wet and slippery in places.  The rain was still light but it was falling steadily and we were glad to reach the shelter of the trees.

Walking down the slope between these tall conifers reminded Tim and me of a previous hike up Slieau Whallian in near gale-force winds when the trees were swaying and groaning in an alarming way.

We passed this recent victim, which probably came down in the gales last week.

Further down the path became more civilised and Tim took this photo as I paused to look at a small bracket fungus on a conifer trunk.  We had passed some other small mushrooms earlier in the walk.  They were just small and beige and mushroom shaped . . . not worth risking my camera.

It was raining seriously by this time so we walked back to the cars as fast as possible.  The morning definitely didn’t look good enough to tempt us to extend the walk.  It wasn’t a long walk but it was good exercise because the summit of Slieau Whallian is 333m (1093 feet) above sea level – almost a thousand feet above St. John’s.

Ohio

Mainly Mushrooms

Monday 14th October, 2013.

In her email on Sunday, Dorothy suggested a Monday walk “ . . . from the Sulby Claddagh and up Narradale and back through the woods.”  

This is one of our “useful” walks.  Not too long if the weather is iffy or we are tired, and conveniently situated half way between our glen and Dorothy’s home.  Also there are three routes up to the Lezayre tops that start near the Claddagh, on the banks of the Sulby River, so it is possible to vary the walk slightly.  The only snag is that it is difficult to find anything new to photograph or describe.

The forecast was for “Bright spells but also a small risk of an isolated shower” . . . with winds up to 25 mph.  There were clouds over Cronk Sumark as we set out, but no showers arrived during the morning.  Not many bright spells either.

The Narradale road is part of an old route from Sulby to Laxey.  Thinking of old routes reminds me that I may have confused Slieau Ree with Slieau Ruy in last week’s post about the Red Road when I wrote “I once read that a hill called Slieau Ree (Red Mountain) has that name because of the heather”.  I can’t remember where I read about Slieau Ree being named on account of the colour of the flowering heather.  It is never a good plan to trust one’s memory (or anything that you read on the internet!).   According to our Manx dictionaries Ree means King and Ruy means Red . . .  but the waters are muddied slightly by the Illustrated Encyclopaedia which gives the English translation of Slieau Ree as Heather Mountain!  


Dorothy and Trevor arrived back from Ireland towards the end of last week.   They had a fantastic time and Dorothy claimed to be shattered after too many late nights.  But that was hard to believe as she shot up the Narradale Road like the proverbial scalded cat!  I was relieved when she stopped briefly to chat with a friend and I had a chance to catch up.

A little further up the hill I stopped for another brief “photo rest” and took this photo of a little patch of sunlight illuminating half of Mount Karrin.

The wind wasn’t as strong as I had expected but I could hear it singing through the stay wires supporting this aerial.  The Island is a curious mixture of ancient sites and modern technology.

We eventually reached the gate onto the moors - nearly 700 feet higher than the Ginger Hall where we started the climb up the hill.  I like to measure elevation in feet because it sounds so much more impressive than metres.  The Narradale road  is "good exercise", in other words long and tiring, but at least we didn’t have to scramble over compacted snow like we did on the first of April.

We followed the path at the edge of the moors and climbed up a bank to avoid the puddle where we encountered a long jumping/swallow diving sheep last autumn.  The sheep panicked as it raced past us and ended up doing a memorable bellyflop into the middle of the puddle.  Then our route turned downhill and followed a farm road between fields to Ohio Plantation.

Last autumn we walked through Ohio hoping to find photogenic fungi and found very little even though I expected fungi to flourish in the damp conditions we had last summer and autumn.  On Monday we were luckier.  The fungi must have preferred the warmer weather this year – or perhaps our timing was better.  We were hardly inside the gate to the plantation when Dorothy stopped to photograph a rather ugly mushroom.  Then, just few yards down a side track, on a bank above a small ditch we came across a whole group of bright red Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria).  The  common name comes from the old practice of soaking bits of the toxic toadstools in milk to stupefy flies.  Tim took this photo . . .

. . . and then I climbed up the bank to get a closer shot.

There were a lot of nondescript brownish mushrooms under the conifers.  I think they are the same as those we have been seeing during our dog walks on Skyhill.  I tried to identify them from the photos in my mushroom book but had no success.  Then I tried the internet with an equal lack of success.  Fungi are particularly difficult to identify.   A large proportion of the photos on one website were marked as “waiting identification” so it appears as though the experts have difficulty too.

As we walked down through the conifers, we passed more Fly Agaric on the bank above the main track.  These had been nibbled.  Probably by slugs.  I have read that reindeer have a great liking for these mushrooms which have an intoxicating and hallucinogenic effect.  I wonder whether they have any effect on slugs . . . and whether it would be possible to notice if a slug was drunk or having a drug induced “trip”.  

Further down the track I came across another ugly mushroom, rather like the one up by the gate.  I think it is probably a variety of Boletus or Suillus as there are no gills on the undersurface of the cap. 

Near the bottom of the plantation were some clusters of mushrooms, which looked uncomfortably similar to honey fungus, near the stump of a dead conifer.   Honey fungus is a problem in the glens, feeding on roots and sometimes killing vulnerable trees and shrubs.

The last fungi that we photographed were these tiny ones - almost orange in colour and rather pretty against a background of green moss.  This is another of Tim’s photos.  

At the side of the path below the plantation, I noticed these nearly-ripe holly berries.  Living in the sub-tropics before coming to the Island, I naively thought that holly trees would be loaded with berries at Christmas.  Sadly, for the Christmas decoration industry especially, they ripen in autumn and by Christmas the blackbirds have eaten most of the berries.

Further down the hill we passed Ballamanaugh, set in immaculate gardens below Cronk Sumark.

Between the road and the boundary walls of the Ballamanaugh garden is a the stream where I saw the toxic giant hogweed plant in June.  I checked to see whether the gardeners from Ballamanaugh had bothered to remove the plant.  They hadn’t.  The dead flower stem (at least eight feet long) had fallen across the stream after shedding its seeds.  So there may be a whole thicket of giant hogweed plants by the stream next year.


We were nearing the end of the walk when I finally came across one tree near the ford which dared to be different and don autumn colours before the others.