Tynwald Mills

A missed walk

Monday 2nd December, 2013

I have three main reasons for missing walks and only one is an enjoyable reason . . .  a visit from non-hiking house guests.  This week I missed the hike because I did something silly to my back last weekend.  Not the best of reasons to be housebound but marginally better than nursing a sick dog which is the third main reason.  Danny is still with us and is playing the victim card for all it's worth . . . wangling daily walks and being allowed to sleep next to me on the bed.

I am not sure how this post will display on the blog.  It will have to travel along a tortuous route - rather like one of our hikes.  Unfortunately the position that my long-suffering back dislikes most is sitting at the desktop PC.  So I am trying to type emails and write this report on my elderly XP laptop which is balanced precariously on my knees.  The original laptop browser is virtually obsolete and there isn't enough free space to download a non-Windows browser so I can't transfer the report directly from the laptop to the blog.  Instead, I am composing this as a message in Outlook Express which I will email to myself.  Then I will pick up the message on the desktop, transfer it to Word and then on to the blog.  I know this is ridiculous but I don't know how to do clever things like setting up a network so that the two old computers can "talk to each other".

Tim obviously took all the photos of this walk which started from Tynwald Mills, a shopping centre near St John's, which was developed during the later part of the twentieth century, in (and around) an old woollen mill which originally housed a thriving weaving industry. 

They walked up to the Staarvey Road and continued along the road as far as the junction with the road leading towards Little London.  I have read that Little London was originally called Gliontan (meaning little glen).  Slurred speech resulted in it losing the G at the beginning of the word and it was eventually corrupted from -liontan to London.  Either the locals remembered that the original name meant little glen, or they thought it was rather absurd to call the tiny hamlet consisting of a handful of farms London, so Little was added at the beginning of the name and it has been Little London ever since.

On the way they took one detour through a field to photograph an old building which appears to have been a barn attached to the remains of a cottage.  The corrugated iron roof must have been rusting away for years but it was more or less intact until the blizzard this spring.  The weight of the snow was too much for the old roof timbers to bear . . . and the roof collapsed.

Near the crossroads they saw a little three-wheeled Reliant Robin sitting in a field - apparently waiting for better days.  Unfortunately it was parked at the wrong angle for a photo.  Viewed from behind it just looked like any little old hatchback.

Then they continued along the road, crossing the main west coast road at Cronk y Voddey and climbing up the hill before turning off to the right, down into the Rhenass valley above Glen Helen.  It was a good morning for old cars.  Near the river, this old Hillman Imp had been left to "blend with nature".  It has been there for years but used to be partly covered with the blue plastic tarp which is lying nearby.

Near the Rhenass River is this old stone mill or barn, built in traditional fashion, with outdoor stone steps up to the top storey.  I wonder whether there are the remains of a water wheel behind the building.

Trevor was the only one who was adventurous enough to cross the river using the old stepping stones.  The others took a sneaky detour over the bridge before rejoining the official footpath.

After crossing the bridge, Tim took this photo of the stepping stones and the reflection of the bridge on the still water above the weir.

The next photo-stop was at Ballasayle to photograph the Highland cattle.  Only one, which Tim nicknamed "Big Mama", was interested in the photographers.

 

Big Mama seemed to feel responsible for protecting the other younger animals in the field.

The rest of the walk was hard work . . . as I know from past experience!  First there was the overgrown and boggy path up from the old farm up to the forestry road through the plantation.

Then a long climb up the steep, stony track up the back of Beary Mountain.

And finally the long, steep descent along the even stonier footpath across the south side of Beary which eventually leads back down to Tynwald Mills.

Cornaa

Last walk of autumn

Wednesday 28th November, 2013

There are only a few leaves left on the trees now but it is too warm to be real winter weather.  The maximums are still hovering around the double figure mark.

This walk was scheduled for Wednesday because we had a tree surgeon working on our beeches down by the road on Monday and Tuesday.  The walk had to be a short one because Tim had an appointment early in the afternoon so Dorothy suggested “Shall we meet at Ballaglass for a walk to Cornaa?”  The only drawback to this walk is that we have done it so often that the photos must be getting rather repetitious.

Danny was sleeping when we left and I was a bit worried that he might be anxious when he woke and found that he was alone in the house.

 We got to Ballaglass early and I took a few photos of the bridge over the stream between the parking area and Ballaglass Glen.  The bridge appeared to be stronger than necessary but I realised that it is the only road access to the Glen and they must need to take heavy vehicles across to work on fallen trees.

If this hike had a theme it would be hard to choose between fallen leaves, water and rocks.  We started off through the trees towards the main stream which runs down the middle of the glen.  On the way we passed a pile of old logs with an interesting crop of bracket fungus which was being inspected by a hungry slug.

Nearby there was a huge fallen tree.  Tim and I tried to identify it.  Judging by the bark we could eliminate everything except elm and oak.  Most of the saplings in the area were elm, so I would guess that it was the parent tree and is also an elm.

By the time we had finished our investigation, the others had disappeared.  We weren’t sure which path they had taken but we managed to find them down by the river.  I took this photo of the little white water rapids.

Further upstream we crossed a footbridge.  There was a small weir near the bridge and the water above the weir was still enough to reflect slightly distorted images of the bare branches overhead.

We walked along the footpath above the glen until we reached the steep road which climbs over a high ridge, between the Cornaa River valley and the next valley (with an unnamed tributary) to the south of the Ards.  We didn’t stop at Cashtyl yn Ard because we photographed the burial site about two months ago.  We just continued down the road to the footbridge by the ford and then turned down the road to the shore.  The tide was out but not quite as far out as it was last time we stopped here.  I took a photo of the valley with the mist on the hills and mallard swimming in the tranquil river.

Then I took this photo of Tim.

He had walked down to the edge of the sea to see whether he could spy any caves.  Nothing was visible from the shore apart from sea, rocks and a vast expanse of shingle.  But he took a photo of the south side of the little bay from a different perspective.

I wasted a bit of time photographing pebbles.  I must go to the Visitor Centre at the Ayres to see whether they still have a display of pebbles.  They used to have an interesting exhibit showing some of the different pebbles and giving the names of the rock that they came from and also the areas where the rocks are found.  For example there are some pebbles on the north west coast which are formed from a type of riebeckite which is found on Ailsa Craig.  Many of our pebbles come from the north and were pushed south by the encroaching ice during the last ice age.

This is not the best time of year for photographing flowers but there seems to be an exception to every rule.  For some unknown reason, ivy flowers in late autumn and the berries ripen in spring.  I was confused by ivy when we came to the island.  I recognised the ivy-shaped leaves of the climbing stems with their little suckers for clinging to trees and walls but I didn’t realise that the mature, woody, flowering stems which have a different shaped leaf were part of the same plant.

We returned along the familiar path through the Barony where there were still a few autumn leaves on the young trees.

I stopped to take a photo of this rusty pole – which I wish I had photographed twenty years ago.  There used to be a sign on the post which read “Isle of Man Highways”.  I don’t know whether it fell off – or whether it was “liberated” as a souvenir – because it disappeared after a year or two.  It would have been fun to send the photo to friends as an illustration of the high standard of “highways” on the Island.

The last bit of our short walk was through the lower section of Ballaglass Glen.  Tim took this photo of the river.

And then I took this photo of the photographers taking a few last pictures just before we got back to the cars.

I needn’t have worried about Danny.  He was still fast asleep when we got home.  I don’t think he even knew that we had been out.  But he soon woke up and demanded his walk.

Baldwin

Around Carraghan in the mist

Monday 18th November 2013

We met at St Luke’s church, on the ridge between the east and west Baldwin valleys.  It is a fairly long drive from our glen – up the Mountain Road, along the Brandywell Road and then down the steep hill, past Injebreck House and the dam, and finally up the hill to the church.  There was dense hill fog or low cloud on the Mountain Road near Snaefell but it lifted slightly before we reached the Brandywell junction although the cloud cover still looked almost low enough to reach up and touch.

We decided to reverse the direction in which Trevor had planned to walk so that we wouldn’t have to climb the hill to the church at the end of the hike.  So we started off down the hill towards the dam – retracing the route which we had driven along earlier.  There was a brief patch of sunlight on the lower slopes of Colden.

During the drive down I had noticed that there was a lot of water running down the overflow ramp from the dam.  This wasn’t surprising because we had heavy rain overnight.  I took a quick detour to photograph the River Glass below the dam, flowing under the old stone bridge we had just crossed.

The next quick detour was up some steps to the top of the dam wall.  It was a peaceful scene with just a solitary fisherman on the bank near the yachts – and a single cormorant swimming in the distance.

Further along the road there was a lovely view across the northern part of the dam towards Carraghan.

And a little further on there was a gap in the wall leading to the remains of an old track down towards the dam.  Another short burst of sunlight illuminated the scene.

The next stop was at a pretty little waterfall near the road.  We have stopped off here in the past on hot summer days to let the dogs paddle and cool off in the water.

We continued up the road past Injebreck House and then turned up an old track.  It isn’t a public right or way and it may not be strictly legal to walk up this route any more.  It is included in an old book “Manx Hill Walks” – with the note “This track is a private way, which the landowner kindly permits walkers to use on an occasional basis.”   There may well have been a change of landowner since the book was written but we hoped for the best and headed up the track.

We usually associate mushrooms and toadstools with wooded areas but we walked past numerous patches of fungi on the hillside – probably varieties of waxcap as they are found mainly in grassland and upland pastures.  These were the most spectacular.  The little round caps were bright red as they emerged through the grass and then became paler as they opened up and matured.

Looking back at the view down to the dam in the valley under increasingly ominous clouds.

I was puzzled by the track that we were following.  It seemed to be too wide to be an old packhorse route or a conventional old farm track and care had been taken to construct stone drains under the surface in a few places.  The private gardens of Injebreck House used to be one of the numerous pleasure gardens which opened during the late nineteenth century for the entertainment of Victorian tourists.  We discussed the possibility that our track might have been the original road from the Brandywell Road down into the West Baldwin Valley. The present road (which may have replaced it) turns down near Brandywell Cottage on the other side of Injebreck Hill. 

I left the road to take a photo of the remains of a wall over a drain, built into a small ravine, to take water under the road.  We were approaching the edge of the hill fog/low cloud and were quite close to the Brandywell Road.

The photography came to a standstill for a while as we walked up the Brandywell Road in the patchy fog.  Every now and then there would be a brief patch of distant views to the north but they only lasted for seconds.  I managed to capture a hazy image of Sulby Dam before it disappeared again in the mist.

We passed a signpost indicating a greenway road but decided that it probably wasn’t the correct route because there was no Millennium Way sign.  Then we walked on and on and on along the Brandywell Road.  It was hard to get our bearings in the patchy fog and I was getting anxious, thinking that we had missed the turning and might arrive at the junction with the Mountain Road any minute.  But Trevor was confident about the route and he was right.  We turned right when we finally reached the Millennium Way marker and after a while we reached another sign post.  It marked the junction of the Millennium Way and the greenway road which we had passed earlier.  We could have cut the corner by walking along the greenway road but it had a stony surface and it was probably more comfortable walking along the tarred road.

The surface of the track now became uncomfortably rocky – but at least it was downhill all the way back to St Luke’s.  Carraghan was looming above us on the right but there was no sign of  the alleged “presiding genius” of the mountain,  the legendary little red-cloaked Ben Veg Carraghan wandering the hills with her goose.

Once we were below the clouds we could see down into the green East Baldwin valley on the left.

The track deteriorated further down the hill . . . into a mess of mud, deep ruts, stones and running water.  But had improved again by the time Tim took this photo.

We stopped to take photos at Keeill Abban, the site of an early Tynwald (parliament meeting). 

There was an excursion to this site by 45 members of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society on July 24^th 1900.  The members discussed the actual site of the Tynwald as it was alleged by Mr Kelly that the Ordnance Survey Map had marked it in the wrong place.  He said that the real site was well known to all the local inhabitants because the Parish Club used to march around it once a year although this custom had since been abandoned.  It was suggested that the Tynwald was held “on a natural eminence in a commanding situation” which had unfortunately been quarried in order to build St Luke’s Church.  The Society also noted that “It had been a wish of the late Deemster Gill that a stone should be set up to mark the site of this interesting national monument, and, at the meeting held later on, it was resolved that this Society should use its best efforts to have this carried out.”

This is what the site looks like now.

Attached to a large stone set into the ring of stones, which marks the site, is a metal plaque with the inscription

Site of Tynwald

Holden at Killabane

1428.

The plaque must have been erected following “the best efforts” of the IoMNH&AS after their excursion – probably early in the twentieth century and I imagine the stone circle was constructed at the same time.  I hope they built it in the right place.

St Luke’s church is just one field further down the Millennium Way.  It is the last of a series of churches said to be built on the site of an ancient keeill.  Rather confusingly that keeill has the same name as the Tynwald site – Keeill Abban. 

We took some photos of the church from the field just below the stone circle.

The Bishop at the time must have been quite crafty because the building was divided into two sections with a moveable dividing door.  The west wing (on the right in this photo) was a school room and only the eastern chancel end was consecrated.  This meant that most of the costs of building the church could be met from funds allocated for school building.

When we returned to the cars I was puzzled by this sign on the gate into the churchyard.  Someone had painted “Luke’s Gate” on the other gate below the churchyard, which seemed logical given the name of the church – but who is Robbie?

We were lucky with the weather.  The rain, which had been threatening all morning, didn't start until we were  in the cars ready to drive home.

PS  When we returned home I was greeted by our last geriatric dog, Danny  . . . demanding his daily walk!  He didn’t consider the fact that I had been walking all morning (or the fact that it had started raining) was an adequate excuse for postponing or cancelling his walk.  So I had to change into dry boots and go straight out again.

Corrany Valley

Not the best of days

Tuesday 12^th November, 2013

Apart from a fresh, north-westerly wind, the weather was perfect.  But that was the only good thing about the day.

Tim walked with Trevor but I stayed at home for what turned out to be a last, very sad morning with Alexander.  Although his health had been deteriorating fast, I had hoped for a few more days with him.  But I realised on Tuesday morning that the end was near and the kindest thing was to let him go.  So Tim phoned the vets’ surgery when he got home and we took Alexander in early in the afternoon.  He was such a sweet, friendly, cheerful little dog and I still can’t talk (or even write) about him without getting all choked up.

Alexander in his prime.

To return to the happier topic of the walk - Dorothy was still off the Island and the men met at the parking area near Ballure Reservoir.  They decided to take one car as far as the little road behind the Hibernian to avoid the muddy path up to the Gooseneck - and then they walked up the track towards Park Llewellyn.

The bracken is a lovely coppery colour at this time of year.

Instead of continuing along the track towards the sheep fold and the mines down in the valley, they followed the remains of a higher path which appears to be the route of an old pack horse track that crossed the dip between Clagh Ouyr and the first of the North Barrule peaks.

Further up the hill the old track has been eroded by water running off the side of the hill.  Tim was a bit puzzled by the narrow tracks running alongside the eroded track.  Sheep might create one path – but they are unlikely to create three or more.  Perhaps the narrow paths were made in the past by off-road motor bikes and the authorities have since succeeded in keeping them off the mountain which has allowed the vegetation to recover.

When Tim and Trevor reached the path along the top of the ridge, they were exposed to the full force of the icy wind.  We live in a sheltered glen and the force of the wind up on North Barrule is always a shock.

After climbing the first peak and seeing the next two looming ominously ahead, they decided that the cold wind was too much to endure and turned down  into the relative shelter of the Corrany Valley.

The contrast between the high ground and the coastal farms is amazing at this time of year.  The green fields don’t look at all autumnal – but the leafless branches on the deciduous trees prove that this isn’t a spring or summer photo.

Later in the afternoon, I walked up through Skyhill plantation with Danny.  I needed to get out of the house which contained too many sad memories.  We stopped near the Ballagarrow fields  and then set off up the hill though the conifers.  But Danny lagged behind an seemed reluctant to go any further.  I wasn’t sure whether he was tired so I turned back.  When we got back to the track, I climbed over a strand of sagging barbed wire to take some photos because there were no horses in the top field.  Standing on top of an old stone wall, I took this photo of Ramsey, sparkling in the late afternoon sunshine.

Then I zoomed in on the trees surrounding Milntown, on the left-hand side of the photo above.  The beeches are still looking pretty.

Before we returned to the house I took a photo of our last old "best friend", Danny.