Pink ribbons and old boats

On days when there is some time before my bus is due I start walking home along the loch's shore road. Some months ago, when overhanging shrubs and trees were being cut back at the sides of the road, pink plastic ribbons appeared tied to branches and fence posts. It took me a while to figure out that while the general slashing of roadside vegetation was happening, the pink markers were for things that needed more work than a mere machine slash. Like this tree (sallow? there's a lot of that):

too much for a mere slash

Toad and I used to worry about shrub slashing. What's left when the machine has done its work makes the method seem brutal but such is the rate of growth in what amounts to our temperate rainforest climate that the shrubs soon recover. Hazel and sallow are not subdued for long and the road does need to be kept open.

Yesterday the bus passed me at the head of the loch going the other way so I knew it had a sixteen mile round trip to do plus the couple of miles I'd have walked by the time it reached me again so I set off in search of pink ribbons. I untied ten or so and pocketed them. They'll be used as plant markers in the garden.

And so I came upon a dead boat on a steep bank down to the sea where the roadside slashing had partly opened up the undergrowth. Its name is Caol Ila. There is a whisky distillery of this name on the western isle of Islay. The name apparently means 'Sound of Islay' where sound means a narrow strip of water. The Gaelic word Caol is Kyle in English which occurs in other place names such as Kyle of Lochalsh. Apparently the pronunciation is "cull-eela".

The boat Caol Ila
with its old pulley yanker for getting it out of the water

Today I walked the same route before the bus caught up with me and took pics of another dead boat, one that I already knew about as it's readily visible on the shore, and another boat yanker-outer. Also a massive thing that looks like a metal float.

On a wind chilled day in March

During the visit by Toadlet's Spanish school exchange partner Toad thought a visit to the Victorian Gothic Revival house, Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, would be a nice weekend outing. The day we thought most suitable turned out to be during the time the Mini Beast from the East weather phenomenon was hitting the UK. Although the ambient temperature in our part of western Scotland was about 0ºC, the wind chill was huge. We checked the website to make sure the house was open. We packed flasks of soup,  coffee, and peanut butter cookies into the car along with two down sleeping bags and took our "big coats".

On the way, via Rest and Be Thankful, we had a camera stop at ButterBridge across Kinglas Water, built by Redcoats under General Caulfield in 1745.
Ice patterns around stones in the river were pretty and icicles hung in the arch. The wind chill blasted us good and proper as we got out of the car.

The central bump in this pic is Beinn Ime, which we can also see from home on clear days

We took the ferry from Colintraive over to Bute and continued on to Mount Stuart. The house was not open. We sighed with studied patience. Toad sent an email after we got home explaining the confusing information on the website and, in reply, was granted two free tickets to see the house during 2018.

We turned around and made our way around Bute stopping to check out Scalpsie Bay where seals are often seen. We saw no seals but had another wind-chill-tastic, bracing escapade from the car.



Toadlet wanted to have what would now be a late lunch in Inveraray so we headed that way. We ate in the George Hotel and then did a tour of the fascinating Inveraray Jail. I asked our Spanish visitor if she thought Spanish jails of the same period were better. "Worse", she said. Certainly this jail must have been one of the first, if not the the first, to have central heating!

The heating wasn't on for our visit! We went back to the George for hot chocolate before setting off home.

Nearly forgot: I spotted my first Colt's-foot flower of the season near Butter Bridge.