Misty, rainy beach walk

I had half an hour before the bus was due. Sometimes I sit on the crash barrier on the sea wall and read the paper on my phone or a book on my Kindle. When it rains though walking is more appealing. I've been meaning to get to know better the beach and coastline on the west side of Gare Loch for a while and, since today was the day I began wearing hiking boots again for my daily 'commute' (this will continue until next May now), I decided to walk along the beach as far as Dahlandhui if I could.

It's not far but it was slippery going on the rocks and seaweed. Someone in a wee rowing boat who took someone ashore near "First Wreck" called out to me as he began his row back over the loch: "Keep to the grassy bits." I had just decided that's what I should do and thanked him. I had to do a sort of stomp to test each footing. I wonder if my phone pedometer picked that up? When I walk with Toad he walks further than me according to our respective phones; either he's heavy-footed or I'm light-footed–probably a bit of both!

First Wreck

Second Wreck

Nature along the beach: sea plantain, acorns, devil's-bit scabious, bright yellow lichen

 

Historic boaty bits along the way fastened into the rocks 

(there was lots more, including old slip-ways)

 

Boats to my left in the mistiness of the day

 

I got as far as the point where the Dahlandhui Burn comes out onto the beach and decided I'd better get back up to the road if I was to catch the bus at all. Besides which, although I'd checked the tide times, there didn't seem to be much beach at Rockville Point for me to get round to "Fisher Place". Odd.

There was also no way I was going to get across the burn without getting wet feet so I found a way up to the road past an old boathouse and the gateway of Dene Hard. 

The bus passed me as I reached the road but I waved and the driver (he of the "Deer in the water!" comment during the summer) screeched to a splashy halt for me as soon as he could. Bus drivers are nice round here.

So I learnt some new local place names and that a 13:16 1.20m low tide at Garelochhead is not very low around Rockville at 11:15, especially when one forgets that tide times are given in Greenwich Mean Time. Ho hum and all that 😆.

Gare Loch today

Fungussy welly wander in the wood

It being beautifully autumnal yesterday morning, and not raining, I decided to go on a fungal foray on the farm track above the garden and in the woods just above that. It was partly to check if there were any chanterelles in the usual place by the burn. Nope. Either there has been too much sheep and heifer traffic along there this year or conditions have not been right for other reasons.

Chanterelle habitat in previous years

Before I climbed over our corner 'stile' though, I spotted this purple-staining milkcap mushroom at the top of the garden. under the goat willow.

And then this mushroom gowing on the woodpile up there





This is the 'stile', Boggybrae style, at the west corner of the garden. I use the mossy wall at the right of the photo as a step.

Here's the one, barricaded against heifers, in the south corner (the west and south corners of the garden are at the top, the south one being the highest on the slope that is Boggybrae).

without the branches, it's a swing your leg over
kind of stile

No chanterelles by the burn then, but there was plenty of this eyelash fungus on the cowpats. And this tiny inkcappy-looking one:


At this point I was beginning to think: "Cannae move for fungi!" 😀 Here are four more within a few steps of each other still in the back farm track:


Wandering back up the track towards what I call the umbonnate field (because, from across the loch, its shape looks like a huge umbonnate mushroom cap), it was these Vermillion Waxcaps that called me over the fence into the wood. Such a stunning colour!

Before even crossing the wee feeder burn of Hattonburn, I spotted these:

Then, having tested my rather old wellies' waterproofness, I scruffled around in a fairly small area of woodland looking at a large number of fungi. It's not a simple 'walk in the woods' kind of wood; definitely more of a scruffle getting anywhere as the pics below show. Managed not to get my hat yanked off by a stray branch or bramble this time though. I think that's a first.

Scruffle woodland

My way back to my sit-upon-ery and gloves
(leather, for barbed wire and brambles)

Lots of things like this, boletes past their best, perhaps. There were plenty of young ones too.


A selection of fungi on wood:



Some webcaps



Some more on the ground, including some that I think of as "frilly gillers". The yellow one, whose colour the phone camera had difficulty capturing, was plentiful. I'm not sure if it is Yellow Swamp Brittlegill/Russula claroflava but we have had that in the garden sometimes. The photos here show tiny fraction of all that was to be seen.

And still, after all my scruffling, I was within easy sight of South Stile.
You don't have to go far for a fungal foray on Boggybrae.
A mizzle of rain started a this juncture. It had turned into heavy rain by the time I was back in the house.


I see one of the frillies is duplicated. Blogger has begun to play sillybuggers so I won't try to delete one of them!