Bike ride to Faslane Cemetery

We can’t keep up with the Joneses 😉 but we had an enjoyable ride yesterday morning in pleasantly cool and breezy conditions. Faslane Cemetery contains memorials to the crew and builders of submarine K13 that sank in the Gare Loch in 1917.

We wandered around the rest of the cemetery reading names and stories. Perhaps I should say imagining stories. It’s not hard to imagine some tragic storyline when you read of several deaths of infants affecting one family.

I wondered what relation Gertrude and Marie Louise bore to each other on the gravestone pictured below, as well as loving Marie Louise's full name.

Riding back it struck me how much of the signs of spring I had missed in Garelochhead by travelling to work all through lockdown by car. I’ve sometimes considered cycling but decided against it on the grounds that I wouldn’t have energy for that as well as for the extreme gardening I need to do at home!

The pic below shows expanses of scentless mayweed that are visible this year on the tidal marshes at Garelochhead. This is one of the results of someone’s epic cutting last year of the Japanese knotweed that usually pretty much smothers everthing else. I hope it is kept under control in future years. 

The final pic is looking down the loch. You might be able to pick out a green field above the small, rightmost boat. Home is next to that field.

Note: I’ve often wondered why Gare Loch is so often referred to as the Gare Loch (the Gareloch). I think it’s perhaps an easy way to distinguish it from the town of Gairloch in the North West Highlands.

Rescued peonies and a bike ride

I went out in my PJ’s and wellies to rescue the rain bombed peonies. The midges were out in force. If I did any gardening later, I thought, it would be full midge jacket and Little She Bear's homemade midge repellent on the only bit of exposed skin, my hands.
Homemade midge repellent made from bog myrtle leaves (picked up the hill), vegetable oil and tree resin. It’s good.

After I'd done the grocery shopping, Toad and I went for another cycle ride on the Loch Long side of the peninsula. It was good to see quite a few sailboats out, including a couple with black sails. Pirates, Toad said. 😉

I stopped on an uphill bit. This was above me.

Isabella Campbell's shrine

The 60–90% threat of rain hung over us most of the afternoon but we decided to go for a walk anyway. It didn’t rain. We did a little wander along the shore at Garelochhead noticing a swan family near the McAuley Burn bridge and Biting Stonecrop in abundance among the broken shells atop the sea wall.

Then as we were leaving Garelochhead on the Rosneath  Road, we decided to stop and go explore up the path signed to Isabella Campbells shrine. I’m not sure about the shrine bit but anyway something to investigate and which we never had until today. It is a small fenced place beside the burn where she ussd to pray. Someone keeps a votary candle there.

 I soon realised that this was probably the hill path that the dog Amber and owner, whom I’ve met in my Garelochhead wanderings, go up to get muddy before coming down for a splash in the sea. It proved a lovely path, not so muddy at the moment, with lots of common spotted orchids and some huge old trees, both oak and ash.

I noted the Whorled Caraway leaves among the spotted orchid ones.

There were some good views down to Garelochhead  and down the loch. We could see the field that’s just south of our garden but the light was poor for photos.

It’s a place to go exploring with my grandsons when they are next here.

Beyond a fence into what I suppose is MOD land there was a rusty sign the colour of which Toad, with his new enchroma glasses, really appreciated! 😁

Sweepings

A barrow of driveway sweepings. Food for peonies, which are doing well this year with eleven flower buds. In former years the maximum has been three and sometimes none at all.

A walk up and along the peninsula

First over the garden fence at the top west corner and across the top of a field where bluebells and young trees abound.

Take a look down to the loch.

Then up along the old track past the house where Elizabeth Todrick, the only female shipwright at Clynder's McGruer boatyard, used to live. We checked out the benches in the garden.

Further up we climbed over this style. There is a picnic area near the brow of the hill where you can look across Loch Long: 

Breezy but still hot (by Argyll standards). It’s a good place to enjoy bog cotton and skylarks. We heard a Grasshopper Warbler too.

Cotton grass, milkwort and Cladonia lichen alongside the path.

We came back by a different way and saw some huge, keeled over, but still growing old oaks. This is a place to bring my grandsons when they next visit from Derbyshire.

Hot enough to go sleeveless and manufacture some Vitamin D, not least for its usefulness against Covid19. I don’t tan much but I think I caught some sun today.

19 March garden welly wander

Link to today's welly wander post over at Argyll Garden. Blogger is clunky on an iPad.

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