Summer hols

Toad spent much of our summer leave drawing and painting, learning new tunes on his keyboard, and mending the shed. I spent much of the first week of mine recovering – hobbledehee, hobbledeho – from a wrench to my back that happened on the first day. During the second week, eldest daughter Rye came up with her boys, Moo and Oink. When Rye arrives it seems she often ends up cooking dinner. I'm happy with this. This time it seems my estimates of how much pasta was necessary to feed however many of us there were, how much cheese sauce to make, and so on, were inadequate. We rummaged through some of Toadlet's student digs bags and found some more pasta which Rye tipped into the pot. She then made the sauce while I did useful things like finding an ovenproof dish to put the giant macaroni cheese in and sending boys in search of more chairs. All the macaroni cheese was eaten. I keep thinking, if Moo and Oink eat so much now, aged nine and six, what will they be like in their teens!?

Here they are making a rope out of goosegrass:

We spent a fair bit of time down on the beach puddling about and searching for treasure. Rye collects crockery handles, for example.

We were intrigued by this beastie that looks similar at first glance to a woodlouse. The stone it was on appeared to be the back of an old tile.

One day we went for a walk around Ardmore Point in the Clyde. It's a lovely little wild nature reserve full of wild flowers. If the tide's out you can walk much of the way on the beach, which we did, but we also had a look in the woods.

Finding harebells

There were some white ones too:

white harebells

Towards the end of our walk we spotted a mouse on the path. We froze and got some photos of it. It seemed utterly unconcerned by us though and even allowed Moo and Oink to stroke it before it toddled back in the the undergrowth. Oink wanted to bring it home and keep it as a pet but he already has a cat so we argued against that idea. Given the mouse's carelessly dreamy attitude I rather thought it would be owl food that night anyway.

The light drizzle that went on most of the day didn't bother us at all. On the way home we shopped for grub for a crowd. Dinner the next day was going to be baked spuds with this and that and something else followed by a colourful fruit salad, Moo's request, and ice-cream, including soy ice-cream for the partner of J-of-the-wolves who has to avoid dairy products.

So that day all three of my daughters were here with their partners, whom I'm calling Pointy, Hilly, and Hezza unless objections are raised. Rye and Pointy hadn't met Hilly yet and no-one except the BoggyBraers had met Hezza, so it was a grand mixing together.

It was lovely having the visitors, thoroughly enjoyable, but I had apparently got quite tired: when I got home from work on Monday my nap lasted four hours!

Birds on Bute

Yesterday Toad and I met up with other members of the Argyll Bird Club to go to Bute and do some bird spotting. We had views of Arran most of the day and no rain except for a wee spot or two early on at Colintraive ferry.

Arran from Bute

There is a (probably incomplete) list below of birds seen. I did not see every one of those, just most. The Water Rail and Coot were heard and recognised by others. At the Quien Bird Hide I seem to remember a moorhen in the reeds, but maybe that was the coot! Other people compiled the lists.

I did not attempt to take photos of birds, just of scenery, and some of these are below to give a feel for the sort of places we were looking for birds.

Scalpsie Beach

I enjoyed the different kinds of sand that the island has:

Shame about plastic everywhere but it was somewhat encouraging to see lichen and moss colonising the plastic rope handrails of the board walk over the mud to the hide at Quien Loch.

Walking home

Yesterday was cold but sunny, perfect for walking, so I did, from the head of the loch to home. It took me two and a half hours, not because it's a long way but because I was clambering up and down the lochside depending on the walkability of the beach. In some places there is very little beach and the banks up to the road are steep and rocky. In some places, such massive trees have fallen down into the loch that it's difficult to get past them. There was one enormous ash tree, its trunk covered in thick old ivy stems, which I couldn't go under or round so over it had to be.

Eight months ago I did the same walk though more on the road that time. One of my finds was the old boat Caol Ila. Yesterday I saw it from the other side. It's definitely a dead boat.

Anchor and rudder below

At one point I needed to climb back up to the road. Luckily there was a rope tied to the trees to help haul myself up. I'd have got rather muddy otherwise!

Took some pics of wild flowers still in flower for #thewinter10 on #wildflowerhour run by some botanists on Twitter...
.

 ...and enjoyed a leafy bit of beach as I neared home.


By this time I had much aching of arthritic knees and feet to contend with. Happily painkillers, a large piece of carrot cake, and a nap dealt with the worst of that. The weather is back to cloudy and showery today.

On my walk to catch the bus home

Kicked my way through leaves across the park and through the woods.

wood path

 Raised my gaze skyward for light through leaves.

 Followed the burn down to the loch and marvelled at green cockles...

...and more light through leaves

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 😆.