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...
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 ...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.

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.

Look away if you're tired of sunrises and boat wakes

From the back door, hurrying out...

From the target boss, looking over the house

Here comes the MOD Police boat zipping into the picture

no boat

Boat and wake

Camera 'ahead of boat' again

Boat catching up

Boat over the loch moraine

Wee tower left of boat is Rhu point light; other dots are buoys

Just clouds and refracted light

Last of the boat as it zips into the sunrise and the Clyde past Rhu Point