Bricky Copse

Standing on top of a compost heap,  which is now taller than the fence between us and the copse, to offload hedge trimmings, I noticed this array of mushrooms and went to have a closer look. I don't know what they are yet.

The sheep that were in the field have eaten down the low vegetation (in spring there is a carpet of opposite-leaved golden saxifrage) revealing the large stones and bricks that make up the floor of the copse. There are mossed over concrete steps at both sides of the copse. Someone whose family lived here for a good chunk of the twentieth century told me there was prisoner of war accommodation there during the First World War. The prisoners worked on local farms apparently.

Another interesting thing in the copse is this split trunk of an old sallow. From this split the trunk spreads almost horizontally in two directions over an area about 20metres wide.

The photo below shows the copse from further up the field. The sallow is the one at the front. Its lower leaves have been eaten leaving bare branches. There is birch, sycamore, holly, hawthorn, elder, dog rose in the copse as well. The dog rose grows all the way up to the top of the hawthorn which, from the right, is the third in after elder and holly. At the left end, over the fence in the boggy brae garden is the famous 'Scrawny' (some kind of cypress).

The Bricky Copse on a misty day

Walking back up the field to my sheepskin "sit-upon-ery" that doubles as protection when climbing over barbed wire fences, I enjoyed the autumn look of dock plants. Also their leafy readiness for next year's growth where bracken has been trampled.

A tiny rose

Irrepressible Rose has produced a tiny flower despite the best efforts of roe deer to prevent it from doing so by eating its young shoots. I'm guiding the shoots, as they get long enough, behind the trellis to afford the plant more protection...

...because they are still eating new leaves.

We have had a lot of heavy rain so the colchicum is looking somewhat rain battered. 

As autumn progresses, the late afternoon and evening light on the hillside across the loch is sometimes lovely, like last night when it coppered the bracken in a warm glow.

Mist in the trees

We have had torrential rain, even by western Scotland standards, today. It has eased off now but the road along the coast is awash in various places. Looking up the hill from the back door, I love the way the memory of rain hangs in between the trees while the air is still saturated.


The two bare trunks are the woodpecker trees. We often hear them hammering away.

Gall midges, flowers and leaves

In a break between rain pourings yesterday I went out to look at leaves, aka greenness. The lobelia and the yellow loosestrife caught my eye. Flowers do that :)

But the greens did too, especially of this fern with leaves at various stages, the basal rosette of a Cat's-ear growing in a boggy bit, and some aquilegia.

And then I spotted something new which turned out to be midge galls of the Gall Midge (Dasineura ulmaria) on meadowsweet leaves. Apparently they turn red as they progress.

Bothwell Castle and Woods by the Clyde

On Sunday Little She Bear and I visited Bothwell Castle. We both loved its impressiveness of scale, the beautiful red sandstone it's made of and its situation beside the Clyde with the wonderful woods alongside. The visit has inspired us to walk the Clyde Walkway in stages between the World Heritage Site at New Lanark to Cambuslang where King Arthur, prince of the Welsh-speakers of Strathclyde, is reputed to have fought his last battle against invading Saxons.

We walked all around the outside of the castle before going in and paying the entrance fee, which we were happy to pay to help Historic Scotland, now called Historic Environment Scotland, keep this magnificent ruin from deteriorating further.

From the back we found a way down the steep bank to the River Clyde into the wonderful Bothwell Woods.

Lots of evidence of children's (probably group) visits to the woods which was nice to see...




...and lots of sheer tree beauty. We both loved this enormous sycamore tree. It had several trunks so is probably several close together but at first sight it looks like one. Sycamores, like ashes, are weeds on our little peninsula north of the Clyde, growing tall and spindly for the most part, and in their hundreds. This one, or this group, showed how even common trees can be amazing plants when they have space to breathe, as it were.


Looking up into the canopy and down at reflections in the river on such a lovely day was also a great experience.


We enjoyed the sand ripples at the edge of the river and the evidence of sand layering in progress before making our way back up the riverbank. In the third photo, there is a tiddler; it looks like a little shadow in the pic. There were shoals of them.

And so, up to and into the castle we went. The grass really is that green.

We sat on one of the benches to eat our lunch of pork pie, cold boiled new potatoes with some mayonnaise to dip them in, tomatoes (those three brought by me), cheese and chutney sandwiches, apple, nuts and raisins, home-grown cucumber (those brought–made, in the case of the chutney– by LSB. Pooled picnics are the best.

Below is a small section of Bothwell Woods along the Clyde seen from the top of the castle keep.

We continued to enjoy the beautiful red sandstone both as used in the castle build, but also for its own sake. Beautiful stuff.

A little repair

Stone 'shot' for a trebuchet

A stonemason's mark

I think I need to bring my grandsons here, sometime.