OCH, THE WORLD OR MOND

 It was our turn to organise a walk this month. After a fairly chaotic couple of attempts, we decided to revisit Ormond Hill near Avoch. We had been here as a group before, but there are no rules to say you can't come back and revisit old jaunts.

We foregathered next to the foreshore in Avoch. It was a little cold in the force four breeze, but we were not to be forestalled and we would soon be setting forth.

Actually, it was more like a force 2 Light Breeze, but I was enjoying setting forth as many words with a four sound as I could.

The definition of Force 2 on the Beaufort Scale is when there are short wavelets with a glassy appearance. A bit like the photo below.

We had brought two of our grandsons with us and like all little boys, the lure of the sea was too great to resist. What they didn't know was that just out to sea in the direction of the salmon cages, lies the wreck of the fishing boat, Fortitude (another four sound!). She was lost along with 8 lives in December 1796.

However, we were going inland to start with, climbing up the hill away from the sea and towards farmland.

We were heading to Ormond Hill, marked by the two Scots Pine on the skyline.

To get there we had to pass along the drive to Castleton. This is a farm, but it was once a farming township comprising a number of buildings. The clue is in the name - it was the farm town of the castle.

A bit more climbing up to the castle. As you would expect, altitude leads to some fine views over Avoch and out to to sea. There were also three errant sheep in the foreground - another one would have given me the opportunity to write four in the foreground.

This is also very close to where a Medieval silver seal with a cross shaped handle was found by metal detectorists in 1998. It has a design on the base, of three keys encircled with an indecipherable inscription.

Just as we were about to go up the zig zag path to the castle, we met John Watt coming down. John is known to most of us, but the chances of meeting him on a walk like this must be pretty remote. After a brief chat, we parted ways and we went up to the castle site.

There is nothing really left of the castle itself, although the foundations are visible as turf covered linear features on the ground. The castle was said to have been one of many Royal Castles built by William the Lion. Ormond is originally thought to date to 1197 and the Royal Castle of William was only a few years later. It was destroyed by Cromwell in 1650. It was a very large castle, covering well over 8000 square metres. 

I'm not sure that Robbie and Liam were quite so enthralled with the historical importance of the site. Indeed, Robbie was so hungry, he started eating his lunch!

The castle is traditionally associated with the Earl of Moray, Andrew de Moray, who mustered his men here at the beginning of the Scottish Wars of Independence. De Moray and William Wallace raised armies to fight against the English king Edward I. He had previously installed John Balliol as a vassal king of Scotland, but he abdicated in 1296 as he had no support among the noble houses of Scotland.

De Moray and Wallace defeated the English army at Stirling Bridge, but De Moray was wounded there and died shortly after.

Ormond Castle, therefor, has huge significance in the history of Scotland and the struggle for Independence. It is for this reason that Independence campaigners frequently commemorate De Moray's role to this day. 

You can see from the views over the sea approaches to Inverness, just why the castle was so important.

Having been marched up the hill, it was time to march down the hill to carry on our way. The boys were magnetically drawn to an old landslip, which Dave convinced them was a neolithic flint mine. They spent a fair amount of time cracking stones together in the hope of creating a spark.

It is the time of year for frog spawn and there certainly was some in the track-side puddles and pools.

We were now getting close to Munlochy Bay and there were some great views to sea, which Liam ignored as he tried to get another spark from his flint.

The moody sky just added to the atmosphere.

The path took us downward, where Liam came across something we have never encountered in all the many walks we have done.

Yes, it was a number two that looked like a number 2!

Now, you may not want to know this, but the colour and apparent softness of this poo indicates that the badger has been eating a lot of worms! You could smell the poo as they are supposed to be sweet and musky. Nobody did!

We were heading downhill to the shore and this entailed a bit of 7 bar gymnastics, which Robbie and Liam managed with ease.

Jimmy was less elegant!

We followed the shore around and the land looked pretty reasonable. There is significant, but barely visible archaeological evidence for a prolonged occupation and cultivation of this area along with a lot of marine activity in the shape of old wooden jetties and the like. There appear to be a further 3 shipwrecks lying offshore in the bay. Only one, the lugger, Powerful is identified. It was registered in Banff and caught fire and sank in 1921.

Much more interesting to the boys was a plastic box full of very brown and smelly water. Kicking the tub made the water shiver and shake. Happily, most of the water remained in the box and not all over the boys' clothes.

We did notice the remains of one building - probably a house. This was recorded as roofed on the 1881 Ordnance Survey map, suggesting that it may have been occupied at that time. It certainly isn't now. 

The walk directions suggested that there was a Clootie Well at the end of the field. There was even a tree with the word WELL painted on it. However, we could not find it.

It is there, but apparently difficult to find as it is surrounded by stone, some of which is dressed. This would indicate it had some importance as dressed stone is worked and shaped rather than just rough as if straight from the quarry. The stones are falling over and obscuring the well as are the roots of a large tree. Nonetheless, the well (Tobar Chragag - meaning Well of the little rock) is apparently still used. It is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and people would tie rags to the surrounding trees, especially on the first Sunday of summer. Once the rags had rotted away, whatever ailment afflicted the supplicant would miraculously be cured. Here is a picture taken, I think, in 1966. An archaeological visit in 2014 noted signs of use at that time.

Having failed to find the well, we also failed to find the gate that would allegedly allowed us to pass through the fence at the top of the hill with ease. As the barbed wire fence was at the top of the slope, climbing over was a tad on the difficult side.

We made it in the end and decided this was a good place for a spot of lunch.

Seating was a little precarious on the bank, comfortable for Liam against the tree and optional for Robbie, who had eaten most of his lunch at the castle, anyway!

Robbie was still fascinated with the possibility of making fire with flint, so he had collected a pile of dry wood in the hope of starting a bonfire on the track!

Liam, meanwhile, took a leisurely lunch.

I hope nobody had a beef sandwich for lunch, as we soon ran into some cows once we got back on the road. One of them was actually a bull. The boys did stay behind when we carried on and once they got up they were happy to regale us with tales of of farting and lengthy urination. What is it about wee boys and bodily functions?

Eventually, we reached a bit more civilisation and we came across a house and garden where the owner clearly liked a tractor or two.

You might say the owner had a bee in his bonnet. We, however, had a bee in the blackthorn blossom. In this case a Red-tailed Bumblebee Bombus lapidarius. This is a female bee - the males have a yellow ruff around their necks. These bumblebees are among the most common of bumblebees, although this one was about a bit earlier than is usual for the time of year. Being a bumblebee, they carry a sting!

Our bumblebee is feasting on the pollen and nectar of a blackthorn bush. Blackthorn is one of the earliest flowering bushes and is very important for a range of foraging insects early in the year. The fruit is, of course, the sloe and this is used to make sloe gin, or less commonly to make sloe port. The latter is not made form port at all, but wine and brandy, which is basically what port is made from. Sloe juice was used to adulterate genuine port. It made the port a bit rougher, but it was a cheaper additive allowing for greater profit!

By now we were back on the very quiet back road into Avoch.

This road took us past a surprising thing - an airstrip. Who knew? Certainly not me. It is a private grass airstrip with a runway length of 600 metres. It is listed as Bennetsfield airstrip on the UK airports and airfields website - yes there is such a thing! They list over 7000 such sites. This one has apparently operated on a private basis at least since the early 21st century.

The sign is quite clear that rutting on the airstrip is to be discouraged.

From the airstrip, it was all downhill to the cars and then on to Munro's for tea and buns. This was a highlight for Liam and Robbie! I think!

I think everyone enjoyed our day out. It was nice to venture forth in March and not get soaked to the skin. Plenty of history and interest about, so we all had a good day.

FIVE GO ON A SECRET TRAIL IN NAIRN

Good afternoon, boys and girls. I do hope you are sitting comfortably, so that I may begin my wondrous tale of the adventure of 5 rascals getting into all sorts of scrapes and jams near the pretty little seaside town of Nairn.

Naturally you will be expecting to see all 5 of our jolly wholesome crew, but, don't be so dim - someone has to take the photos. Heaven forfend that these 5 would ever be so base as to take a selfie. 

So here are our four frolicsome females. I do hope there are a lot of dishes to wash after they have had lashings and lashings of ginger beer and cake later. After all we know only too well that that's what girlies do best.

At this point, I should point out that the blog has not been proofread by my ever so wonderful wife, and there may be a number of editorial changes made!

Naturally, Dave, being the only male, made sure that all the girls were ready and suitably clad with warm clothes, mittens and stout shoes. Then they were off, following the Secret Trail, that only Dave knew. Sometimes such knowledge can be terribly burdensome, but Dave would never trouble any of the girls with this charge, which he bore so stoically.

The trail was wonderfully serpentine and eventually wound its way to the Ice House, where Mama used to keep copious amounts of ice for her daily pre-, post-, and breakfast G&T. One simply cannot get through the day without a snifter or two, she always said. Frankly, the children were much too frightful to allow abstinence. If only they could be seen and not heard, life would be so much more agreeable.

Dave gaily led the little troop on a merry way, further and further from home and the comfort of a roaring fire and the smell of crumpets toasting on the flames. They were undaunted and knew in their fluttering little hearts, that Dave would take care of everything.

Just as there was a smidgin of doubt creeping into their minds, they came upon a sign, which irresistibly, invited them to flirt with danger. Surely there must be all sorts of jolly japes to be had if one were to ignore the instruction to Keep Out. Modern life was just so terribly safe and children had become so cosseted and separated from peril that there was a danger ennui setting in!

Let's go!, they cried and tumbled over the fence and into a whole new world. Gracious, but there were huge holes to tumble into, diggers to play with, cables and wires, the purpose of which was impossible to divine, lots of sharp and deadly tools and, best of all, pipes to crawl into and hide from each other. My, what fun they had and hardly anyone got badly hurt. 

Unfortunately, their foray into this world of adventure had not gone unnoticed and PC Murdoch, from another story altogether, was soon galloping after them and threatening a clip round the ear and a stern word with Papa.

That would never do, so the infamous five had to escape. Luckily, the ever resourceful Dave spotted a way out. He reasoned that this would work for the five companions, as old PC Murdoch was rather too stout to make it through.

So it proved, as they escaped by the skin of their teeth.

Phew! They were all rather glad to have escaped the long arm of the law, with nothing but a bit of a fright! It really had been such fun!

What shall we do now, they wondered.

Why! we should go to my house and eat lots of scones and jam with lashings of ginger beer. Perhaps they should avoid being sick, if their eyes are not bigger than their bellies.

So, that was exactly what they did. All sorts of cakes had been conjured up by Sandra and a wonderful time was had by all.

Afterwards, Mama and Papa, said they would take them to the Punch and Judy show, once Mama was able to walk in a straight line.

Five go to Punch and Judy is, of course, another story for another day!

The end.

LPPER REI'_ I ⌈ AGAIN.

Our first walk of 2025 and not too far from home at Reelig Glen. The intention was to walk on a completely different route than we had done before. We certainly achieved that! We arrived in plenty of time to examine the sign board, which provided the title for this blog, but it looks like it needs a bit of TLC.

It was a beautiful morning and I had time for a little look about before we were all gathered and ready to go.

This house is called Lyne. Just a short distance behind and to the left of the house is the remains of an illicit whisky still. These were, apparently, quite common in these parts.

With the arrival of Agnes, we were all raring to go. Perhaps we shouldn't have been in such a hurry. Just off to our right are some turf banks, forming 2 dams, built to conserve water on the side of the hill.

However, we didn't know about this and set off, blissfully unaware.

We headed downhill through the trees, with the bright sun lancing through the branches. We were well and truly in Reelig Glen. In Gaelic it is Ruighe lice, meaning stone slope, which may be a reference to the steep cliffs and slopes in the gorge itself. 

The ground and the path is covered in fallen leaves, mainly beech where we were walking.

The beech trees are thought to have been planted in 1870 and they sit nicely in among a variety of exotic and native species.

Sometimes you can't see the trees for the wood.

This is where things started to go a little awry. Jimmy, our walk leader for the day thought this might be a hill fort. It doesn't seem to be, however, it is a bit of an enigma. There are a number of entries in the historical record for this site. It looks as though people thought there were some chambered burial cairns here, but this was later found not to be so. Additionally there are natural features which have been added to by human activity relatively recently in historical terms. These might just be a folly, but there is some vitrification evident, although this appears not to have been related to fortification.

Even more weirdly, there is a theory that the hill may have been the motte hill of a 13th Century Baron and that this hill was altered by the 18th Century Laird of Reelig. He built footpaths at the base of the hill and placed a circle of large stones on the top. Other structures, if of the same date as the supposed motte, seem to be for enclosing animals rather than for defensive purposes.

I'm so confused now, that I'm beginning to regret looking it up.

I should have just stuck to the local, traditional name of the Fairy Hillock.

I am not as confused as Jimmy was, though. He then led us down a path in the wrong direction. Not bad for someone who gave us the grid reference for the meeting point and lived his whole working life dealing with maps!

Having said that, we were going more or less where we wanted to be and we were treated to a bit of exciting walking close to the edge of a reasonably precipitous slope, some might say it was a cliff hanger.

Sharon looking anxiously back to check that I haven't, literally, gone over the edge. Something, I'm apparently prone to do, especially when watching the news on TV.

We did have a raging torrent to negotiate.

Actually, it wasn't a raging torrent, but it did look as if it might have been once.

More signs of devastation - destroyed by a power so terrible that it cannot be named. It was like the Fellowship of the Ring heading through the Mines of Moria!.

There go the Hobbits!

A bridge photo. Not just any old bridge, apparently there is a stone bridge allegedly modelled on one in Ravenna in Italy. Now, I looked this up and, frankly, they don't look that similar to me! Nor, truthfully, do the Dinosaurs look like suave sophisticated Italian to me.

This is a  bit more like an Italian bridge! In order to preserve the illusion of the Grand Tour, I left the walkers out of the photo! Much more pleasing on the eye.

This bridge sits next to follies erected by James Baillie Fraser of Reelig. He was a noted artist and traveller. He spent a great deal of time in India, and Persia. He once made an epic horseback journey of 2600 miles from Istanbul to Isfahan in Iran. He became the 15th Laird of Reelig on the death of his father in 1835. He is thought to have commissioned the follies as employment for local men cleared from their crofts. The glen became known as the fairy glen, because the day's work was always removed by the time the workers returned the next day - ostensibly by fairies, but really by other workers on the instruction of the Laird.

This generosity was not unknown among some Highland landowners. In Fraser's case, it might have been a bit limited in that he spent some time in the West Indies overseeing the family's large sugar plantations, where slavery was commonplace.

There is a certain attractiveness about the grotto/folly, which is added to by the profusion of mosses and other plants. It is almost as if we had stumbled across the remnants of some long lost civilisation.

It wasn't very far from the grotto to the giant trees for which Reelig is famous. These are Douglas Firs and a number of them have been measured at over 65 metres in height, which, at the time, made them the tallest trees in Britain and, perhaps, in Europe. The tallest is known as Dughall Mor, big Douglas. He was overtaken by one of his neighbouring trees. Both are mere sapplings compared to Douglas Firs in western America, which have been measured at over 99 metres. In the UK, there are a number of Douglas Fir in Snowdonia coming in at over 70 metres. These Welsh trees were measured in 2024, so their height is more recently recorded than the Reelig trees, which will have grown in the 10 years since Douglas was measured. To complicate things even more - the usurper of Douglas at Reelig is called Dearthair Beag. Now Dearthair is Irish Gaelic for brother and the whole name would be Little Brother. However, on the Monumental Trees website the photos of Dearthair Beag are annotated as Brathair Beag, which would be little brother in Scottish Gaelic. Either way, the trees are two of a band of brothers. The grove of Douglas Fir is supposed to be the biggest collection of trees over 60 metres in height in the country.

For scale, Dave and Sandra are quite small in comparison.

After all of that hard to digest information, it was time to digest lunch, which we ate very close to the tallest Lime tree in the country, which stands at over 46 metres high, which I neglected to take a photo of.

After grottos and giants, it seemed inevitable that we would find some fairies on the fairy glen. These were, however, are the strangest fairies we've come across.

Our resident fairy friend, Maureen, was not impressed

Further down the path, we came across this structure. As with the grotto and the bridge, this is not recorded in the archaeological record, which is quite strange, I think. This may be another folly or maybe a viewing platform of some sort, overlooking the river. Having said that, the river was not particularly outstanding at that point. So, who knows?

Reelig Glen is famous for its biodiversity and, in particular for the assemblages of mosses and lichens. In places it is almost primordial in appearance.

The walk took us to the car park that most people use to do the walk up and down the river side. Nothing too exciting about a car park, but, by chance, I happened upon an old map of the area and the car park seems once to have been a coal depot!

Anyway, we climbed up from the car park with the help of railings, recently erected by Jim and Jacque's grandson Stuart, back into the beech woods. 

The woods have sheltered the ground from last night's frost, which was still lying on the fields beyond the trees.

Once we had passed the point where our very experienced walk leader took us the wrong way, we started to climb back uphill. Did I mention that he spent his working life using maps?

Now, I want to say that this is two trees having a wee hug in the forest, so I'll leave it at that.

We were heading into the sun and because of the backlight, the moss on the rocks almost looked as if they had a shimmering halo of gold.

Talking of light and dark, the lichens on the trees clearly are affected by their exposure to the sun. The dark side is facing south. That means that the dark is a lichen and not a moss. Moss prefers least sun, so can usually, but not always, be found on the north side of tree trunks. Lichens are not mosses, so need the light and prefer the south side of trees. Helpful if you find yourself out in the woods with Hansel and Gretel one day.

However, just in case there is no lichen about, you might find a handy wee directional signpost partially made form an old IRN BRU can. IRN BRU actually features along with lots of other Scottish dietary peculiarities in the Duolingo Gaelic course. The name is exactly the same in Gaelic, as in Cha toil leam IRN BRU ach tha toil leam Isbean Latharnach.  I don't like IRN BRU, but I do like Lorne Sausage..

Next a photo that reminds me of Build me up Buttercup by the Foundations from 1968! Don't be daft, you say, but look at the lyrics of the 7th verse - and I quote.....

Baby, baby try to find (hey, hey, hey)

A little time and I'll make you happy (hey, hey, hey)

I'll be home, I'll be a xylophone waiting for you

Ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh.

Jimmy played us the theme to the Lone Ranger, or was it Rossini's William Tell Overture? Actually, they are the same thing. Indeed, some writers have defined an intellectual as someone who can listen to the William Tell overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. Nobody seems to have defined who might listen to the overture and be reminded of the fast motion orgy scene in A Clockwork Orange. It wasn't me - I just read about it, honest.

A round of applause from his adoring fans, or was it just a round of fans? 

Suitably entertained we carried on up to a community cabin, with some nice looking log joints.

The Elf and safety cabinet.

On the wall of the cabin and, perhaps, following on from The Clockwork Orange was a Rutter. In fact, this was a spade used for manually digging drainage ditches in the forest before the advent of specialised machinery. These were used in the Highlands until the 1950's.

It was a bit of a Dave and the 4 Gretels cottage in the woods.

From there it was but a step to the cars and then on to The Priory in Beauly for tea and cakes. Dave was looking longingly into the distance whilst Hugh played a soulful tune on the moothie to bring our first adventure of 2025 to an end.

Thanks are due to Jimmy for getting us on the wrong path and Jacque for realising that. The first of what we hope will be some good walks this year.