WASH SHEET, DINE.

After 15 changes of date, the July walk finally took place on the last Sunday of the month.

We all met up at the Links car park in Nairn.

There are many seaside towns with Links and, of course, many Links golf courses in Scotland. Links is really just the shortened form of Linksland, which was a term used to describe sandy land covered in coarse grass by the sea.

The Links at Nairn are very inportant to the town and their openness and recreational value are jealously guarded by local folk.

The Links are the site for the Showies which set up at the same time of year as the Nairn Show. It used to be that the Circus would set up there as well when it visited town. Today, there were only a few clowns on show.

Don't be fooled by the blue skies and sunshine - we were!

Sharon had her shopping bag with her and attempted to escape to buy stuff accompanied by Robin. The rest of us virtuously walked on the top path to take in the sea air.

The beach was remarkably quiet, but looking pretty good. If you look closely, however, you might just see a smear of rain on the left of the picture along the horizon line - an augury of what was lying in wait for us.

We were heading west, away from the rain and towards the bright blue yonder.

The Alton Burn runs through the Nairn West golf course and discharges across the beach. There was an Altonburn hotel, but that was demolished to allow for new housing to be built. It was actually quite a nice building and, somewhat oddly, was a preparatory school for boys up until the 1930's before it became an hotel. The 1911 Census lists boarders from parts of the Empire like Ceylon and India as well as one from Argentina. Many of the others came from Scotland and have names that sound as though they were from well to do families. Six of the seven servants came from the Moray Firth area.

Off the coast we could see a local lobster boat setting and checking the creels. They are reasonably close to the shore. Magnification of the photo reveals that the name on the stern is Golspie Mick. I don't know whether that is the name of the boat or the owner. Certainly, I can't find a fishing vessel under 10 metres named that. Who knew you could search for the names of fishing vessels through the Marine Management Organisation? Well, you do now!

Another small discharge onto the beach and the closest we got to a waterfall on this walk. I cannot vouch for the purity of the discharge.

The further west we walked, the fewer people we saw. It really is a fine stretch of sand and good, easy walking.

This is a footprint from a golf shoe.

There was actually a trail of footprints heading away from the golf course towards the sea. Was this someone who knew where they had hit the ball and were determined to get it back because it was a brand new Pro-V1?

Or, was it someone who was so disgruntled with the shot that they decided to end it all Reggie Perrin style by walking into the waves?

We did come across a second set heading back to the course, so it was either second thoughts, or they found their ball.

Unfortunately Granny was not so lucky and didn't make it back through the soft sand.

The Moray Firth is important for recreation and for industry and this is neatly (well I think so) encapsulated in the photo below.

The beach is covered in worm casts, that look like a cross between those hazelnut caramel sweets you get in a box of chocolates and an endless Celtic knot.

What I did not notice was that there are also little indentations in the sand which look like inverted volcanoes.

These are both associated with lugworms. They can grow to about 9 inches long. They live in U-shaped burrows and eat sand, extracting the organic matter from the sand as it passes through their gut. the casts are where the seived sand is piled up from the worm's bums.The indentation is where the mouth end is sucking in sand.

Lugworms are eaten by flatfish and some wading birds, notably curlews. They are also used for fishing bait.

Not a terribly exciting life you would think, but, hey lugworms are not just as boring as you might think. They might even be more exciting than this blog is to most of the readers.

When it comes to mating time, lugworms suffer (if that's the right word) from a genital crisis! Essentially, because they live in different burrows making dating difficult, they just explode in a mass of sperm and eggs and fertilisation is pretty random.

This is all well and good, but apparently it renders them useless for bait fishing!

A seal popped up to watch us. This was a Common Seal, of which there are about 1500 in the Moray Firth. Remarkably, or maybe not if you think about it, seals are either right or left handed. They also don't have external ears like us. They can easily catch their prey in the Moray Firth as the water is quite shallow - 80 metres at most.

We spent a bit of time watching what we thought was a pod of dolphins in the Firth. They were also being watched quite closely by a yacht and a rib full of people.

However, they were not dolphins, they were Pilot whales. Well, actually they were dolphins, because Pilot whales are not whales at all, but in fact are very large dolphins! They are the second largest dolphins after the Orca or Killer whale, which is also a dolphin.

There were between 15 to 20 of them and there was apparently some concerns that they might become stranded in the Firth, where the water is not so very deep.
 Somewhat paradoxically, Pilot whales are notorious for mass strandings.

They are called Pilot whales because they are thought to be led by a single pilot whale. Their groupings are very stable and highly social. Both males and females stay in their mother's pod, which is highly unusual for most mammals - except of course, for humans who cannot often get their offspring to move away and become truly independent.

The whale/dolphins were pretty far away, so the photos are not the best, but they do show the size of the group. Some photos show what looks like a black square sticking out of the water. These are actually whale heads. the whales are doing what is called spyhopping - basically having a look about.

Pilot whales can reach 6.5 metres in length and females might live for 60 years. Males live for a shorter period of 45 years. The males are heavier at up to 2300 kg, 1000 kg more than most females. They eat squid for the most part, but are also known to take cod, turbot, mackerel and herring. Perhaps they were lured into the Firth's shallow waters by shoals of mackerel or herring. It is apparently quite rare to see them this far up the Firth.

One creature that is often seen stranded on beaches is the Jellyfish.

This small one is a Common Jellyfish. They are found all over the place during spring and summer. They have a mild sting.

This, much bigger, bad boy is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish. They can reach a size of 2 metres across and they have a severe sting. Sharon was not touching it, honest, she was showing the scale of the thing.

Is this the beginings of a modern day Wicker Man?

From film to painting - Sandra does a solitary figure version of the Jack Vettriano painting, The Singing Butler. This painting at one time held the record sale price for a piece of Scottish art when it was sold for £744,800 in 1992. It is the best selling print in the country. I am hopeful of putting this photo up for auction soon. Sandra will get a modest share of any profit.

There was no butler about to serve us luncheon on the beach. We had hoped to sit near the small bothy you can see in the background, but it is owned by Cawdor Estates and some of the family were there for the day and might not have looked favourably on any interruption by the likes of us. 

From the rough to the smooth.

Smooth, sinuous sand.

Sharp spines sitting in the smooth stones.

As we left the beach we found the wheels from Jimmy and Jacque's caravan!

There were a few Goldfinches flitting in among the gorse bushes. There were plenty of thistles about and their seeds are a favourite food of this bird. This association with thistles is why Goldfinches are often depicted in Christian art - a reference to the crown of thorns.

A trig point in the heather. This trig point is one of the lowest in Scotland and it marks a height of 4 metres above Ordnance Datum at Newlyn. The lowest trig point in the country actually sits below sea level at -1 metre in Little Ouse in Cambridgeshire.
There are, in fact 4 other trig points sited at a similar height to this one, the official name of which is Carse of Delnies. The other low lying ones in Scotland are Balconie, near Evanton at 3.764metres, Easter Lovat on the south side of the Beauly Firth at 3.526 metres, Fassfern on the north shore of Loch Eil near Fort William at 4.285 metres and, finally, Rhunahaorine on the road to Campbelltown and opposite the Isle of Gigha at 2.663 metres.

People actually "bag" Trig points and you can search for them on an Ordnance Survey database using the Flush Bracket Number, which in this case is S7413. This revealed that the true height of this was 3.941 metres and that level was established in 1957.

Trig points are pretty interesting if you like that sort of thing - and I do. So here goes!

Trig stands for Triangulation and it all relates to a project undertaken between the 1930's and the 1960's designed to update the basis for Britain's mapping system. The theory was that if you precisely located a series of triangulation points and related them to each other, you could get a much more accurate basis for map making than the original system devised 

between 1783 and 1853. It has since been overtaken by GPS and electronic measurement technology.

The new trig system actually estimated that Britain was some 20 metres shorter than thought. You can, apparently, see at least two other trig points from any one other trig points. The nearest ones to this one are at Meikle Kildrummie and Drumine, both in Nairnshire and Muirhead and Fortrose Hill in the Black Isle.

On we footed it out through the purple heather, through the fair or stormy weather.

A Wall Brown butterfly on the path. These are a priority species for conservation due to loss of habitat, particularly in England and Northern Ireland. They are most usually found in areas of short grassland where the turf is bare or broken. They are often found in coastal areas. Just exactly where we saw them, in fact.

Heading back to the cars and into the heavy rain.

A juvenile Oystercatcher, probably looking for a juicy Lugworm. You can tell it is a juvenile because it has grey rather than pink legs. The other bird is, I think, a Common Sandpiper, but these small waders are a bit of nightmare to identify at a distance.

By now the beach behind us was empty.

Water running across the sand leaves an intricate pattern of different colours of sediment.

Back by the golf course the rain began to batter down.

We sheltered under the eaves of the golf club house. No doubt if Mac, Janet or Hugh had been there we, or at least they, might have been allowed to take shelter within.

Once the rain abated sufficiently for us to leave our shelter and get to the cars, we did so spurred on by the thought of tea and home baking at Sandra's and Dave's house.

The home baking turned out to be baked by some chap called Harry Gow, but the tea and coffee were made on the spot. There were even two pots of different strengths of tea - a step above anything we usually get in professional establishments.

Many thanks for Dave and Sandra for finally settling on a date for the walk and for organising everything - especially the much needed tea and cakes.