SANDY FRASER'S WEE BOY'S TOWN.

After the delights of a few days at Stromeferry, it was back to our usual routine and a walk nearer to home. The walk, chosen by Susan and Robin, was in Evanton. We had done the walk in June 2013, but in the opposite direction from that done today. As it would transpire, the weather was a bit different as well.

We gathered in reasonable sunshine and warmth in the centre of the village. The village is one of a number in the Highlands named after somebody connected to the local landowner. In this case Evanton was founded by Alexander Fraser of Balconie, who named it after his son Evan. He built the village to accommodate all the people he had cleared off his estate to make way for sheep in the early nineteenth century.

I'm not sure whether naming the place that people were cleared to is adding insult to injury, but it certainly doesn't illustrate a great deal of humility.

Almost immediately there was something startlingly different.

Jimmy had a new bunnet. There was some debate as to whether this made him look more sophisticated or just older.

No sooner had we followed our leader, Robin out of the car park, than people started to stop walking and look at a little park, which had a very small tank seemingly intent in destroying a seat.  This seems a little odd insofar as Evanton's wartime history related more to the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm, rather than the army.

 We had gone only a little bit further on when we passed a pixie butterfly shrine, which I was surprised to see Maureen pass without a glance, so here it is.
At the top right of the photo is a metal plate. This is actually a bench mark plate, which gives an exact height above sea level. I hadn't noticed it at the time. There are hundreds of thousands of these in the country and the Ordnance Survey has a list you can download. Even I could not be bothered to try and identify this particular one from the partial information in the photo.

Like little pixies, we skip on down the road towards the sea.

We were walking along by Kiltearn Beach towards Kiltearn Parish Church. Kiltearn is an Anglicised version of the Gaelic Cill Tighearna. Where Cill appears in Gaelic place names it indicates settlement from before 800AD, so we were walking where people had walked a long time before.

The church is no longer used for worship, but the graveyard is still active - if a graveyard can be described like that!

The church has not been used since the 1950's. However, it has has a long and turbulent history. It was the parish church, which would indicate that the community was much closer to the sea when the original church was built and there is archaeological evidence for this. The village of Evanton that we see now was built well away from this location, but the church continued to be used despite this inconvenience.

There are a number of gravestones commemorating Polish service personnel, as well as Canadian and Australian soldiers and airmen.

I photographed, at random, one of the Commonwealth Graves Commission stones, commemorating John Rawlinson, who was 18 when he died on 28th August 1946. He did have quite an interesting tale to tell.

He was from Manchester and served on HMS Fieldfare which was actually Evanton airfield. It was built in 1922 and served the Fleet Air Arm when they were in Invergordon. It was originally known as Novar airfield and then Evanton airfield. From 1937 to 1947 it became HMS Fieldfare. John was an air mechanic on board a naval whaler. This boat was near some seaplane mooring buoys in the Firth when it heeled over, with the sails going into the water, pulling the boat over. The Balblair ferry rescued some of the men, but unfortunately not John, who drowned along with 3 other men.

 

 Another stone with a tale to tell was that of the Reverend Thomas Hog. Now, he was a bit of a character. He championed Protestantism at the time it was vying with Catholicism to be the established Church of Scotland. Many of his parishioners fought abroad in the religious wars in Europe at the time. This appeared to bring blessing on the parish as it became known as the Holy Land. The return of Charles II to the throne brought all that to an end and Hog was ejected form the manse and prevented from preaching at his church. He fled to Inshoch Castle at Auldearn, where his brother-in-law John Hay of Lochloy lived. There he set himself up again and was imprisoned in Forres and then at the Bass Rock for his troubles. He fled eventually to Holland and became the chaplain to William of Orange. When William took the throne from Charles II, Hog returned to Kiltearn. He died after a short illness, no doubt the legacy of his devil proscribed imprisonment. He obviously held a grudge and left instruction that he be buried at the door to the church and that his stone make it clear to the parishioners that they must not appoint a wayward minister in the future.

The original stone is now almost illegible (it being over 300 years old) and the stone we see now was put in place in 1940.

Jim and Jacque had brought Ross and Amy's dug, Richmond with them. I jokingly had asked if he had found any bones. In fact the part of the graveyard nearest the sea has been subject to erosion and many bones have been exposed by this!

 Many of the landed gentry are buried at Kiltearn. The Munros of Foulis have been buried here since 1588. They include Sir Hector Munro who had Fyrish Monument built to help his tenants during a time of famine. He then cleared plenty of these tenants when he was smitten with a mania for the introduction of sheep.

Just round the shore form the church, we crossed over the River Sgitheach, where it enters the Firth. The Gaelic is stream of the Hawthorn. This is one of the two rivers which bound Evanton. 

On the opposite side of the Firth sits Craig Castle, a 16th Century tower house, which is thought to once have been the summer residence of the Bishops of Ross.

I'm not sure what this memorial against a tree is all about, but the tree is dead.

Looking back to the east as the first shower of the day was soon to sweep in over us.

Here we are with most of us putting up our hoods against the rain in the shelter of the roofless fishing hut. It is confirmed in the archaeological records as a fishing hut despite the rather grandiose arched window in the gable. 

It didn't take long for the shower to pass and the blue skies to return...at least for now.

The rain was still sweeping across Fyrish monument, Sir Hector's folly and the site of one of our previous walks. I'm not sure how many walks have views of other walks. I'm also not sure I want to take the time to find out.

We returned along the beach, the way we had come.

The erosion that exposed the graves at Kiltearn is clearly a bit more widespread.

 Some of the elderly defences are less than secure.

 We were heading back to the River Sgitheach to take a different route back to the village. 

Lots of plants along the banks of the river, including this Sweet Rocket. It is from the mustard family and might well have escaped from gardens. It is considered invasive in some parts of America. It has nice scent in the evening and we have some in the garden.

This is the quite interesting Amphibious Bistort. It has two forms, one which grows and floats in water and the other, which this is. It has migrated onto land and is rooted in the soil.

Red Campion, known as Cirean Coilich, Cock's Comb in Gaelic.

This looks like a sundial. It is located in the general location of Balconie Castle, which was demolished in the 1960's after it had fallen into disrepair. Somewhat oddly, the rubble from the demolition was used during the construction of the now defunct aluminium smelter at Invergordon.

On a smaller scale, there is clearly room for hedgehogs to move about, which can only be a good thing.

As we got back up towards the village, views opened up towards the Firth and the oil rigs awaiting repair and maintenance. What would John Rawlinson have though about it nowadays. I feel the Reverend Hog would be scandalised by it all.

From the village centre we headed up the hill to Black Rock Gorge. Before we got to the gorge, however, it was time for lunch for one man and his dog.

It had also started to rain quite heavily, which allowed the chain down "pipes" to show how they work. They are an environmental alternative to plastic down pipes and they work well.

Luckily Susan and Robin had laid on somewhere dry for us to eat our picnics.

After lunch, Richmond took Jimmy and Jacque home.

Some of the rest of us queued for the toilet. The workings of the dry composting toilet were explained to me, but I think the details are not for this genteel audience.

Those who didn't need the toilet were given a woodworking class. I expect that we will all be getting table legs and candlesticks in our secret Santa stockings this year.

We set off in the rain for the gorge.

Dave had some poo on his trousers. Apparently, it was bird poo and not human. At least, that is what he said.

On through the deep woods we went.

The rain had stopped, so that was the cue for a bit of shedding of clothes.

It was enough to make the trees cry!

Soon we were at the gorge. Apparently a scene from a Harry Potter movie was filmed here - whoever Harry Potter is???!!!

The gorge is quite eerie and, to make things even stranger, it carries the Allt Graad. This is sometimes known in Gaelic as the Ugly Burn. It is certainly different, being up to 40 metres deep and very narrow, which forces the water to rush through the gorge.

It was formed at the end of the last Ice Age - about 10000 years ago. As the ice retreated, the land rose because the weight of ice was no longer holding it down. As an aside and without further comment, Scotland is still rising ever so slightly, while England is sinking into the seas at the same rate.

Anyway, the rivers were full of sediment from the glaciers and this scoured out any weaknesses in the rock. The sides of the rock are formed from Old Red Sandstone conglomerate and were susceptible to some erosion, hence the gorge you can see today.

Here we are on a bridge across the gorge. Some of them wanted me to go into the gorge to take the photo, but I was too smart for that!

The gorge is pretty deep and you can see the river foaming away far below.

There are innumerable waterfalls racing down the sides to join  the torrent below.

There are quiet passages further down the river and this large boulder is like some miniature world with only one tree in it - Caithness or Shetland, perhaps.

There were also some bowed trees about. This one nearly made it across the river.

This one was across our path.

I don't think anyone noticed just how precariously balanced it actually was.

Once out of the woods we were on the public road and we passed this stone. It commemorated the coming of the Millennium. Psalm 121 as we all know is a song of ascents, a subject we know precious little about. 

I lift up my eyes to the hills - where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip - he who watches over you will not slumber;

indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord watches over you - the Lord is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all harm - he will watch over your life;

the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

A catchy little number for a walking group, I would suggest. No doubt the singers among us can change this into a marching song that would keep us right on to the end of the road on our next walk. I look forward to it immensely.

On the last stretch now, heading back down into the village.

The last time we did this walk a Red Kite soared up as we were crossing the A9. This speck in the sky was a Kite soaring above us and much further away. Honest.

This was not the size of the hailstones that assaulted us as we reached our cars in the village, although it might have been. It was a collection of fungi in a stone wall beside the road. It looks to me like Common Inkcap. Not so long ago this would have been listed as edible. However, it became apparent that eating it with alcohol - and who wouldn't - gave rise to severe poisoning. Even the application of aftershave could cause a reaction! Now which lucky person got to test all that out?

Then we were back at the cars after another fine walk, courtesy of Robin and Susan, who organised everything except the shelter from the downpour of hailstones at the very end. Apparently tea and cakes at Foulis Ferry were very good.

Looking forward to the next one!