BOAT OF GARTEN AND THE SPEY

Well, this was a first for the Dinosaurs.

Morris dancers in Boat of Garten!

We have been to the Boat many times, but we have never seen Morris dancing on any of our walks. I don't know why they were there, but it is not their natural habitat. I just had to look up Morris dancing. I wish I hadn't. The first search result takes you to The Morris Ring, which is the founding National Association of Morris and Sword Dance Clubs.

Goodness gracious, but they have pages and pages of really interesting facts about Morris dancing. If you've stopped reading now, I don't blame you, I fell into a catatonic trance pretty quickly, let me tell you.

Luckily, I don't have to repeat everything, if anyone wants, I can provide the web address.

Quick round up.

The earliest recorded Morris dance was on 19th May 1448, so it is a pretty old tradition and it probably goes further back than that.

The name is thought to derive from the French word morisque, meaning a dance or the dance. I'm not aware of any Gaelic word for Morris dancing.

Sometimes it is spelled with a capital M and sometimes not, but apparently someone always asks which one is Maurice.

A group of Morris dancers are called a side and most if these will have been founded in the last 80 years.

The most widespread style is called Cotswold Morris and involves six or eight dancers, almost always men, but women have been allowed for a a few decades now.

There is a branch of dancing called Molly dancing and you might expect this to be the female equivalent, but it isn't. Molly dancing is confined to East Anglia and happens in January. The dancers take a plough through the village and if householders don't reward them with food and drink, they plough a furrow across the lawn!

That's enough of that then.

There are other activities in Boat of Garten that involve people with sticks, jumping up and down  and waving flags.

 Having escaped from all of these weird activities, we set out on our own activity, walking.

The first part of the walk down to and then along the Spey, was notable for the profusion and variety of flowers to be seen.

The first was the quite prolific Tufted Vetch, known in Gaelic as Peasair nan Luch - Mice's Pea. It is, of course a member of the pea family. Vetches were among the first crops to be domesticated.

Ox-eye daisy, also called Gowans and Neoinean Mor in Gaelic, which neatly translates as big daisy! The smaller flowers look like one of the Stitchworts to me, probably Wood Stitchwort. All the Stitchworts have a Gaelic name referring to dejected or dejected one. I don't know why they should be considered dejected, being quite nice bright little flowers. 

 

A thistle.

 There are a number of different types in Scotland and this one is the Melancholy Thistle, so called because the flower heads are singular rather than being formed in twos or threes. The Gaelic name is Cluas an Fheidh - Deer's Ear.

Harebells or Scottish Bluebells, known as Currac-cuthaige in Gaelic, which translates as Cuckoo's cap.

 

This is a Spear Thistle, which is widespread throughout the country and it is a bit of the archetypal Scottish Thistle. The Gaelic name Cluaran Deilgneach, Which means Prickly Thistle!

There were huge swathes of this white flower throughout most of the walk that was not in the woods. It is Yarrow and is often so widespread because grazing animals avoid it due to smelly and bitter tasting leaves. The Latin name is Achillea millefollium, which refers to Achilles, who used Yarrow as a medicine to heal wounds and treat fevers.

We were walking along the edge of some nice birch woodland and heading down towards the River Spey.

Birch woodlands are becoming a bit more rare these days. There is a shortage of young trees coming through and the older trees are dying off. Without any kind of succession, these woodlands will completely disappear from our landscape.

This is part of the problem. Grazing animals like sheep and deer, eat all the tender young trees and so condemn the woodland to a slow decline.

The yellow flowers of Lady's Bedstraw, so named because its foliage smells like new-mown hay when cut. It was often used as scented bedding once dried and was said to have been used at the Nativity - hence Our Lady's Bedstraw.

Foxgloves, both white and purple. The white variety is often thought to be a garden escapee. If you think gloves for foxes is a cute little name, the Gaelic is Lus nam Ban-sidh which translates as the Fairy Woman's Plant.

 

It is not all wild flowers. On the opposite side of the track was a glorious field of barley, which, of course,  will probably be used to make some wonderful whisky somewhere.

Wherever, there are wild flowers, you might expect to see some butterflies and here is one. This is one of the most common butterflies in the country, the Meadow Brown. This one is sitting on Mouse-eared Hawkweed.

Our first sight of the River Spey, the third longest river in Scotland and the ninth longest in the UK. It is famous for whisky and salmon.

Just beside the river was this butterfly, a Ringlet. Again these are fairly common, but in the Highlands they are confined to the east.

Here we are walking alongside the river and this bank of gorgeous flowers. How lucky are we to live here?

Not only flowers, but mountains too. Looking towards the Lairig Ghru

Where there is water there are usually ducks, like this female Mallard

I know it is hard to believe, but when Sharon and I saw these wildfowl on the river, we agreed they were Mergansers. In fact they are all female and/or juvenile Goosanders. Yes, I was wrong! Having said that, the two are easily mistaken for each other. The real clincher in identification of these is that the Goosander has a much sharper definition of the brown head to the off-white lower neck than the Merganser. The white chin is also a give away and Goosanders have a thicker bill at the base.

Now you know.

Clear evidence of a water horse or kelpie at the edge of the river. They are well known for trying to lure passers by onto their back, where they will be unable to dismount and then will be dragged into the water to be eaten by the kelpie.

This stone fishing platform is not natural, but is a man-made groyne, sometimes called a croy. They slow water down and help in controlling sediment deposition, but they also help to form pools for salmon and allow fishermen to get closer to their quarry.

Next to the river we spotted this "cobweb" in a tree. This is probably the feeding tent of the Bird Cherry Ermine Moth. There are a number of Ermine Moths in the UK and they each have specific host food trees. Tent caterpillars can reach epidemic proportions and strip trees completely. That hasn't happened here. Although you cannot see any caterpillars, the little dots at the bottom right of the tent are probably frass - caterpillar droppings, which would indicate that there were a few in the tent at some time.

Coming round the bend, where a photographer was taking photos of salmon leaping. How difficult can that be?

Quite, actually. I did manage to get some ripples, though.

Agnes didn't see any at all, although she claims to have done so after watching for twenty minutes over lunch.

Here we are having lunch at a posh fisherman's hut.

After a pleasant lunch and a bit of salmon watching, we retraced our steps slightly and headed up by Kinchurdy Farm. The farmhouse is quite grand, and there appears to have been a farm here for a long time and the area was occupied possibly before medieval times. Just beyond the farm was a small loch - Loch Dallas. The fields around the loch had a number of Greylag Geese that appear to have decided not to migrate, but to stay where the food was good and plentiful. It is not unusual for Greylags to do that, although most of those we see here are from Iceland.

Mallards on the loch.

A little further on, we came across a shallow excavation, made for a purpose unknown. The exposed soil profile would suggest fluvial rather than glacial deposits. Generally, glaciers dump material rather than spread it and the material will more likely be mixed and angular. Rivers tend to carry rounder and less mixed material. So, the deep sandy stuff at the bottom would suggest a very big flood or a longer period of flooding, which is more likely given that you can see some different colours of deposit. the gravelly deposit is typical of flash flooding and then there is more sandy and silt above and finally some better looking soil derived from silts. Rivers do often destroy crops when they flood, but they do create lots of good soils and agricultural land.

Resting in the sand was this beautifully named Pearl Bordered Fritillary. This butterfly is highly threatened in England and Wales and is now only widespread in the Highlands.

A tractor. This is not any tractor, this is a Zetor 6911.

I can hear you all gasp at this revelation.

Zetor is a Czech manufacturer based in Brno. They were formed in 1946 and are world leaders in agricultural fields. They were the first in the world to have roll over safety cabins, for example. They also invented a system of unified parts which allowed tractors to be made all over the world.

I have to be honest and say I had never heard of them before now.

We were moving towards the pine forest and this meant we were going to see lots of ant nests. These are almost certainly Scottish Wood Ants, which can only be found near Scots Pine woods in the Highlands. A nest will typically hold up to 100,000 ants and can be over a metre underground as well as the mound of needles that you see on the surface.

Wood ant nests are a good indicator of direction. They are usually found on the south and west sides edges of woods to take advantage of the warmth of the sun.

A stand of Aspen. These trees are reasonably rare and are most often found in the Highlands. they are apparently tasty to animals and suffer badly from grazing, hence they are under some threat, so it was nice to to see these here. The leaves are never still, shimmering in even the slightest zephyr, giving them the Highland nickname of Mother in Law's tongue. The Gaelic is critheann from the verb crith - to tremble. Aspen crowns were used in burial ceremonies, to allow the departed to return in the future. However, the Christians soon put a stop to that and Aspen became one of a number of trees to be reputed as the source of the timber for Christ's cross.

Aspen often sends out suckers, which will grow to be separate trees. These can be spotted running in a line away from the parent tree. 

Lovely leaves.

Heading into the woods.

While they were tramping towards the woods, they luckily did not step on this little moth. This is an Antler Moth, named after the antler shaped markings on the forewing. They are common throughout Britain.

Under the Strathspey railway line and into the forest we went.

There was even an old RAC sign pointing us back to Kinchurdy.

There were some nice views through the trees to the Cairngorms.

In the pinewoods proper now.

How did this stone get to be here in the fork in the tree. I don't know, but if it was some kind of secret totem, then we could be in trouble because Robin moved it and probably disturbed the cosmic vibrations.

Nonetheless, we carried on and found a nice little viewpoint.

We spent a bit of time there chatting and taking in the view.

A little further on we came across this pretty big rock perched above a house well below. It must give a bit of added spice to sitting in the garden with your gin and tonic. Then again, maybe they've never been up there and sip away in blissful ignorance.

All this talk of gin and tonic must mean we are getting near to the end of the walk, and we were. We picked up the cars and drove through to the Kitchen in Carrbridge for some tea and very nice cakes.
Many thanks to Dave and Sandra for organising such an interesting walk.