EAT, WALK, REPEAT. ALIMENTARY, IT ISN'T, BUT IT IS A CANAL.

A more unusual blog than normal, this time - two separate parts.

PART 1

It being December, everyone's thoughts turn to excess food and presents. Ho! Ho! Ho!

This year we had decided to split the Christmas lunch and the December walk on the basis that we didn't really do the walk justice as we were too focused on the lunch.

So, we started with lunch on the 5th of the month at Contrast, down by the river.

Santa's sack was full to overflowing!

There was a tree made from gin bottles - unfortunately all empty.

Charlie and Sue were still smiling despite the empty bottles.

We had arrived in plenty time for a pre-lunch drink.

Of course, it wouldn't have been lunch without the lunch, and here we are gathered round the groaning trencher waiting to dig in.

I didn't take photos of everybody's lunch, so you will have to make do with mine!

I started with a very nice chicken and tarragon terrine with red berry compote and a dinky little brioche bun. Very nice it was too, although oatcakes might have been better than the bun, which was quite small.

I had turkey and all the trimmings for main. The black pudding stuffing was very good and the veg were well cooked. Very nice.

Spiced sticky toffee pudding with a dark rum butterscotch sauce was as good as it sounds.

Back to the bar, where Sharon managed to empty Santa's sack and we all did very well out of it, too. I think it would be fair to say that we all went home happy and replete.

PART 2

A mere seventeen days later we all met up again to do the second part of the festivities with a walk along the canal.

We gathered at the Telford Retail Park. Named after Thomas Telford, who designed the canal for us to walk alongside. I expect he would be really pleased to have a car park and some horribly designed shops named in his honour. Whoever named it clearly had no sense of history or the absurd. Still, at least his name lives on in your receipt for a kettle or a Game Boy.

Here we are under the memorial plaque.

It didn't take us long to find Agnes in a different car park and then head off along beside the Muirtown Basin. Muirtown is named after the town on the moor as you might imagine.

We weren't the only ones on the move as a skein of geese flew over our heads and the masts of the yachts moored in the basin.

Looking back across the basin on a peaceful day such as we had, you would never guess at the role played out here just over a hundred years ago. The basin was completed about 1807 and Telford had planned that it would be a second harbour for the town. That didn't happen as the boats rapidly became too big to negotiate the canal locks.

However, the basin was an important part of the naval history of the First World War.

A US Naval base was established at the basin then and minesweepers sailed from here to lay the Northern Mine Barrage between Orkney and Norway in 1918. This astonishing undertaking was designed to prevent German U-Boats gaining access to the Atlantic and then preying on supply ships sailing from America to Britain. The mines, components and sinkers and steel wire were shipped across the Atlantic and then taken through the canal from Fort William to the basin before being taken out to the North Sea. It is unclear how many submarines were sunk, but civilian ships continued to be sunk by uncleared mines long after the end of the war!

The thing about walking along canal sides is that the paths are flat. 

This is us heading towards the Clachnaharry locks.

We took a wee diversion through the Merkinch Local Nature Reserve.

The herons were hunched up against the cold.

We actually saw quite a lot of bird life on this walk. This is a juvenile curlew. The whiter underparts give it away as a juvenile rather than an adult bird. It is difficult to see properly from the photo, but both of its legs have been ringed.

Two crows sitting on a branch. The easy way to tell crows and rooks apart is that rooks have grey beaks and crows black. Rooks are also much more gregarious than crows. Crows are usually seen alone or in pairs whilst you will often see large flocks of rooks.

The crows were unmoved by us passing by underneath them.

A little grebe, sometimes known as a dabchick, on the open water as we headed towards the South Kessock pier, where the ferry used to berth before the Kessock Bridge was opened in 1982.

A seasonal robin.

A cormorant on a pole. Shags and cormorants are difficult to tell apart, especially in winter where the white patches at the base of a cormorant's beak are much less visible.

These are definitely oystercatchers.

Whilst there were lots of birds to see, there were also mince pies and mulled ginger wine to be had, courtesy of Susan and Robin. 

They might have got away with setting up a wee stall, such was the demand.

Cheers!

Slainte Mhath! This might have been more appropriate in that Merkinch was once a stronghold of the Gaelic language in Inverness. This was partly down to poverty - the more well to do parts of town would want to show of that they spoke the more "civilised" English.

The name Merkinch derives from Gaelic and means the horse island. The lands here were once an island in the delta of the river Ness and it was used as common grazing for horses.

The Gaelic name would be Marc Innis and the current usage of Merk rather than Mark is fairly recent. Local lads once referred to themselves as the Mark-Nish boys

You get a nice view of the Kessock Bridge over the old ferry pier wall here.

Not just any seagull, but a herring gull. It should actually be round at Clachnaharry as it used to be a fishing village and Merkinch was the site of shipbuilding in Inverness. Thornbush Quay, just around the corner from where we were, was built in 1817.

These birds are difficult to see, but I think they are ringed plovers. They are related to the plover we often call lapwings or peewit.

Another cormorant and a juvenile herring gull. Cormorants are often to be seen drying their wings in what is known as a prehistoric fashion. I guess they are thought to look like Pterodactyls. I've never seen one, so cannot comment.

Fortified by ginger wine and mince pies we head back through the Local Nature Reserve. There are over 50 of these in the country, but this is the only one in the Highlands.

Nearly a bridge photo.

Not to be outdone, Susan lifts up her hands, while Sandra looks on impassively.

What are they looking at?

Well, this!

A not very clear photo of a razor clam filtering the mud for food, suggesting that the tide was coming in.

A small group of pintails. These are the greyhound of ducks flying much faster than most others. Large flocks of pintail are restricted to the Moray, Solway, Cromarty and Dornoch Firths.

Redshanks.

A train! Currently run by Abellio, but only for another couple of years.

A solitary adult male goldeneye on the canal.

Out beyond Clachnaharry sea lock on the canal, you can see right back to the east towards the bridge....

...and west to Strathconon....

....and north west to the hills around Garve.

You can't walk any further, though!

Starting back on the other side of the canal, we pass a group of wigeon on the water.

They have picked a nice spot to spend the winter.

This building was once a smithy and, apparently, the forges and their component parts are still within the building. 

Looking back from the smithy, these canal workshops date from 1850, but they sit on the site where the earlier construction of the Muirtown Basin was overseen from.

Either the workers never managed to get to finishing time, or 

it was always just about 5 minutes left of the working day.

A juvenile moorhen. The adult birds are darker and have red beaks.

A forest of masts in the basin.

Passing by our cars and the Jammy Piece cafe, we stop to have lunch - standing up for goodness sake -  beside the Muirtown locks.

Looking down the flight of locks to the basin.

The original locks were replaced between 1890 and 1906 using new gates of oak and steel. They were mechanised in 1963.

Robin and Hugh eating a new delicacy known as a saus au vent.

They seem to like them.

On we went towards the swing bridge at Tomnahurich.

Still the sun was shining on us, casting very long shadows.

Tomnahurich cemetery on the other side of the canal. 

The Brahan Seer predicted that tall masted ships would sail behind the hill - and he turned out to be right. 

Tomnahurich translates from the Gaelic as hill of the yew wood and it has a long history of association with fairies. 2 pipers once played for the fairy inhabitants of the hill and were treated with fine food and drink and then paid in gold and silver. When morning came they walked into town and everything had changed - houses had sprung up where trees had been before. People laughed at their old fashioned clothes. They fled to their home village and tried to take refuge in the church, whereupon they immediately crumbled to dust!

Perhaps this silver balloon escaped form the festivities under the hill.

Approaching the swing bridge.

By now, we were on both sides of the divide.

There is a huge amount of construction going on here as a new roundabout and crossing of the canal are being built, all linking in to the new west link road.

Back down the other side of the canal heading towards the cars.

Bizarrely there is sign that makes me thing of the fairies and odd goings on.

When did you last see a cemetery walking?

Or a Muirtown lock!

This stretch of canal runs past Dalneigh. This translates from the Gaelic as field of the horse. This makes the neigh in the English translation seem particularly appropriate. However, it actually is entirely inappropriate. The Gaelic is spelt Dail an Eich and well into the 20th Century, it was pronounced as Dalneich by locals and still is by Gaelic speakers. The loss of this bit of heritage was occasioned by the use of Dalneigh on Ordnance Survey maps. Essentially, careless use of spelling can erase locally meaningful placenames.

Talking of appropriate or inappropriate, someone has stuck an Extinction Rebellion symbol on a power cable sign. 

A crane - but not of the avian type.

Once past the Jacobite Cruises and Caley Marina berths it was but a short walk to the Jammy Piece for tea, coffee, soup, gigantic cheese scones, cakes and other delights.

Susan and Pam really liked their food.

That, then was the end of our walks for 2019. It was a fine walk to end with and I'm sure everyone enjoyed the day. Well done to Susan and Robin for sorting out our Christmas lunch and the walk. Looking forward to next year already.
Merry Christmas to all our readers!