AWAY AT LAST

DAY 1 FRIDAY 19TH NOVEMBER

After what seems like a very long time, the Dinosaurs finally got away for a weekend trip.

We didn't go far, but it was away, and that's what matters.

We went to Forres and the Knockomie Inn.

Before we left, there was a bit of a rainbow under a fairly grey sky. A portent for the weekend to come, perhaps.

As is often the way with these trips, some of us played golf. This time it was gentlemen only at Forres Golf Club - although the ladies joined us for tea and coffee before we set off.

It was a remarkably fine morning and afternoon for golf, much better than forecast.

Robin gave his ball a stern talking to before teeing off at the first.

The first hole is quite interesting as it lies immediately adjacent to the large rambling property known as Cluny Hill. Forres Golf Club was formed in 1889, but the first course was between Forres and Findhorn. By 1901, that course had reduced to 9 holes due to coastal erosion. 3 years later, the 9 hole Muiryshade course on the present site was built to serve the Cluny Hill Hydropathic Hotel. It was designed by James Braid. In the same year, the Forres club moved to this site, but had only limited access to the course as priority was given to hotel clients.

In 1912, Willie Park, who won The Open in 1894, redesigned the course to provide 18 holes. He didn't include the telecoms mast in the design.

In 1944, Sir Robert McVitie Grant of Logie, bought the course from the hotel and gifted it to the people of Forres. Spooky, really, given that by the time we were at this spot on the course, the ladies were on their way to Logie Steading and they might even have had a McVitie's digestive for tea.

It really was a splendid day and the course was in pretty good nick for the time of year.

It remained benign throughout the whole round and we had a great time.

We even managed to finish the round before the sun went down.

From the golf course we headed straight to our accommodation at the Knockomie Inn. A very fine looking house. The older house (1812) is on the left and a very fine Arts and Crafts addition dated 1914 is on the right. The 1914 house was designed by Walter Henry Woodroffe who was a London based architect. A strange choice you might think, but his practice seems to have specialised in dealing with large country estates and had a number of clients in and around Moray. The house was built for the Fraser family who had made their fortune in tea plantations in India.

Whilst the poor old gentlemen had been tramping around the golf course, the ladies had returned from Logie and had launched into the gins in the lounge.

Luckily for us there was a welcoming log fire in the hall, but it wasn't the one that was supposed to be there. The drawings provided for a large cast iron fireplace, but this was abandoned at the outbreak of the First World War.

There was quite an elegant staircase which we further enhanced on our way to dinner.

We also graced the hall for a group photo.

Dinner was a fine affair.

The Smiths were having an engrossing chat around the table.

Another group photo at the dinner table.

It ill behooves me to make a great deal of the results of the golf, but the winner was an especially handsome and modest fellow with an outrageously large handicap, Here he is, with his darling wife looking up adoringly at him. I will say no more of it.

After the end of a fine day of golfing heroics (I lied), splendid weather, good food and company, it was time for bed.

DAY 2 SATURDAY 20TH NOVEMBER

After a good sleep and a hearty breakfast, it was time to get walking.

Gathering in the car park, it is hard to miss a fairly tall beech tree in the island in the drive. I expect this was planted at the time of building the house, so it is probably over 100years old. It has certainly suffered a bit from windy conditions, which might have prevailed when the house was built and less surrounded by woodland and housing. You can tell that by the twisting evident on the trunk of the tree.

I don't know if the sign saying "Sunbathing if sunny" refers to the tree, hotel staff or guests.

Behind the tree sits the remains of an elephant's skull - minus the tusks. Nobody could tell us why it was there, but there were other hunting trophies in the hall and on the staircase of the house, so it may have been part of that hunting background. 

I prefer to think that it has something to do with the Frasers making their fortune from tea in India. They surely would have a pet elephant that they brought back from India with them for their children to play with. It lived a long and happy life, giving rides to local urchins and took part in the annual Forres carnival parade, until it slipped away peacefully in its sleep at the grand old age of 100.

Jimmy recalled hearing about a circus elephant that died on tour in the Highlands and wondered whether this was it. I did have a look for this and found that a number of circus or exhibition elephants died in Scotland, including in Dumfries and Dundee. One is even reputed to be buried under Partick Thistle's stadium in Glasgow. I couldn't find any in the Highlands or Moray. I prefer to go with the child friendly pet elephant theory.

My research for this involved a confused glance at a scientific paper entitled 

Qualitative Comparison of the Cranio-Dental Osteology of the Extant Elephants, Elephas Maximus (Asian Elephant) and Loxodonta africana (African Elephant). It didn't help and I don't know whether this was an Asian elephant which would clearly confirm the family pet theory.

Back to the walking. We were off to Culbin Forest in the rain. Culbin derives from the Gaelic Cul meaning back and Bheinn meaning of the mountains. It is though that this refers to the large sand dunes, this being the land behind the dunes.

We were a little deflated to be getting ready to walk in a bit of hefty rain at the car park.

Some of us gathered like little lost sheep near the gent's toilet.

Dave trudged by as Charlie left the toilets to a larger audience than he might have expected.

The rain abated a little and we all gathered round our leader for the day as he explained where we were going and how not to get lost.

Before even a few steps were taken, we saw this plaque commemorating the visit in July 1969 of Prime Minister Harold Wilson to celebrate the Jubilee year of the Forestry Commission. Some of us, but not all, were young enough to still be at school when this happened.

Harold was accompanied by Willie Ross, the then Secretary of State for Scotland.

If it had been raining then, no doubt there was a flunky specifically tasked (when did they stop assigning tasks and just task people?) with holding the umbrella to shelter the important people from the rain.

There was a lot of fungi in the forest. I thought I would take photos and then identify them later. No chance. There are about 15000 different fungi in the country and they are generally classified in huge groups. I started, but lost the will to carry on quite quickly. I'll just include the pictures to illustrate the huge variety of things to see in the woods.

The rain was almost gone and we were making good progress through the trees.

Some of the trees had been cut short to maintain habitat for all sorts of insects and the things that like to eat them.

There were a lot of trees.

There were also signs of better weather to come, the further along we got

Honest! It will get better.

Most of the trees in Culbin are Scots Pine, originally planted to stabilise the dunes.

I did spot this bare branched Larch.

Did I ever tell you the story of how the larch came to shed its needles in winter?

No! No! You didn't great old uncle Bob. Please tell us! Please! Please! Please!

Oh, OK, then.

Once upon a very, very long time ago, all was silent in the cold forests of the northlands. It was very quite just as the summer was coming to an end and the days were settling into a less frantic time. A time for gathering strength and quiet reflection.

Not a sound could be hea.....

"I'm bored" said Larry Larch in a very loud voice. " In fact I'm more than bored, I'm fed up and bored as well" he complained noisily.

"Oh dear" responded grand old Peter Pine. "That will never do. Trees are not supposed to be bored. Can't you just enjoy the magnificent silence? Can't you sit and sense the sibilant sigh of the breeze as it sifts through the leaves of the trees? Can't you..."

" No I can't. I'm completely and utterly stultified. I need some change, some excitement, some colour in all this glum greenness that we live in."

The other trees were aghast. Nobody had ever said such things before and, certainly, nobody had ever spoken to Peter pine in quite such a forceful way before.

"I'm going to do something about this." said Larry. " No more green for me. Why can't we be red, gold, brown, yellow? Any colour but boring old green" he said forcefully.

"Ah well," started Peter Pine. 

" I don't care what you think, Pete, I'm going to change!" Larry shouted. In a moment, because trees can do all sorts of magic things if they want, he had changed his green needles for a lovely orange brown shade, which he felt matched his standing very well.

"No good will come of this" rumbled Peter.

It wasn't too long before some other trees noticed how Larry stood out from the crowd. Bertie Birch changed into a bright yellow, while Mary Maple went as red as can be. Soon, lots of trees had changed into a dazzling array of brightness.

Their clothes shimmered in the breeze and the forest had a whole new look.

Then winter came and the breeze turned into a wind, then a gale, then a storm. There was rain and sleet and snow. This stripped and tore the flimsy bright leaves from the trees, exposing their bare, thin branches to the full force of the weather. The naked trees shivered and cowered from the cold and the wind.

"Told you so" said Peter, smugly.

Winter didn't last forever, though. The days got warmer. The sun shone for longer. Larry and his friends could not forgot about the horrible weather and before you knew it, they started to grow little buds of fresh green leaves. They were happy to get back to being green and to look just like everyone else.

Then, one day, just at the end of summer, Larry the Larch announced "I'm Bored.........

That sent a shiver down the pine!

There are lots of different lichens in Culbin Forest.

This is Cladonia portentosa. At least, that's what it looks like to me. It is certainly a species found on dune systems.

This is one of the Usnea species of lichen, often known as Oakmoss.

This is what happens if you don't listen to Peter Pine.

There are still wood ant nests about, but no sign of the ants themselves. There are some left, notably the queen ants and a few workers. They retreat to the depths of the nest and wait out the winter, emerging in spring to restart the colony. Winter allows the material in the next to decay and create some warmth in the nest.

There are even some flowers about. This is broom. It is more common to see gorse all year round, but broom is less in evidence. Broom is an indicator of acid soils and it is the case that broom was used to make brushes for sweeping floors - hence the name. Be careful not to sweep your house with flowering broom in May, because fokelore suggests you will also be sweeping the head of the household away!

Sweetie time!

Big black fungus.

However, I think this is just a rotting mushroom rather than a naturally black fungus.

These are probably mushrooms belonging to a group known as the Pinkgills. Don't ask me what species they are exactly. They are one of a host of what are known as LBMs - little brown mushrooms.

I know these are boxes. But I don't know what they are for. There did not appear to be any opening to allow access by birds or bats, but surely nobody nails boxes to trees for no reason!

They do have numbers, though.

In trying to find out about this, I did discover that there was an experiment undertaken in this very forest to see what nest boxes, if any, Crested Tits might prefer. The answer seems to be none. Deep boxes were favoured by Coal, Great and Blue tits in Culbin. Only one shallow box was occupied and that was, indeed, by Crested tits. However, the conclusion of the study was that you couldn't draw any conclusions from the study, because it didn't last long enough and there was only a small sample size and low uptake of the boxes anyway. I'm not sure if the study was taxpayer funded!

Charlie has a bit of form for delivering a sermon from the mound!

Nobody seemed to be listening, though.

These were the Dragonfly ponds. There were no dragonflies about today, because it is winter. Dragonflies only live as dragonflies for a few weeks. Most of their life is spent underwater as larvae. When they do emerge as dragonflies, they become the most successful hunters on the planet, catching more than 95% of the prey they target. They do this by being able to track moving targets as well as anticipating their trajectory and being able to adjust their own flight according to changes of direction of the prey insect. I'm just glad they are the size they are.

We all gathered at the pond, but saw nothing moving. Of course, the dragonfly larvae were under the surface and they are as voracious hunters as the fully emergent dragonflies. 

A whole bank of Cladonia. 

Another Cladonia species - coniocraea, I think.

This, on the other hand, is an old water tank. I have no idea how it got here, though.

Wee white mushrooms.

By now the sun was shining through the trees.

We were heading for the platform through the trees. The platform is on top of Hill 99, allegedly so named by the foresters who planted the forest. It may also be because the hill, is the highest sand dune in the forest at 99 feet.

Maybe this is where the foresters lived.

Here is the trig pillar just below the summit of the dune.

This is the flush bracket on the trig pillar. You can find out the details of the pillar from the data on the flush bracket. So S8723 is the number of this one. The height at the top of the arrow is exactly 29.586 metres or 97 feet and 0.803 inches above sea level (at Newlyn, which is where Ordnance datum is taken).

Someone had left this lovely little picture of the seaside, but I don't think it was meant to represent Newlyn.

So, up the steps we went to the top of the tower. Well, most of us did. Dave met a couple of old teacher pals and spent a fair bit of time half way up exchanging stories about how bad life as a teacher is/was.

Not only was there a view of the teachers, there were some fine views in all directions from the platform at the top.

We spent a bit of time taking it all in.

You could see right across to the construction yard at Nigg over 20 kilometres away.

Much closer is the sand bar and lagoon known as the Gut. The white poles in the water were put there deliberately to prevent enemy gliders landing on the sheltered mudflats during the second world war.

It was all quite spectacular.

We were lucky that the weather had cleared to allow a good view of the hills receding into the south and west.

Here we all are enhancing the view.

Nearby to the tower were the fantastically twisted remains of Rosebay Willowherb seedheads. This is a very prolific plant and it can be hard to get rid of. It has many uses as food in North America and is known as a pioneer plant. Not because pioneers ate it, but because it colonises land before other species, notably after fires.

Someone else left a message for passing walkers and it is nice to see it has managed to to stay in the same place for a reasonable period of time (despite the spelling mistake).

A gorse flower. You can see these all year round and they are reputed to indicate fidelity and loyalty.

A proper tree hugger.

Next stop was the Gravel Pit ponds, which are a lot prettier than the name might suggest. 

We spent a bit of time just looking about. A nice spot.

Just as nice from the other side.

Heading back to the cars, we passed a few nests on the road, probably put there by ground nesting birds like the Playfulis kidicus.

Time for lunch, so we went to The Captain's Table in Findhorn for a variety of food and drink.

Sharon tipped her cap in recognition of Hugh's remarkable ability to balance a painting on his head.

Everybody enjoyed their lunch and felt the better for it.

From there it was back to the hotel for a rest, before we were soon out again.

This time we were off to Brodie Castle to see some illuminations of the castle and grounds. It was a bit cold and the sky looked very foreboding on the way there.

However, the doom laden clouds came to nought and we had a very pleasant wander round the grounds.

Jimmy, oblivious to the approaching tentacles of the great purple tree octopus.

Dinosaurs with a dragon.

Spooky

.

Fishy.

Almost the end of a good day, but first we had to go back to the hotel, freshen up, have our aperitifs and then eat another good dinner, before retiring for the night.

DAY3 SUNDAY 21ST NOVEMBER

Another day, another breakfast, another car park and another walk.

Before that, we had time for a group photo before we left the hotel after a really good stay.

The car park and, once again, the umbrellas. As before, however, the umbrellas did not stay up as we were favoured by the weather once more - at least for the bulk of the walk.

Off we go to the woods and the hill to the back of Forres. Quite appropriate as it turns out. Forres is derived from the Gaelic Far - under or below and ras shrubs or underwood. The name likely references the position of the town at the foot of wooded hills.

Up the hill and into the woods.

Kicking through the beech leaves, like playful little children.

For some reason, unknown to me, the raindrops have stayed on the oak leaf, but there is no water on the beech. It wasn't as if the tide had gone out!

The sun was coming out and the woods were really looking very good.

Looking down into Helge's Hole. The origin of the name is unknown, although there is a suggestion that it was once known as Hale's Hole or Hell's Hole. The area was used in the past for sports, including cricket and shinty.

There was even a thought that Helge was a witch, but that was put forward by Sue and she is a bit biased when it comes to witches. The flaw with the argument is that Helge is a man's name, Helga would be the female form. Helge is also Norwegian for the weekend.

Hel, on the other hand, is a woman presiding over the underworld (don't they all), where she receives portions of the newly dead in tribute. Nice, but maybe there is a Viking connection, although that is unlikely as the only documented Viking incursion into the north east of the mainland resulted in Eric Blood-Axe being defeated at Cruden Bay.

Cotoneaster berries. These are a very important food source for birds and the flowers are equally important for bees early in the season when flowers are few and far between.

Twisty beech branches - a bit of the wild wood look about them.

We dropped down to the Mosset Burn, which ultimately flows to Findhorn Bay.

It is markedly different from the woods on Cluny Hill.

It was very calm - this is the reflection of the trees on the burn.

Lots of birds like it here. Swans, ducks and gulls, mainly.

A female Mallard.

A young Mute Swan, not yet thrown out by its parents!

Where there is food there are gulls - mainly Black-headed gulls here. They lose their distinctive black head feathers in the winter.

The birds are all on Sanquhar Loch - a bit of a grand name for an area of water held back by a weir. It must be one of the smallest named lochs in the country.

It is artificial and was used to power a nearby mill and to provide cooling water for the Benromach Distillery.

The water spilling over the dam is almost hypnotic.

Further on, I make the shocking discovery that Maureen has kidnapped one of the ducks!

Heading towards Chapelton Farm we get some nice views form the edge of the woodlands.

We passed this message about COP26. It suggests writing a message to the world on one side of a leaf and a message to the government on the other. Cast it to the wind. I can see that from a metaphysical view, the world might absorb the message. I think there is no hope, real, or metaphorical, of Boris taking a leaf out of this particular book.

There are also 5 rules for us all to follow, so pay attention.

1. Put your rubbish in a bin.

2. Put recyclables in the right bin.

3. Stop chopping down trees.

4. Save as much water as you can.

5. Respect the global goals.

Oops! they missed the notice.

A bridge over the burn. Just the opportunity I was waiting for.

The barn at Chapelton Farm. It hasn't changed much since we were here in 2018.

Now.

Then.

Next we came to the sadly boarded up Leanchoil hospital dating from 1892 and famous for being where Pam had her tonsils removed.

We didn't see much wildlife on this trip, but here are some goldfinches watching us as we walked by the hospital.

We all know that honesty is the best policy.

You think these are the seed pods, but no, they are actually silicles. That is they are the remains of a membrane that separated two sides of the sillicle, which is not a true botanical seed pod. The membrane can last all year and the seeds will be long gone.

Into Muiry wood. If you were paying attention and are still awake, you will remember that the golf course was known as Muiryshade and here we are heading back towards the golf course.

Volunteers are required to maintain the community woods here, so |I sent them some of your details. They'll be in touch soon, I'm sure.

Nice birch woodland that is sorely in need of some diversity. Most of the trees are the same sort of age and unless young trees can be established the wood will disappear in a few decades time. This will mean some felling to create space for new trees. Oh dear, that's rule number 3 out the window.

Looking back over the scene of one of the greatest triumphs in recent sporting history. Modesty prevents me saying what that triumph was, but it was astonishingly recent.

As we walked down the edge of the golf course a flock of pigeons took to the air. This could also have been a plague or a school, a flight, a band or more ominously a dropping!

We managed to avoid the dropping, but not the rain, which began to fall as we were nearing the end of the walk.

Some of us with sore bits, walked down the gently sloping road to the car park and others went through the woods.

We all ended up at the same car park, with the unfortunately closed toilets. From there we drove to the Mosset Tavern for a most acceptable lunch.

Following that, it was time for us all to head for home after a great weekend.

Profuse thanks must go to Susan and Robin for all the organisation and to everyone else for being such good company. It really was good to get away at last.