LPPER REI'_ I ⌈ AGAIN.

Our first walk of 2025 and not too far from home at Reelig Glen. The intention was to walk on a completely different route than we had done before. We certainly achieved that! We arrived in plenty of time to examine the sign board, which provided the title for this blog, but it looks like it needs a bit of TLC.

It was a beautiful morning and I had time for a little look about before we were all gathered and ready to go.

This house is called Lyne. Just a short distance behind and to the left of the house is the remains of an illicit whisky still. These were, apparently, quite common in these parts.

With the arrival of Agnes, we were all raring to go. Perhaps we shouldn't have been in such a hurry. Just off to our right are some turf banks, forming 2 dams, built to conserve water on the side of the hill.

However, we didn't know about this and set off, blissfully unaware.

We headed downhill through the trees, with the bright sun lancing through the branches. We were well and truly in Reelig Glen. In Gaelic it is Ruighe lice, meaning stone slope, which may be a reference to the steep cliffs and slopes in the gorge itself. 

The ground and the path is covered in fallen leaves, mainly beech where we were walking.

The beech trees are thought to have been planted in 1870 and they sit nicely in among a variety of exotic and native species.

Sometimes you can't see the trees for the wood.

This is where things started to go a little awry. Jimmy, our walk leader for the day thought this might be a hill fort. It doesn't seem to be, however, it is a bit of an enigma. There are a number of entries in the historical record for this site. It looks as though people thought there were some chambered burial cairns here, but this was later found not to be so. Additionally there are natural features which have been added to by human activity relatively recently in historical terms. These might just be a folly, but there is some vitrification evident, although this appears not to have been related to fortification.

Even more weirdly, there is a theory that the hill may have been the motte hill of a 13th Century Baron and that this hill was altered by the 18th Century Laird of Reelig. He built footpaths at the base of the hill and placed a circle of large stones on the top. Other structures, if of the same date as the supposed motte, seem to be for enclosing animals rather than for defensive purposes.

I'm so confused now, that I'm beginning to regret looking it up.

I should have just stuck to the local, traditional name of the Fairy Hillock.

I am not as confused as Jimmy was, though. He then led us down a path in the wrong direction. Not bad for someone who gave us the grid reference for the meeting point and lived his whole working life dealing with maps!

Having said that, we were going more or less where we wanted to be and we were treated to a bit of exciting walking close to the edge of a reasonably precipitous slope, some might say it was a cliff hanger.

Sharon looking anxiously back to check that I haven't, literally, gone over the edge. Something, I'm apparently prone to do, especially when watching the news on TV.

We did have a raging torrent to negotiate.

Actually, it wasn't a raging torrent, but it did look as if it might have been once.

More signs of devastation - destroyed by a power so terrible that it cannot be named. It was like the Fellowship of the Ring heading through the Mines of Moria!.

There go the Hobbits!

A bridge photo. Not just any old bridge, apparently there is a stone bridge allegedly modelled on one in Ravenna in Italy. Now, I looked this up and, frankly, they don't look that similar to me! Nor, truthfully, do the Dinosaurs look like suave sophisticated Italian to me.

This is a  bit more like an Italian bridge! In order to preserve the illusion of the Grand Tour, I left the walkers out of the photo! Much more pleasing on the eye.

This bridge sits next to follies erected by James Baillie Fraser of Reelig. He was a noted artist and traveller. He spent a great deal of time in India, and Persia. He once made an epic horseback journey of 2600 miles from Istanbul to Isfahan in Iran. He became the 15th Laird of Reelig on the death of his father in 1835. He is thought to have commissioned the follies as employment for local men cleared from their crofts. The glen became known as the fairy glen, because the day's work was always removed by the time the workers returned the next day - ostensibly by fairies, but really by other workers on the instruction of the Laird.

This generosity was not unknown among some Highland landowners. In Fraser's case, it might have been a bit limited in that he spent some time in the West Indies overseeing the family's large sugar plantations, where slavery was commonplace.

There is a certain attractiveness about the grotto/folly, which is added to by the profusion of mosses and other plants. It is almost as if we had stumbled across the remnants of some long lost civilisation.

It wasn't very far from the grotto to the giant trees for which Reelig is famous. These are Douglas Firs and a number of them have been measured at over 65 metres in height, which, at the time, made them the tallest trees in Britain and, perhaps, in Europe. The tallest is known as Dughall Mor, big Douglas. He was overtaken by one of his neighbouring trees. Both are mere sapplings compared to Douglas Firs in western America, which have been measured at over 99 metres. In the UK, there are a number of Douglas Fir in Snowdonia coming in at over 70 metres. These Welsh trees were measured in 2024, so their height is more recently recorded than the Reelig trees, which will have grown in the 10 years since Douglas was measured. To complicate things even more - the usurper of Douglas at Reelig is called Dearthair Beag. Now Dearthair is Irish Gaelic for brother and the whole name would be Little Brother. However, on the Monumental Trees website the photos of Dearthair Beag are annotated as Brathair Beag, which would be little brother in Scottish Gaelic. Either way, the trees are two of a band of brothers. The grove of Douglas Fir is supposed to be the biggest collection of trees over 60 metres in height in the country.

For scale, Dave and Sandra are quite small in comparison.

After all of that hard to digest information, it was time to digest lunch, which we ate very close to the tallest Lime tree in the country, which stands at over 46 metres high, which I neglected to take a photo of.

After grottos and giants, it seemed inevitable that we would find some fairies on the fairy glen. These were, however, are the strangest fairies we've come across.

Our resident fairy friend, Maureen, was not impressed

Further down the path, we came across this structure. As with the grotto and the bridge, this is not recorded in the archaeological record, which is quite strange, I think. This may be another folly or maybe a viewing platform of some sort, overlooking the river. Having said that, the river was not particularly outstanding at that point. So, who knows?

Reelig Glen is famous for its biodiversity and, in particular for the assemblages of mosses and lichens. In places it is almost primordial in appearance.

The walk took us to the car park that most people use to do the walk up and down the river side. Nothing too exciting about a car park, but, by chance, I happened upon an old map of the area and the car park seems once to have been a coal depot!

Anyway, we climbed up from the car park with the help of railings, recently erected by Jim and Jacque's grandson Stuart, back into the beech woods. 

The woods have sheltered the ground from last night's frost, which was still lying on the fields beyond the trees.

Once we had passed the point where our very experienced walk leader took us the wrong way, we started to climb back uphill. Did I mention that he spent his working life using maps?

Now, I want to say that this is two trees having a wee hug in the forest, so I'll leave it at that.

We were heading into the sun and because of the backlight, the moss on the rocks almost looked as if they had a shimmering halo of gold.

Talking of light and dark, the lichens on the trees clearly are affected by their exposure to the sun. The dark side is facing south. That means that the dark is a lichen and not a moss. Moss prefers least sun, so can usually, but not always, be found on the north side of tree trunks. Lichens are not mosses, so need the light and prefer the south side of trees. Helpful if you find yourself out in the woods with Hansel and Gretel one day.

However, just in case there is no lichen about, you might find a handy wee directional signpost partially made form an old IRN BRU can. IRN BRU actually features along with lots of other Scottish dietary peculiarities in the Duolingo Gaelic course. The name is exactly the same in Gaelic, as in Cha toil leam IRN BRU ach tha toil leam Isbean Latharnach.  I don't like IRN BRU, but I do like Lorne Sausage..

Next a photo that reminds me of Build me up Buttercup by the Foundations from 1968! Don't be daft, you say, but look at the lyrics of the 7th verse - and I quote.....

Baby, baby try to find (hey, hey, hey)

A little time and I'll make you happy (hey, hey, hey)

I'll be home, I'll be a xylophone waiting for you

Ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh.

Jimmy played us the theme to the Lone Ranger, or was it Rossini's William Tell Overture? Actually, they are the same thing. Indeed, some writers have defined an intellectual as someone who can listen to the William Tell overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. Nobody seems to have defined who might listen to the overture and be reminded of the fast motion orgy scene in A Clockwork Orange. It wasn't me - I just read about it, honest.

A round of applause from his adoring fans, or was it just a round of fans? 

Suitably entertained we carried on up to a community cabin, with some nice looking log joints.

The Elf and safety cabinet.

On the wall of the cabin and, perhaps, following on from The Clockwork Orange was a Rutter. In fact, this was a spade used for manually digging drainage ditches in the forest before the advent of specialised machinery. These were used in the Highlands until the 1950's.

It was a bit of a Dave and the 4 Gretels cottage in the woods.

From there it was but a step to the cars and then on to The Priory in Beauly for tea and cakes. Dave was looking longingly into the distance whilst Hugh played a soulful tune on the moothie to bring our first adventure of 2025 to an end.

Thanks are due to Jimmy for getting us on the wrong path and Jacque for realising that. The first of what we hope will be some good walks this year.