OUT AND ABOUT WITH RALPH: Cruise liner at Scrabster dwarfs my kayak!
It’s not been a good couple of weeks for getting out and about. I always tell others to make sure they don’t get too diverted by all the things that need doing and then fall into the same trap myself.
A dose of Covid which completely sapped all energy afterwards didn’t help either! So I planted the tatties and the seedling peas, I cut various lawns and sawed firewood.
The endless job of planting trees in the wood continues, but it is encouraging when trees planted up to 20 years ago now produce a lovely thicket of fresh green leaves, even with white cherry blossom.
There’s a chorus of willow-warblers, tits, chaffinches and wrens. The first cuckoo calls loudly, always arriving within a day or two of the swallows as well as the terns, whose piercing cries are now heard again over Thurso and Dunnet beaches.
Looking after trees already planted is a big job. Last winter’s need a spoon of fertilizer and some water to wash it in. Stakes have fallen over or snapped, ties holding the protective tube in place broken. Fences are down.
As soon a young tree is exposed the roe deer are straight in, browsing new buds and barking the tree with their antlers, the tree is either killed or set right back.
Gorse and a new growth of spruce, unwanted among the broadleaves, needs constant cutting back and removing. Always there is a vigorous new growth of invasive salmonberry, threatening to take over some areas. Fortunately it likes to be an undershrub and does not grow so well in open, exposed places.
A large number of big spruce blew down in the winter gales, blocking paths and routes, smothering moorland. All this needs clearing. The log cabin roof needs to be properly repaired, I only patched it after a big tree fell on the cabin. More logs need to be cut for firewood. The list goes on, I could work in the wood full time.
A long windy spell has meant little sea-kayaking. Just about all I’ve managed is the equivalent of walking round Thurso Mall, namely a paddle from the esplanade out to Holburn Head.
Still, it was nice to be out in the sea even for such a tame trip, and having a look at a big German cruise liner in at Scrabster gave it some point. A couple of hundred passengers had decided to visit Holburn Head, giving the normally deserted headland the appearance of a busy Lake District fell.
The sea was getting a bit choppy towards the point and I didn’t want everyone to witness an embarrassing capsize – so I turned back without even having a look at Clett Rock. The shags had set up nests along the cliffs, on the sea was the first tystie, there were long tailed ducks and terns calling in the bay. Meanwhile, others more adventurous than me were paddling out to Cape Wrath.
I didn’t get any photos at Dunnet Head. Not even by boat, I simply cycled out, to be back home by mid-morning. The fog lay thick over the headland, I always scramble round to the viewpoint north of the lighthouse but the sea-bird colonies were almost completely hidden with just the nearby cliff-top fulmars visible on nests.
Also in ones, twos and little clusters were the campervans which now migrate to Dunnet Head during the summer months. Tourists were photographing the fog, not perhaps realising that on a clear day they would see Cape Wrath over 60 miles away.
I made another favourite little bike ride to shake off the Covid lassitude, out to Dorrery Hill, hardly even worth calling a hill. The view though is good and it gives just a flavour of the Flow Country it overlooks and a nostalgic hint of the Highlands proper.
The osprey platform near the top is not in use this year, I think it was made to divert the birds from nesting on the telecoms mast itself.
Every day is precious at this time of year, new life is springing up everywhere, so don’t be like me, get out there and make the most of our glorious Highland countryside!