Highland Insider

Nosy Norris and I followed the Pack Leader up the Ullapool Hill paths this morning and as usual his choice of route didn’t disappoint. Nosy got the chance to bounce around in the heather and chase snowballs (puny wee things, but still fun) and I got my first view of bonny Loch Achall.

A great walk and great views but as I looked down on the gleaming water I thought the only thing missing was a bit of wildlife. We’d walked for about forty five minutes and seen nothing but a few crows and gulls mooching overhead. There were signs of critters – a pile of fur-filled poo, a young beech tree stripped of its bark – but nothing to stop and watch. Just as I was thinking this I became aware of a busy twittering noise coming from over the next hillock and getting nearer. We waited a minute or two and were rewarded when a gang of long-tailed tits flew past us and settled in the stand of birch trees below.

I always love seeing long-tailed tits. I don’t know who first described the bird as ‘a ball on a stick’ but they were spot on. The wee round body with the long straight tail makes an unmistakeable silhouette whether perching or in flight. These ones were specially welcome as they made a good walk complete.

Being woken earlier than you want to be is a feature of living in the countryside. When we moved to our house in Nairnshire, there were some hens and a cockerel already resident (abandoned by the previous occupiers) and we soon got used to Mr Oats crowing at the top of his voice any time from about 2am onwards in the summer. After one particularly frustrating morning which saw me in my nightie and wellies flinging open the hen house door and yelling SHUT UP! at a row of bewildered blinking hens, we admitted defeat and re-sited the run at the far end of the garden.

Then there were the baby swallows that went mad every morning when their breakfast was brought – right outside our bedroom window. And the cuckoo on the telegraph wire behind the holiday cottage. And the seagull tapdancing on the caravan roof…

This morning it was an enthusiastic robin serenading a lamp-post just outside the house. It was 4.45am. I turned over, started to feel annoyed, then noticed how beautiful the sound was. The wind had dropped at last and the music was streaming out of the silent night. I lay there for a while just listening and eventually drifted off again. Lovely.

I’ve just used the last of this year’s batch of Two Mile Jam. I used to make this in late summer or autumn, using fruit grown or foraged within a two mile radius of our garden in Nairnshire, and every time I spread it on my toast I was transported back to the favourite haunts that had supplied the ingredients.

All the knobbliest apples from the Bramley tree went in, along with the brambles and late wild raspberries that grew along the banks of the burn. Blaeberries from deep in the woods were essential (I kept some in the freezer in case they were over before the other ingredients were ready to pick). Occasionally a few rowan berries or a spare blueberry from the garden fruit patch were added, depending on what was around.

In fact, all of these fruits grew within about a quarter of a mile of the house. So why was it Two Mile Jam?

Because for the secret ingredient, the one that gave the jam its rich, almost alcoholic flavour, I had to walk two miles down the road to the nearest elder trees and ask their permission to take some berries. (Asking permission is traditional. In case you’re wondering, they’ve never refused.)

Elder berries are a magic ingredient for all sorts of things - smooth, deeply fruity, and full of very healthy stuff: according to the ethnobotanist James Wong they have anti-inflammatory and anti-viral properties. But mainly they’re just yummy.

This year’s batch of jam was a bit smaller then usual as we were preparing to move house and my foraging time was cut short. Last year’s big batch (in the cake in the picture) lasted us right through to snowdrop time. This was the last time the smell and taste of a jam will transport me to the woods and streams of Nairnshire. I wonder what I’ll find withing two miles of our new home?

A wee gang of wigeon have been gathering by the shore of the loch over the past few days. There were about a dozen when the PL first noticed them, increasing to thirty-one last time we were able to count them.

The reason we can’t always count them is that sometimes we walk past that spot in the evening, when we’re taking Nosy Norris for her late walk. Then all that can be seen is the reflection of moonlight or the flashing marker buoys on the dark water, but we can still hear the birds chuntering among themselves. It’s a lovely sound, the more gutteral calls punctuated with what sounds like a mini swanee-whistle, reminiscent of the whooOOo0 of the eider ducks.

I don’t know why I’m always surprised that ducks are so beautiful, but somehow I never expect it. Wigeon certainly are, especially the males with their golden foreheads and rosy breasts. I don’t know whether they’ll stay here for the winter or head somewhere further south. We’ll just watch and see, and that’s the pleasure of living among wild things and learning about them day by day. We got to know our local wildlife in Nairnshire so well, I thought I’d miss that familiarity when we moved. To some extent I do, but it’s quite exciting to have a whole new cast of regulars to become familiar with. Like making new friends.

It’s official – our move west was Worth While. I knew that already, but the PL proved it today by stepping outside at lunch time, sniffing the air and deciding to go kayaking. He was loaded up by ten to one and on the water at Ardmair Bay by ten past. A couple of hours paddling around Rhue and Isle Martin and he’s home again, all glowing and at one with the world.

I was left at home working, of course, but he assures me that he enjoyed it enough for both of us.

He didn’t take the camera but here’s a pic of Isle Martin from a previous visit.

No posts since June, but I have a note from my mum to say I was too busy upping sticks to log on.

You’ll notice the view at the top of the page has changed. We’ve left Nairnshire and headed west to that magical bit of coast where our hearts have been twiddling their thumbs for years, waiting for us to catch up with them and move there. It took longer than planned as Nairnshire turned put to be more lovely and interesting than we ever expected, but we wrenched ourselves away at last and here we are, in a seaside village, renting a house while we look for our own place.

The view’s certainly different – it’s weird to be living on a street again, even a small, quiet one, after years in the hills. But just beyond the streetlamps are hills more rugged and sunlit than any we had before, and just round the corner is Loch Broom leading out to sea and the Summer Isles. So we’re happy to be here for a while, enjoying the convenience of having two bookshops and several pubs and cafes nearby, not to mention the local market which is a treat for anyone keen on beautiful arts and crafts and seriously good food. The market is only on once a month during the winter so we’re looking forward to our first visit on Saturday.

Nosy Norris is missing the woods but loving the beach and riverside, and making us lots of new acquaintences whenever we take her out.

The village is a lively wee place and we’re almost overwhelmed with the sudden choice of things to do. Which pub to try this time? A potter in one of the bookshops? A live music session? There’s even a cinema in a van that parks up every few weeks. We’ve got a few months here to try them all, if we want to. But we won’t forget to just sit back now and again, and enjoy our new view.

Our old chooks

I spent the day at the Royal Highland Show on Saturday and my head’s still spinning. In a good way, you understand. There was everything on sale from woolly socks to astrantias, chicken coops to jewellery; there were gun-dog displays and horses, canoes and coracles; artists and crafters; and I only got round about half of the site.

The RHS is much more than an agricultural show these days, but livestock and various crops still form the heart of the show. And what happens to livestock and crops? They are turned into gorgeous, yummy, moreish food. I didn’t even find the Food Hall until after six in the evening but there were still loads of freebies to be had and lovely people who weren’t at all grumpy at the end of a long day. I came home with Stockan’s Orkney oatcakes, Thistly Cross whisky cider, and some gorgeous Lymn Bank cheese with cracked black pepper.

You can still tell it’s a farmer’s event, even if you manage to avoid the hi-tech machinery like I did. There was a stall selling not just roast beef sandwiches, but roast Simmental beef sandwiches (the queue was a mile long) and another with chocolate-dipped strawberries. Nick Nairn and Hardeep Singh Kholi were there, doing wonders with Scottish produce. Not being a meat eater, I ended up with a giant savoury pancake, followed by a Graham’s ice-cream which is now officially the best in the world, in my book.

I spent half an hour in the poultry tent, drooling over the smartest birds you’ll ever see, including silky-legged cockerels, hens with hairdos, fluff-ball ducklings and beautiful, gentle-looking quails. I MISS  MY HENS! One day I’ll have some more.

Of course the only downside to the Royal Highland Show is that it’s not in the Highands at all, but at Ingliston just outside Edinburgh. But I suppose that’s not a downside to anyone south of Aviemore and it hasn’t put me off planning a return trip next year. I’ll be needing to buy a new hen coop after all…

The slate sphere fountain at Cawdor Castle

Our recent visit to Cawdor Castle was partly to check out a new piece of art that’s been added to the gardens. We’d seen it being lifted in by helicopter a few weeks ago and were curious to see it in position. There are already three other sculptural pieces there, all of which I love: a copper fountain in the Paradise Garden and my favourites, the paired sphere and semi-circular bench representing the sun and moon in the Slate Garden. (See above, and look here for the artist’s website.) So I was anticipating something quite special. 

I read in the press that the new addition was a ‘Tree of  Life’, designed by artist Tim Pomeroy from Arran and cast in bronze by local company Black Isle Bronze. This got me even more interested. I liked the concept. I love anything in bronze. I reckoned it was going to be spectacular. 

But it wasn’t. 

It’s not that the bronze isn’t beautiful. It’s very tactile, and up close the details of the twigs, leaves and planetary symbols are delicate and intricate. There’s a sun, a golden disc that sits in the branches  which some of the other folk in our party loved. It did glow wonderfully, even on the overcast day that we visited, but I thought it looked strangely out place plonked among the branches of an oak tree (one with curiously few leaves) as if it was trapped there. It reminded me of the old story where the sun is captured and dragged down to earth with ropes. 

I liked the way the tree is set in the ground so it looks like it’s growing there but now, looking at the photos we took, I think that may be part of the problem. In a room or a small flower garden this bronze oak would look magnificent. But ‘planted’ at the end of an orchard full of big old lichened fruit trees it looks a bit puny. Maybe it will come into its own in winter when the other trees are bare too. See what you think. 

The Tree of Life in the Walled Garden

The sun has fallen!