Tuesday 21 February 2017

An Erratic Walk

We're pretty determined to walk whatever the weather as long as it isn't too miserable and we don't put ourselves at unnecessary risk so, despite drizzle, a brisk wind, and a forecast for rain and high winds later, we walked to the northwest of Ormsaigbeg today, following....

....this, sadly un-named, burn upstream before working our way up the hillside towards the ridge line.

The advantage of a walk like this is that, had the weather suddenly deteriorated and the cloud come down, we had only to walk downhill until we hit the burn, which we could then follow downstream to the road.

The land shows no sign of emerging from winter, the only colour being provided by some of the mosses, including the brownish-reds of the sphagnum, but we weren't short of company. As well as the sheep which spend their whole year out on the Ormsaigbeg common grazings, we put up several birds, including snipe and woodcock, but....

....the highlight was coming across a pair of red grouse - the female is just visible to the left.

Sadly, they weren't willing to hang around long enough for us to get close but it was good to see them: they aren't common here.

After a bit of hunting around we found our objective for the day, a rounded boulder of a rock which is not local. It looks like a granite, and was brought here, and dumped on top of the ridge, by the glaciers which covered this area some ten thousand years ago. From it there's a great view down the Sound of Mull and across to Mull itself - on a fine day.

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