Safaris and so forth....

Part Fourteen.

Upon arrival at the cottage I got all businesslike and composed a list. It consisted of the following (of course the first thing I actually did was go for a foggy walk on the beach).

Ummmm.... are you sure about this?

Things I must do.

1) The garden consists mainly of weeds, I must weed and rescue my herbs and veggies. This will have to wait until the monsoon abates.

2) The spuds must be harvested.

3) Ditto onions and garlic.

4) The lawn needs mowing.

5) The windowsills need repainting as they have developed bubbles.

6) I must decide upon where to hang the mirror in the bedroom.

7) I must finish sewing the quilt.

8) I must collect the trunk or trunks (I must also decide whether to buy one or both).

Hmmm…

9) I must get some dark green hammerite and paint the butcher’s block.

10) I must get some sturdy mirrorplates in order to hang the above mirror.

11) I must get a sheet of ply and paint my flag signals

As a reward for achieving any of the above I created the following list. Both lists existed in order to give me some kind of frame of reference for day to day living… the strangest things start happening in your head when you are living in splendid isolation up a mountain which is frequently swathed in thick and impenetrable fog. This blog is in fact a testament to that!

Things I wish to do.

1) I want to go snorkelling and try my new camera. This will require sunny warm weather (this reminds me, I must find a spot for the barometer and hang it)..

2) I want to go for a walk on Xxxxx head, a map would help.

3)I want to find out if the lakes are phosphorescent at night. If they are I will try and take my mate to watch me swim there.

4) I want to cycle around and explore (NB lights and a dog carrier would be good).

5) I want to cycle up to the cottage I didn’t buy and check it out.

6) I want to get up at dawn and go for a swim.

7) I want to turn  my driftwood into something useful and attractive.

8) I want to kick Xxxx into gear and achieve that walk.

All this was well and good, and some of it even got done, but somehow I kept getting sidetracked. It was the weather you see… I didn’t rain hardly at all. Rather than waste this great good fortune doing stuff to the house or attacking the undergrowth (in what I now accept is probably a loosing battle) I decided to get out there and make the most of it.

I got a wonderful present of a waterproof camera from Himself. This has created a monster, it dictated almost everything I did… If I was digging the garden and spotted an interesting insect, or cloud or…. I would dash inside to get the camera and spend the next twenty minutes shooting the object of my desire from a variety of angles, before getting sidetracked by yet another interesting bug/stone/plant/bird. It is no wonder that I was to be found frantically digging spuds on the day before I was due to leave.

Here are a few of the reasons the gardening didn't get done.....

Help with identification would be useful please?

Small tortoiseshell on the hydrangea

Ummm...Lizard and spider?

Small tortoiseshell on the allium

Caterpillar.... but which caterpillar?

Another small tortoiseshell on the hebe this time.

Slightly blurry bee on the montbretia, what kind of bee?

Male common blue on devil's bit scabious (thanks Heather :-D)

Wall brown... maybe?

Slightly scary spider....

Burnett moth (six spot...maybe?)

Bee or hoverfly?

Definitely bee!

Lizard (common??)

I think he's rather cute

A female Gatekeeper apparently! Thanks again Heather.

Ummmm...help?

Grasshopper (before the dog arrived, she's got rather good at hunting them)

Might be Bog Pimpernel, but I'm not sure.

BIG hairy caterpillar capable of great speed!

Stoat (my stoat, eating my bank voles I reckon)

I had the brilliant idea of climbing a (small) mountain in order to take pics of the peninsula for my mate In fact I climbed it twice. The first time the cloud rolled in and the pictures I had envisaged taking consisted mostly of, well, cloud… 

On my way up I was vaguely looking for a path, though without any great expectation of finding one.  

Up we climbed, or rather I climbed and the dog was carried due to an incompatibility with gorse. She becomes quite heavy quite quickly. There were a number of trodden paths, although trodden by whom or what is open to speculation. Every now and then a small cairn would appear. Assuming that these denoted an official, or at least semi official track, I followed them.

That little pimple in the middle is one of the cairns, can YOU spot the path?

 Of course the track I was following would inevitably peter out and I would find myself waist deep in gorse, or bog or face to face with a twenty foot wall of vertical slimy rock. I would eventually pick up a track, probably made by wild goats (who must be enormous if the droppings are anything to go by, and the rabbits must be the size of St Bernards. The caterpillar I found was colossal

When it grows up it will be an Emperor Moth

God knows what they all live on, gorse perhaps?) and sight another cairn, towards which I would aim. It took a while for the penny to drop. The only thing which the cairns signified was the presence of some other idiot up there at some point. They did not signify any kind of path and nor were they any kind of indication as to the subsequent survival of their creator.

I knew I had finally achieved the summit when out of the clouds, a cross (newly erected) loomed above me.

Such things are not uncommon in this part of the world. To me they represent a sort of grand whimsical folly. I mean, why??? It isn’t an official place of pilgrimage, despite the awe inspiring view (when you can see anything but cloud).

It isn’t even a recognised walk. It’s just a bloody difficult, spiky, wet and disorienting scramble up a large hill (dog carrying is not obligatory) which then doesn’t go anywhere. There are a few houses and farms nestling on the eastern foot of this large hill. This is the reason why you cannot go anywhere except back the way you came. One of these houses sported a German flag fluttering gaily in the breeze. Nearby was another house which had no visible means of access, it looked like a suburban Sleeping Beauty castle, all tangled undergrowth… This led me to speculate about various cold war type scenarios and other intrigues.

Apart from the slightly worrying crap (if there’s something THAT big up here, where is it hiding and what does it eat…..?)

 A wide variety of wildlife was in evidence. There was obviously a Peregrine somewhere in the vicinity as I stumbled across the remains of it’s dinner, a seagull.

I can’t think of much else that would take a seagull on, they tend to be evil tempered buggers at the best of times. There were many raucous choughs on the way up the mountain. They sound rather common and lower the tone. There were several magical little lakes, home to many dragon and damsel flies, which whirred and buzzed about the place.

I discovered that it is almost impossible to take a picture of a dragonfly, the move too fast (even while mating!). The damselflies were more sedate, though I think they were also busy making more damselflies.

A random fish dropped (I presume) by a gannet or seagull played host to vividly coloured carrion beetles, (so did a turd left by the dog, but I didn’t take a pic of that),

I did some more exploring, going to visit a derelict Napoleonic tower which was subsequently used by Marconi as his first signal station. It is perched precariously upon a sliver of rock which projects out into the incessant pounding of the Atlantic.  

True to form, the cloud descended. The speed at which the weather changes is astonishing (this is usually, but not always for the worse). One minute you might be basking in sunshine, the next you are thoroughly damp and unable to find your car.

 Don’t get me wrong, the weather was absolutely fantastic all summer, it was just the days on which I ventured out that inexplicably turned grey and wet. I struggled up a wet, spiky and overgrown track to the unprotected ruins, where masonry was free to fall and slates to fly off and decapitate the unwary. I explored the piles of rubble, unfettered by warnings, admonitions or barriers.

If this building were anywhere else (in Europe or America anyway) it would have been carefully restored and offered as an ‘experience’ at €10 a visit, café and gift shop attached. I can’t decide whether it’s abandonment is a tragedy or a blessing. I made a damp detour through the long grass, the dog disappearing down green tunnels of undergrowth.

We scrambled over a partially collapsed drystone wall and across an overgrown field. I had to carry the dog again… more gorse. I carefully avoided the worryingly fresh cowpats, keeping a wary eye out for the culprits. While there were numerous smelly splats in evidence, all of the cattle appeared to be in a neighbouring field (unlike the large bull I encountered wandering along my road the previous evening), maybe the incontinent ones had dropped off the edge? Slipped on their own shit perhaps? The slope either side of the narrow track was becoming increasingly precipitous.

If you look very carefully, you can see where the path isn't... It's dropped into the sea.

I couldn’t help recalling Himself holding forth on the subject of walkers falling and getting themselves killed (and we had been on a much broader and gentler slope at the time, a broken leg rather than instant messy death on razor sharp rocks). In Ireland, there are few, if any denoted footpaths. One takes one’s life in one’s hands and follows a random goat track (their prints may be seen in moist ground and their shit abounds). There are no safety notices or fences (except the odd ‘stop’ sign approaching a precipice), however, no pedestrian precipices are protected. One gets lost all alone and unaided.

This is like some sort of prehistoric toll gate...

Er.... Mum...?

By the time we reached the end of the path (or more accurately, the point at which I lost my nerve) I had put the dog on her lead as she seems to have no fear of heights. We sat down on the crumbling path on the edge of the cliff in order to take pictures of the large chunks of said cliff which had fallen into the sea (for those who suffer from vertigo, look away now).

If I had been in England, this vantage point would have been fenced off half a mile back, possibly sensibly so, although I am unaware of any recent casualties at that spot.

We then explored the derelict mining village, eerie in the all enveloping fog, with the signal station looming through the cloud at the brow of the hill.

There are many ruins around here. There is a reason for this, despite the mental image of a cozy rural cottage with a blazing turf fire, these houses were rubble walled hovels which sucked in the damp and had two bedrooms (one walk through for the children and a terminal one for the adults and infants) a kitchen and living area (stone floors and a plank on boxes to sit on). The sanitary arrangements consisted of a water butt or stream and a long drop toilet if you were posh, otherwise there’s plenty of gorse….

The dog was very pleased to make it back onto tarmac and civilisation as she was rather wet and spiky.

That didn’t prevent her from acquiring an admirer who popped out from a gap in the hedge and followed us for some distance. She was unmoved by his devotion and ignored him.