Great trees, Cistercians and the Blackwater Valley

I lived in Eire from 1990 to 1993, I have not been back to Eire since I visited Co. Clare in 1996. So when an old school friend invited me over I put up very little resistance. Springtime in Ireland is special.

Kathy lives with her family in Co. Waterford, within sight of the Knockmealdown Mountains. On my first day with them I explored the area with her youngest, Daniel.

Kathy's family had, in previous centuries, been significant land owners in this part of Ireland and the nearby Cistercian Abbey now occupies what had been one of the family homes. The drive curves down from the road, finally revealing the church and abbey against the backdrop of the wooded Blackwater valley. Of course, what caught my eye immediately was the great tree in front of the building! When I got up to it, I did not know (and am still unsure) of the species. It is a truly remarkable tree. Great height coupled with the expansive open-grown form gives the tree a symmetrical beauty and majesty from its sheer size that makes you stop and stare.

The hour-glass trunk makes it difficult to measure, but at 1.5 metres off the ground (where we would usually measure the girth of a veteran tree) it is over 7 metres in circumference.

As I looked around, I could see several other great trees: copper beech, Scots pine, common beech and of course Irish (or Western) oak.

The views down the Blackwater Valley are fantastic. Daniel and I went on down to explore the river, finding more lovely old oaks in the flood meadows.

A pollard oak, sadly misused by management and cattle.

Daniel was reluctant to become a tree hugger at first, but soon got the hang of it!

The River Blackwater itself is a strong lowland river as it winds through the broad valley, drawing waters from the mountains and rolling farmland on either side. Daniel and I searched for signs of otters, found none but we did find where the deer had been swimming the river and scrambling out.

Our feet got soggy in the long valley grass as we tramped back towards the Abbey. Climbing up through the woods, we had a look into some interesting burrows amidst the bluebells and wild garlic.

Last days on Islay

My last couple of weeks on Islay, which could have been a nightmare of packing the house, selling all the stuff I could not get off the island, making bookings for vans, flights, storage and finding somewhere to live (not to mention cancelling flights, car rental, etc), was hugely alleviated by the presence of good friends who saved my sanity and offered practical help.

The first visitor to my home arrived the day before my employment ended. She sat me down in front of a spreadsheet and worked through the process of getting off the island with my belongings, making a move to a new location and ensuring that I was able to make the vital hospital appointments the following week. Friends and family came up with offers of accommodation, invaluable career advice was forthcoming and pretty soon I had a plan. How that plan developed, dissolved and had to be re-made on the hoof has provided me with proof that the military adage "no plan survives contact with the enemy" is God's own truth. That whole litany of stress and disaster will not be the subject of a future blog ... I'll just let it sink back into the murky waters of my memory, hopefully never to surface again.

The best thing about having my visitors with me was that I was able to get out into the increasingly nice weather to enjoy bits of the island and share them with others. The lovely walk up to Rhuval Lighthouse (subject of my first Islay blog) was so much more enjoyable with a friend striding beside me, a stroll around the Mull of Oa and beach combing in search of shells; all things that you need to share with others. The hard core photographic trips are peculiarly painful for anyone with me, so are best done alone, but the pure enjoyment of a beautiful natural environment, full of wildlife and alive with wind, sun and rain is enhanced by the company of a friend or three.

Beach combers

Finding shells

Skimming stones - who can resist it?

The wildlife was not quite so forthcoming. The promises of eagles I had made at Rhuval and Oa did not materialise (I blame the RSPB for this, they are in charge of birds after all) and the Bunnahabhain otters also hid from us. However, there was a lovely sighting of an otter for me as I left on the ferry from Port Askaig to take the first load down south. A female was sheltering from the ferocious tide by  hunting close to the rocks in the lee of the ferry itself. She popped up like a submarine surfacing, looked at me, winked (she DID!) and then disappeared.

I was very pleased that the hares, that abound (literally) on the island, performed superbly for the amazing friends who came to join me for my last three days. They helped me pack, load the van, get the house sorted out and ensured that I was able to take whatever remains of my sanity with me when me and the van were squished onto the ferry by the skilful CalMac folk at Port Askaig.

So, now I am resident in sunny Bracknell, but am sitting in Heathrow Terminal 2 while writing this before travelling to Cork for the weekend. The weather in Cork promises to be a series of 'soft days' (gentle rain), but I am looking forward to seeing it all again after so long.

Goats and grey seals

I have started to explore the rocky coasts of Islay. It is full of caves, arches and tiny lonely beaches. Along the coast are the mysterious duns: the remains of prehistoric round houses. It is so full of nooks, crannies and ottery hidey-holes that I don't get very far along the coast: exploring takes time!

One of the more surprising things to see along the coast are the wild goats. They breed very early. This nanny had a tiny kid at foot and this was taken before the recent period of cold weather. These early kids will be very luck to survive. bad for goats, but great if you're an eagle.

Wild Goat and kid. Islay

The secluded beaches are safe places for seals to haul out and rest. I came across the two below last weekend. One sunbathing on a rocky about 150 metres off the shore and the other came swimming in towards me and popped up to get a closer look. Their faces are rather odd, a bit mask-like with huge goggle eyes that I find a bit un-nerving.

Grey Seal. Islay

Grey Seal. Islay

Islay: sand, sunburn and scenery.

My third weekend on Islay. Sunday dawned clear and still. Gone was the mix of rain and hail that, when driven by a blustery gale, really hurts a bald head. So I set out to walk from Bunnahabhain to the lighthouse at Rhuvaal on the north-east coast of the island. I parked near the distillery and went through the deer fence gate. Almost immediately, I came upon the Margadale River where it debouches into the sea. Where a river meets the sea is always the best place to find sign of otters and sure enough I quickly found lots of evidence: fresh spraint that had been perched on top of small mounds. The mounds are actually made of old spraint. If you dig into them it is a mass of old fish bones deposited for decades. 

Looking north towards Rubha Bachlaig and up the Sound Of Islay. Jura is just visible on the right.

Across the Sound, Jura's twin peaks, The Paps, had lost the snowy mantle that had shrouded them for most of the last two weeks. Little tufts of cloud adorned their summits as the air moved across them and its moisture condensed.

The Paps of Jura

The Paps, with their distinctive cloud caps.

As you might expect from one of the Estate's best stalking areas, there were plenty of deer around; even if the otters contrived to be elsewhere. Both red deer and roe deer were making the most of the morning sun. They had found banks and sunny hollows where they could sun bathe. With the sun at my back and the light breeze in my face off the sea, I was in a good position to stalk in close with the camera.

A roe buck let me get very close, about ten metres away, before he quit his sunny place and moved off.

I spotted a stag lying fast asleep in the sun. He heard the first few shutter clicks (I had not silenced the shutter) and stood up to get a better look before ambling off.

I took my time as I made my way up the coast, taking every opportunity to descend from the ATV track to the pebbly shoreline. Ringed Plover could be seen flittering across the pebbles in small flocks.

Ringed Plover.

As I scanned the rocky foreshore for otters, a large bird came into view flying powerfully along the coast towards me. A juvenile white-tailed eagle flew past at head height as I stood on the small cliff over a beach.

White-tailed eagle

White-tailed eagle

A little late I saw it flying across the hill just inland of me. They are hugely curious birds so, the second it saw me, it veered towards me and came to soar above me. Then, having satisfied itself that I was not going to do anything that some other more interesting humans do such as throw fish from boats, shoot deer and find dead sheep, it grew bored and flew away over the hill.

Whit-tailed eagle

Almost as soon as the eagle left me, two juvenile peregrine falcons appeared over the Sound, chasing each other across the line of snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Looking northwards to the snow caps of Mull.

Colonsay rears up white and wintery to the north of Islay.

Rhuvaal Lighthouse, from near Glen Dubh.

I finished the day back home, standing beside the monument to John Francis Campbell, watching the sun go down over Loch Indaal and listening to thousands of barnacle geese gently honking as they settled to roost on the mud flats.

An ancient olive tree and a great mystery.

Olive (Olea europaea)

While working at the Chalke Valley History Festival in Wiltshire, I was lucky to meet the owner of a Hampshire farm and he told me a fascinating story about the ancient olive that he had in his garden. In early August, I went to see him and his lovely tree.

The owner has lived on the farm for most of his adult life, about 60 years. The property dates back to the Early Medieval Period; it is mentioned in Domesday. There is a fish pond that is also Early Medieval and a walled garden, yew avenue and coach house that are testament to there having been much grander houses on the site than at present. There is a long record of occupation on the farm which has kept the same name that it had before the Norman invasion. 

The story of the olive is that it was planted by a crusader in 1307. The tradition was that when a knight returned from the Holy Land, he would carve a cross on the door way of the local church. The knight would also plant a tree and one such crusader, probably one of the Chamberlain family who lived at the nearby Manor planted this olive.

"Crusader Crosses" on the door jamb of the local church.

It does not look 710 years , does it? But could this be the re-growth from an older, ancient bole? Or could it be a cutting taken from the first tree and planted in it's place? Has there been an olive growing here for over 700 years? Whatever the truth of it, it's a great story! The owner has cared for it and defended it. One enthusiastic and very well known botanist and TV gardener wanted to come and dig it up and take it to his arbortum, but the owner very wisely declined that offer. More recently, he has had sycamore trees removed from around it as they were over-shadowing the tree. As soon as this was done, the tree responded and put on much of the top growth that can be seen in this photo above.

The larger stem is hollowing, possibly where another stem has been removed. At 1.3m  above ground level (just below a swelling where the first branch bifurcates) the stem has a girth of 1.3m.

The smaller stem has a girth of 1.2m at 1.5m above ground level.

The sucker is 50 years old (according to the owner) and has a girth of 22cm just below the first branch, about 50cm above ground level.

The tree seems to be growing well. Two stubs, where branches have torn off, are surrounded with epicormic shoots.

I don't think that we will ever know the truth of this tree, but that is one of the great charms of old trees. We do not know their full story, but we are teased with hints and rumours, signs and faint tracks that we can follow to trace their long history. Sometimes, an ancient tree will give us a chance to lift the veil of time and peer into the deep past.

Adventure: the road to revelation.

There is a lovely Scots word, "stravaig", which means to wander without purpose. The natural history writer Robert Macfarlane calls such a wanderer a "Meanderthal". I neither stravaig, not am I a Meanderthal. I love to have a purpose and a destination when I walk. More often than not, I carry a heavy load with which to do things; cameras, tape measures, collecting equipment, binoculars, rifle.

Each walk must be a journey. A successful journey should have an element of discovery. That's what makes it an adventure. Adventures are about discovery. You don't have adventures until you feel the thrill, the wonder of seeing something new or spectacular, something that stands out in your memory, something you talk about and recall with friends.

I have always found that the natural world thrills me more deeply, touches me more profoundly, than anything else. Natural discoveries can be small, happenstance encounters. Last week I watched a raven performing a display flight over the chalk hills near my home. I heard it’s deep croak “prruuk”, and looked up to see it flip over upside down, then roll back again. It dipped and rose again, effortlessly surfing the great green wave of the downland escarpment. Or they can be more dramatic, profound encounters such as the journey I made last year to photograph tigers in Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari National Park.

Raven


Lou and I often go out with the express purpose of a certain discovery: to find otter signs, to see the great bustards on Salisbury Plain or visit some hidden coombe in the folds of the hills. These purposeful walks are some of the best, they combine the art of the hunter with the hopeful expectation of the naturalist: I have a set purpose but am also open to a joyful serendipitous encounter that will divert me from my mission, leading to revelation and inspiration.


This is one of the great things about hunting for ancient and veteran trees. I know that I will meet a remarkable tree; that I will measure it, photograph it and know it. I also know that these trees hold many secrets. They have holes where bats live, mammals burrow around the roots and fungi gradually hollow their centres. So any meeting with an ancient tree holds the promise of meeting one of it's close family that will supply me with the joy of a surprise encounter.

Two trees, an ash and a willow, entangled one in another.

I remember meeting a wonderful ash tree in the Glyn Valley, Cornwall. It was a huge old tree standing near an old mill site. When the corn mill was working in the Nineteenth Century, the tree would have been quite venerable even then. When I encountered it, the top had blown out years before and new stems had sprouted up from it’s bole. The original trunk of the tree had hollowed out and I squeezed inside it to see what I could find. As I had suspected, it harboured bats and owls as evidenced by their distinctive droppings. But to my great delight I saw that the tree had started to grown internal roots. From high above my head, roots had sprouted and were writhing down through the rotting carcass of the old tree: the rejuvenated stems were feeding on the decaying remains of the original tree, extracting and recycling nutrients that it had first acquired in the previous century.

Such encounters open windows on the natural world, brief glimpses into lives and ways of living that are completely alien to humans. This is what makes purposeful walking so important to me. It is the mode of travel that enables the journey to take place. When I walk I am part of the world, I am in the landscape. In a car, or even on a bicycle, you travel over the land not through it. The Meanderthal on his or her stravaig will do so wrapped in thoughts of themselves, their mind free to dwell on their lives and loves past and present. My purpose consumes me, it removes all spurious cares and considerations from my life and focuses my mind on the job in hand. In my search for the designated target, I will inevitably come upon the unexpected revelation that brings delight as well as data.