We knew that the
Ayrshire summer had arrived when we stopped on top of Goldenberry Hill for
coffee. The sky lowered ominously, pregnant with rain, the air was thick and
damp allowing no evaporation from sweaty bodies and the flies buzzed and tormented
incessantly. Yes, summer had arrived.
We were only on Goldenberry because
of the weather. When we arrived at the gathering place for the walk on Irish
Law the hill fog was down close to road level and the drizzle was heavy and
wetting. And the forecast gave little in the way of comfort, predicting heavier
rain for later in the morning. A quick revision of plan was in order and
despite some protestations, we opted for an old favourite in this area, the
Portencrosss circuit.
The sky still lowered and the air
was still damp as we left the car park at Portencross but at least the drizzle
had gone for a while. We walked along the road for Ardneil farm eyeing the sky
for impending rain. Nothing came. We climbed through the farm and on to the
track for Goldenberry. Still there was no rain, but the damp air was hardly a
help on the easy climb of the track. Sweat failed to evaporate and clothes were
soon wet from the inside anyway. And, when we stopped on top of Goldenberry for
coffee, the flies found the sweaty bodies much more to their liking than the
young beasts in the field below us.
The view from the hill was much
obscured today, the damp air and lowering sky cutting out anything more than a
couple of miles away. We could look out over Wee Cumbrae, Cumbrae and part of
Bute but Arran stayed hidden in the gloom. Below us lay Hunterston Power
Station and Fairlie, the Fairlie Roads running up toward Largs. Behind us the
hills we should have been on were covered in drizzly hill fog. The view might
have been better but at least the rain had stayed away.
The rain might have stayed away but
the flies were increasing in number and it was partly due to these that we
started off again. We came down off the hill towards Goldenberry Plantation
where we found an old track running beside the wood and turning along it came
through a wood and found tarmac on the road from Goldenberry cottage. We stuck
to tarmac for a while now, coming along this wee road to find a slightly bigger
road to the south of Hunterston Castle. Now we were on very familiar territory
and followed the road to the power station road and the shore.
A wee, insignificant broon bird
caught the attention of our birder. ‘Listen’ said he. And we did as the wee
broon bird chirred like a bike wheel. ‘Grasshopper Warbler’, said he. We couldn’t
argue, but it certainly sounded like a grasshopper to us so perhaps he was
right.
The
only other thing of significance on this part of the walk was to find a chap
from SEPA sampling the water on the shore for radioactivity. This is apparently
standard procedure around nuclear power plants and he didn’t expect to find
anything out of the ordinary. We left him to his paperwork and walked on.
On
the rocks on the shore just beyond the power plant we settled down for
Lunch. At least there were no flies now
and the rain had stayed off much to our surprise. Lunch was a more relaxed
affair than coffee. But there always comes a time when the itchy-footed start
to fidget. This time came for us and we moved off again.
Barely
had we started again when Rex stopped and looked into some scrubby bushes.
Another grasshopper warbler. The birder was delighted that somebody had been
paying attention earlier.
The
walk along the raised beach under the cliffs of Hawking Craig and the Three
Sisters is always a delight and today was no exception. Despite the gloomy
weather there was much to appreciate on the crags. A large brown falcon swept
across the face just above the trees, a female peregrine. A group of folk hung
with binoculars met us. Just as our birder was mentioning the peregrine to them
there came a screeching from the cliffs. ‘That’s the young peregrines screaming
for attention,’ said the chap who seemed to be the leader of the group and
though we could hear plenty, we couldn’t see where the young birds were. So we
left them to it, the birds to their feeding and the group to go in search of
the grasshopper warblers. We can only hope they saw one or the other.
Fifteen
minutes later we came to Portencross Castle. The door was open and we, being of
a nosy disposition, went to investigate. A chap was upstairs setting up an art
exhibition but said we could have a look around the lower floor. This we did
and found out a little of the history of the place since replacing the Iron Age
fort on Auld Hill. As we made our way back out of the castle we met a man
coming in. ‘Have you been on the roof?’ he asked. When we replied in the
negative he invited us to do so. We accepted his invitation enjoyed a further
exploration of the castle. We offer our thanks to the two for their kindness.
From
the castle it was only a few minutes' walk back to the car park. We had been
unlucky or lucky today depending how you look at it. We had been unlucky in as
much as we didn’t get to the walk that we had planned but we were lucky in that
we got a dry walk, a walk that, according to the forecast, should have been
done in heavy rain. Still, as they say, God’s good to his own.
The
Laurieston in Ardrossan provided the FRT for today.
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