 |
| Taken on 15 Dec 2012 |
The weather was hardly promising – a
south-westerly airstream bringing a constant dribble interspersed with spells of
heavier rain. And the forecast was for this to last for the day so our proposed
visit to Arran was postponed in favour of an old faithful, the Falls of Clyde
at New Lanark.
The recent visit to Mosset has taken its toll
with most of the visitors down with a similar lurgy and with holidays and other
duties to take care of our group was reduced to three for the second week
running when we met at Davie’s in Darvel.
It
was without enthusiasm that the three of us stepped out into the dreich weather
for the trip through to darkest Lanarkshire. But as we travelled east the rain
went and a silvery streak in the dull grey sky showed where the sun was making an
attempt to come through. And it was dry when we set off over the old bridge at
Kirkfieldbank for the Clyde Walkway, Davie Mc covered from head to foot in
waterproofs while the other two braved the damp air and lowering sky without
jackets for, despite the overhead conditions, it was reasonably mild.
Up
into Lanark we went, through Castlebank Park we came, and down to the river
again we dropped. That’s where the first spots of rain hit us. Waterproofs were
the order of the day for the rest of us now. And the rain continued as we came
up to the New Lanark viewing platform above the river and on into the village itself.
A party of school children came out from the ‘New Buildings’ and walked in the
rain to the sweetie shop and we reminisced on how the old ruinous village of
the nineteen-seventies has been transformed into this World Heritage site and
school trip attraction. Then we thanked our lucky stars that we were no longer
in charge of such trips. And there was no point in hanging about in the rain
reminiscing. We walked through the village and took the path for the Falls of
Clyde.
Davie Mc pointed out some nice wee
signs at the side of the path showing what wild flowers were to be seen in the
immediate area. We kept an eye out for the tiny, yellow-green Spurge, Primroses
and Wood Anemones among others as we walked alongside the river to the power station.
Then the rain went and we were to have it dry for the rest of the walk. We
climbed away from the river to the top of the gorge to look down on Corra Linn,
probably the most spectacular of the Clyde falls – at least it was today with
the snow melt on the Lanarkshire hills swelling the river and throwing
countless gallons of brown water through the gorge and over the cliff. We
stopped here for coffee and couldn’t have picked a better spot, especially when
the sun broke briefly, very briefly, through the cloud.
The peregrine was sitting on at
least one egg according to the red-headed young man who was manning the
observation post. Looking through the scopes trained on the nest, we could see
a bird sat there keeping its head down as though it expected the rain again any
minute. The young naturalist told us that they man this observation post during
the day but there is a twenty-four hour guard on the nest with closed circuit
television recording pictures twenty-four – seven. What a sad comment on
society, or at least a small section of society, when wild birds are
not safe from human interference. Sad.
We
left the young man to look after his station and continued upriver. Bonnington
Linn is not quite as spectacular as Corra Linn but it has its own grandeur,
especially now that the sun was breaking through and lighting the water for us.
Had we cameras, we might have attempted to capture the grandeur of both linns.
But we hadn’t, so we didn’t. We walked on up to the barrage.
Now, mechanical things are not
normally an attraction to Jimmy who prefers the wonders of nature but something
on the barrage caught his attention. A grab is slung on a beam across the water
intake for the power station. The purpose of this grab is to clean debris from
the filter, grab it underwater and lift it out and over the barrage into the
river again. Jimmy was fascinated by this grab and was stuck watching it
working, automatically, for a few minutes until we shouted that we were moving
on.
On
the other side of the barrage we turned downstream to come to the other side of
Bonnington Linn. The fall does look more spectacular from this side and a few
minutes were spent just watching the rush of water over the linn before we continued
downstream. Downstream we came, past Corra Castle with its roost of Daubenton's
bats to a viewpoint overlooking Corra Linn. Here we stopped for a bite.
A
couple of fellows were already there when we arrived, a couple of chaps of our
own vintage. These fellows knew how to have lunch. The Primus stove roared
underneath the pan of hot tomato soup and the chunks of rough bread in their
hands showed they were connoisseurs of the al-fresco lunch. We had our flasks
of coffee and our sandwiches. Still, as they say, hunger is the best sauce and
we enjoyed our lunch as much as they.
After
lunch we followed the river downstream. We came to the path diversion where the
riverside path is closed to prevent disturbance of the peregrines and then down
to the riverside opposite new Lanark. A wildflower, unknown to our botanist,
grew in profusion in the wet patches beside the river. This time there was not
a wee sign to tell us what it was so we walked on in ignorance. (So, what’s
new? – Ed.) Further research showed that it was probably White Butterbur – one more
to add to our combined knowledge.
We
came back to Kirkfieldbank around the two mark having been lucky enough to have
had a mostly dry day with the occasional blink of sun while back in Ayrshire it
rained all day.
And
it was back in Ayrshire that we took FRT, in the Black Bull in Darvel.
No comments:
Post a Comment