Thursday, June 22, 2023
I had a wander up through the woods of Lael Forest Garden by the side of the stream to the more open areas above. A tree pipit was singing and a spotted flycatcher was hunting low in the tangle of vegetation.
Greger meanwhile had walked back along the road to follow a different stream uphill, to investigate what a run-of-river hydro scheme that he's bought shares in looked like at the top. We met back at the car park and I suggested visiting another hydro scheme. The lay-by on the Destitution Road was almost full with hill-walkers' cars (lucky things!) but we managed to squeeze in; and then we took a familiar track through a plantation and out onto the moors. An unseen cuckoo was calling from the conifers but he must have been a bit hoarse, as the second syllable wasn't quite right - he sounded like a small distant dog.
We found it easy to cross the rough ground after all the dry weather we've been having, and soon came to the Obermeyer weir across the Abhainn Cuileig.
This is a rather larger project than Greger's - but it was apparently scaled back from the original plans after lots of protest; well, this didn't seem too intrusive in what is a wonderful wild place and if it provides clean energy then it's doing some good.
Walking back, we looked along Loch a' Bhraoin and recalled walking its length back in May 2016, when we went up the Corbett Creag Rainich - the rounded hill to the right in the picture below. Just showing behind its flanks is one of the remote Munros of the Fisherfield Forest, while the distant rugged hill beyond is Slioch, which rises from the banks of Loch Maree and which I climbed long ago. Long ago.
A second cuckoo was calling from a distant hillside where broadleaved trees like birch and rowan defined the line of a mountain stream; and the first cuckoo was still calling from the plantation. I would have thought it was getting a bit late for cuckoos, so it was a nice surprise to hear them. A small pool close to the road holds bogbean - though the flowers have long gone to seed - and the dragonflies whizzing about seemed to be mostly four-spotted chasers.
