Christine's walking & birds blog

Picking my way down the northern flank of the Dodd I got into some really rough, wet ground - but I was cheered up by the sight of a fairly large patch of dwarf birch (I think this photo is upside down!).

There was also plenty of cloudberry - but the flowers were over and I could see only one plant with sepals. These were probably all male plants, so there were no berries - but never mind, I 'd once seen berries up on the col between the two hills I was heading for. By the time I reached the huge summit cairn of Meall Coire nan Laogh (666m) it was extremely windy, the cloud was down over Tom Ban Mor - and I was tired. I sat in the shelter of the cairn and had lunch. Standing up again, I realised that the patch of tiny red "flowers" near my feet was dwarf willow with its strange red seed capsules. I hadn't noticed this on my previous walks here - I've only ever seen dwarf willow before on the summit ridge of Ben Wyvis. Some of the capsules were splitting to release their fluffy white seeds.

A few oddly shaped reddish things like berries away from the main patches were possibly diseased dwarf willow - perhaps galls. Just over a kilometre away, Tom Ban Mor was now out of the cloud. I knew that if I continued I might find cloudberry fruiting again, while higher up there would be the outside chance of ptarmigan and dotterel; but then I recalled the rough ground I had to cross later in order to get down to the track - and I reluctantly decided to start going down. I was taking the old route rather than going back over the Dodd. Actually, the first part wasn't too bad - although a sighting of golden plover or red grouse would have made it better. On reaching the deer fence I was dismayed to find the walkers' gate gone, while a wide metal vehicle gate had replaced the old wooden one. This was no doubt to accommodate the huge diggers that have been doing work on the hillside recently - and fortunately, it wasn't padlocked. After all my struggles I certainly wouldn't have enjoyed having to climb over!

The next section, as anticipated, was the most tedious part of the walk. I followed an ATV track for some of the way, but this led me through some of the worst bogs I'd encountered yet. However, two new wildflowers made me forget my woes as I snapped a plant I've since identified as bugle....

 .....and this interesting flower which turned out to be marsh cinquefoil.

And a marsh is certainly what it was growing in! When I tried to move, I found that my feet had sunk into the mud; and after I'd gone a hundred metres or so, I realised that I'd left one of my walking poles behind so I had to go back into the same mire to pick it up - its handgrip now, of course, covered in mud. When the going wasn't wet or muddy, there was very long grass and other tangled stuff to contend with and I tripped a couple of times but managed to stay upright. By the time I reached the hydro track I was pretty weary, and pleased that I'd made the decision up there not to do the extra two kilometres.

The only bird snapped on the walk now appeared over the loch - a rather pale red kite.

Other birds: willow warbler, skylarks, ravens, stonechat, a house martin over the dam, several unseen common sandpipers calling anxiously from the loch-side - and a possible dunlin calling as I started my descent from the second top (or was it a dotterel?)