Rebuilding a nursery - Copton Ash

[Tim Ingram]

A walk in the woods to take a card to a very fine gardener. The woods are 'Perry Woods', near to Selling, a small scattered village south of Faversham in Kent - and the very fine gardener is Elizabeth Thomas, who with her husband Graham (who advised on the cultivation of Hops) made 'Longacre Garden', and also taught gardening and organised tours of gardens for local people and students (and much more). She is one of the most respected and loved of gardeners in Kent, not only a fine gardener but also a fine lady.

[Tim Ingram]

Took a week or so off from the garden to visit the visit the West Highlands of Scotland with Robyn, Heather and Heather's friend George (and our Jack Russell) - the aim, to climb Ben Nevis and explore this wonderful part of the island we live in. A few pictures on the way up and down the highest peak in the UK. Need to do more of this and that skyline (the Mamores) in the last picture is very inviting! And there is a wonderful valley in between - Glen Nevis - that we walked up to see the An Steall waterfall, where the landscape is steadily being managed by the John Muir Trust to help return more of it to its past ecology of vegetation and fauna. A very refreshing place that I hope to write about in more detail in my AGS Kent Diary, especially on the Isle of Skye which we had far too little time to see, but I have to return to in the future! Will show more pictures in the next few days... (Unfortunately the garden doesn't sit still in the summer, so a lot of weeds and grass cutting to deal with now 🙁).

[David Lyttle]

Looks like you had a great day for it. Are there really steps all the way to the summit?

[ian mcdonald]

The path seems to go on forever. It took me 2 hours and 45 minutes but I was a lot fitter then. Parsley fern seen on the way up.

[Tim Ingram]

That's pretty good going Ian! The general advice is to give around 8 hours for the round trip and we took longer because my younger daughter wasn't too well on the way down - a combination of heat stroke and probably not enough fluids, though we took a lot with us. Coming down was tougher than going up for me but Robyn seemed to recover once we reached the col at about the halfway point. I see now why quite a few walkers use those lightweight sticks!

David, the steps go in sections up to the col. From this point on it's much more rocky and steep and zig-zags. They don't necessarily make it any easier but certainly save a lot of erosion of the lower parts where the slopes are well vegetated. Beyond the col it's virtually all rock so you hop from stone to stone!

[Tim Ingram]

This is the An Steall waterfall at the top of Glen Nevis (it drains a large upland cirque completely surrounded by high peaks). A completely wonderful walk which follows a steadily deepening gorge, reaching a point where the river is held in the narrowest of clefts - the third picture shows the way the rock has been scoured by water which must thunder down here at snowmelt in spring. There are boulders in this section as large as cars or bigger. Just beyond the the river opens out into a wide meadow and the waterfall comes into sight in the distance. A truly magical spot. Below the waterfall is a broad open plain, this gravelled area must be deep in water in spring, now in summer in the evening full of Scottish midges! (Not such a good spot to have a hot chocolate!). Beyond here the path(s) continue into a large expanse of wilderness with no roads and many fine peaks to explore. These upland meadows though have and are being grazed by sheep and deer which have denuded them over centuries of any natural woodland except in inaccessible parts of the gorge and rocky slopes and lower down. The region is being managed by the John Muir Trust with the aim to control grazing and enable regeneration of woodland, at least close to the waterfall. It's good to see this happening in various parts of Scotland, a kind of reversal of the terrible Clearances of earlier times, but the absence of primary predators - and impossibility of really reintroducing them (on any scale anyway) - means that it can only occur in very limited areas and with a lot of input.

[johnralphcarpenter]

Loving this, Tim. We will be in the Highlands in a month's time, although my knees and age are making the mountains more difficult. We have "bagged" more than 30 Munros but not Ben Nevis, so far. I guess it is a "must do" though. My chances of bagging them all depend on me living to the age of 350 and remaining fit, so probably not! I would be happy to do the most northerly, southerly, westerly and easterly, plus the highest, but so far we have only done the most southerly (Ben Lomond) and the most easterly (Mount Keen).

[Tim Ingram]

It was the Isle of Skye that captured my imagination more than anywhere Ralph. We only had a short time there but drove down to Elgol and saw the Black Cuillins across Loch Scavaig. I'm not sure I would want to climb them(!) but I certainly would like to see Loch Coruisk and a lot lot more of Skye (picked up a wonderful little book at a mountaineering shop in Fort William, 'Tramping in Skye' by B.H.Humble, written in 1933, of a couple of weeks walk around and through the island and its history). Ben Nevis is the only peak I've climbed in Scotland and I think I prefer the idea of walking 'into' the mountains rather than 'up' them that Nan Shepherd describes in 'The Living Mountain' (Robert Macfarlane refers to this in one of his books). My daughters wanted to add Ben Nevis to Snowdon and Scafell Pike. Would love to return, especially to some of the parts really off the beaten track and look in more detail at the plants. Prof. John Birks has co-written 'The Botanist on Skye and Adjacent Islands' and did his PhD on Skye - can't imagine anything more stimulating and giving an excuse to explore (rather like Robert's wonderful adventures in California here on the SRGC Forum, though fewer plants to distract from the views!).

[David Lyttle]

Interesting landscapes in Glen Nevis, Tim. There is a lot of water coming down the An Steall waterfall. The landscapes remind me of some of our own high country in New Zealand in that the original vegetation has been modified by human activity and livestock grazing and any remaining trees are largely confined to gullies. Of course Britain has had a much longer period of human occupation.
Even though 3000 ft seems modest by our standards the Highlands are rugged and beautiful.

[Hoy]

Seems you had a very nice trip, Tim! The landscape looks very familiar to me Not unlike some parts of Norway.

What kind of trees would be natural in the valleys there?

[Tim Ingram]

This is probably the best reference Trond, the Carrifran Wildwood Project: http://www.carrifran.org.uk/about/what-we-have-achieved/silviculture-2/ (if by chance you ever look on Facebook there is a detailed photojournal by Stuart Adair of the developing flora of this valley). At Glencoe the National Trust for Scotland are regenerating an area of natural woodland which was previously a Forestry Plantation, building on remnants of native woodland. The trees include alder, downy birch, scots pine, a variety of willows and (rare or very rare), wych elm, sessile oak, bird cherry, rowan, hazel, hawthorn, and holly. This is very early days though and the picture below shows the beginnings of some of the planting. In this reference I found from DEFRA: http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/protectedsites/sacselection/sac.asp?EUCode=UK0012959  only about 2% of the valley is wooded, but there are important colonies of herbaceous and alpine species which heighten the conservation value of the Glen and surrounding mountains, and it is the wilder places where grazing is restricted or not possible that provide the basis for wider regeneration. There has to be the will though to put this into practice and monitor it which probably requires a change in the mindset of many landowners if it is to occur more widely.

[David Lyttle]

 Scots pine, bird cherry, rowan, hawthorn and holly are considered undesirable here. It is ironic they are under threat in their homeland.

[Hoy]

Tim,

Thanks for the info. It is the same tree species we have here, although some like the holly grows only at the coast. Wych elm is common in the screes in the valleys along the west coast and often makes pure stands.

In many cases we have the opposite problem: Trees invade the old meadows as the use of modern machinery makes it impossible to harvest the steep and often small meadows here.

[Matt T]

In many cases we have the opposite problem: Trees invade the old meadows as the use of modern machinery makes it impossible to harvest the steep and often small meadows here.

They experience exactly the same problem on the traditional mountain hay meadows in Transylvania.

[ian mcdonald]

Tim, I have an article on mountain plants in the IRG. This might encourage further exploration of our native alpines. Glen Brittle, on Skye, is worth a look at. Follow the path up behind the caravan site.