Beauty and the Bleakness

So much does he love Wales, that it took some effort earlier this year for me to persuade my husband Paul to holiday in Scotland.  But the scenery in May took his breath away, and so we returned.  This time though we took both friends and bikes, Paul thinking that a trip along the West Highland Way (by mountain bike) might make a good tour.  My friend Chris, the wife of one of the lads riding with him, helped me move the van full of our collective luggage.  We had our bikes too of course, and we certainly made good use of them.

Caledonian Pine Wood

I don’t think we could have picked a better time to go.  Autumn’s palette has saturated the hillsides in colour, layer upon layer of reds, golds and greens rich and deep.  The grass, now turning, seemed like a million shards of amber lit from beneath, each glowing in the afternoon light, and the water in the lochs seemed to combine steely coldness with deep blue mystery.  


 

We rode through the exquisite Glen Etive.  There we saw a herd of twelve or fourteen red deer, led by a magnificent 12-point stag.  Their riverside location seemed intense in its beauty, peaceful and tranquil as well as wild and weather beaten.  We felt the wildness and the weather ourselves, for it poured down as we rode.  A double rainbow set against the stormy grey sky reminded us that this valley was indeed a pot of gold.

Raasay

Paul and I finished our holiday (after the departure of our friends) on the Island of Skye, where we had left a part of our hearts when we visited in May.  Setting off from our cosy B&B we rode along and across the Trotternish Peninsula.  To our east and offshore, the myriad of small islands making up the archipelago of Raasay seemed to float in the misty sea, the giants of the mainland mountains rising behind them magnificently.  Enveloping us gently as we went, the windswept bleakness dominated everything, and the little houses, many of them former crofts, were squat and sturdy, testament to the conditions they must stand firm against.

View from the West Highland Railway

Back on the mainland, the spectacular West Highland railway took us from Mallaig to our last night’s B&B at Milngavie, close to Glasgow.  Crossing Rannoch Moor, the word “bleak” was redefined for me.  So remote, so seemingly empty, and so beautiful in its wildness, only the red deer could call it home.  I had the feeling that if any person ever was lost there, they would never be found.

There are many places in the world I have never been, but there are many places in Britain I have never been either.  For the time being then I think that Scotland will have more visits from us, for we didn’t manage to bring home the parts of our hearts which we left in Skye last time.  Instead, we left parts of our hearts in all the other places we visited too.

Ferry in the Sound of Sleat

Fun in the Peak District

I looked out of the window this morning, and it was well and truly Autumn.  Fallen leaves are everywhere, the weather seems to have broken and the outlook is wet.  Given the date I should not be surprised, and nor am I; but every year the end of Summer gives me a slightly sad feeling, just as it does for every child at school.  It seems to feel as though the good times are over.

But of course, the good times are not over.  There is more than one way of having a good time and on every occasion I’ve ever spent time with friends, I’ve never known the weather to make even the slightest difference to the experience of being in good company.  And I have been fortunate enough to enjoy the company of some very new friends this last weekend.  The weather even seemed to be our friend too!

My husband Paul runs mountain bike weekends on behalf of CTC Holidays, both in Wales for the more experienced rider, and in the Peak District for beginners.   He makes no profit out of this, the reward he seeks is the more human reward of meeting fantastic people, and the buzz of enabling them to do something which is immense fun in fantastic surroundings. 

I tag along to the Wales trips, but my mountain biking skills are too basic to enable me to assist him with leading the rides.  The beginners’ Peak District weekend however is right up my street and I jointly lead it with Paul; I just love being a part of it and I always come away having had a fantastic time myself.  It’s my dearest wish that our participants have a superb time too, and along with Paul, I put a lot of thought into routes and tea-stop locations to ensure that we have a chance of achieving this.  It helps that I’m a map fetishist!  

The Peak District has a host of tracks, trails and bridleways, some of which are quite historic.  They offer the beginner a variety of surfaces to ride on and a great many opportunities to try new skills.  Our routes are normally a series of loops, returning to Bakewell after each one, so that if anyone doesn’t wish to continue they may bale out.  Our loops take us through Chatsworth and Haddon Hall parks, as well as through picturesque woods, along disused railway tracks, over delightful streams, along exquisite river valleys and up and down some quite challenging hills.  All of this is punctuated by tea stops at pretty cafes. 

This last weekend, our riding was punctuated by punctures too!  September is the month of hedge-clipping and we had at least 10 punctures amongst the group, almost every one of them caused by an imbedded thorn.  Next year when we run the weekend again, we’ll run it in June, before the farmers get busy with their clippers.  We’ve also decided to invest in a stock of self-adhesive puncture repair patches!

Paul intends to lead an additional new tour next year which tackles the West Highland Way in Scotland.  This is a challenging route for experienced riders from Milngavie to Fort William, and I shall be assisting by driving the support vehicle.  But Paul is a responsible leader, and he would never lead a tour he had not fully researched beforehand.  So next week he and some of our friends will be riding the route, and I will be moving the van, taking a friend with me for good company.  Once we get where we need to be, my friend and I will drag out bikes out of the back of the van and go for a ride.  But if the weather is really bad, we can always knit instead!

It might seem a shame if the weather is foul and our views restricted (and the forecast says it will be foul) but rain brings it’s own beauty, and I have seen the sublime beauty of Scotland in the rain before.  So I shall try to stay away from my knitting, but I’m making no promises!

Equinox

When I was at school, I had detention just once, but it seemed like agony.  I was compelled to write an essay under the title “Why I like Autumn” and it seemed like absolute torture.  Back then, I just hated Autumn!  The cold, wet, windy days; the leaves which gradually composted into filthy sludge, having to come home from school in the dark…
  

But I grew up, time passed, and my perspective changed.  Last Autumn was a triumph of exquisite colour and now I’m looking forward to seeing the wonders this Autumn will bring.  We’ve passed the equinox now, but there is still the tail end of Summer to enjoy.
   

Have you seen the swallows, queuing up in long lines on the telegraph wires to gather their strength for their big flight to South Africa?  Have you seen the black-headed gulls, with their heads now just spotted white, coming into town to seek opportunistic feeding?  Yesterday I watched as a still-brown young cormorant, struggling to swallow a fish which was far too big to swallow, dropped the fish disappointedly. By the time Spring comes, every young cormorant’s fish catching expertise will be honed to perfection.
   

My last few cycle rides have taken me through superbly beautiful scenes. Skies blue between the dark, dark clouds; saturated greens washed with rain and tinged with gold and the plaintive call of the swallows, as they gather on their wires.  There’s a quietness about the tail end of Summer, as most of the songbirds no longer sing, and their simple calls seem to be carried away on the wind. It’s as though the land rests, after the heady rush of Summer. 
  

But the farmers are still busy.  Arable fields are being harvested leaving behind ochre coloured stubble, and livestock are spreading muck on the minor roads as they are moved from one wet field to another.  My bike needs a good clean when I get home.
   

I’m going to be in the Peak District this weekend, helping a bunch of relative cycling newcomers learn there are rewards for cycling uphill.  I hope I can also find some swallows to show them, so that our humble cycling exertions can be put into perspective.

Watching Birds, by bike

I love riding my bike, but I’m no mountain biker.  So when I found myself at a loose end during one of my husband’s mountain bike weekends in the Conwy valley in August, I packed my binoculars into my backpack and set off for the RSPB Nature Reserve at Conwy.

I took a minor lane up the valley, and battled against a savage head wind, feeling quite exhausted by the time I pedalled into Conwy town.  But then came the next problem – how could I get to the reserve by bike, when I knew from my map that it was approached by way of an exit from a motorway-style roundabout?  Being away from home I had no internet to turn to, and my map wasn’t exactly up to date.  I felt as vulnerable as a farm-fresh egg riding amongst the speeding cars and trucks and I had a few close calls, not to mention angry blasts from motor vehicle horns.  But I made it in one piece, and noticed as I cycled past it in the car park that there is a beautiful riverside Sustrans cycle path I could have used.  To think, I could have come by a traffic free route!  I resolved to ride out that way, after spending some time peacefully observing the wildlife.

But first I was off to the café for warming soup (and it was so good that I had two bowlfuls), and as I waved my membership card at the lady on reception, I was immediately humbled by her admission that she’d cycled to work that very morning from where I’d ridden.  She does it every day, over the hills and battling with the wind.  But the wind and the hills are a part of her job, I suppose, and savage though they sometimes seem to be, nature can be savage, and I found myself full of envy for her nature-soaked commute.

And so to the hides.  Conwy is an unusual reserve, sandwiched as it is between the arterial routes of the A470 and the A55.   Traffic noise is ever present and for me, a human, it is hard to ignore.  But it matters not one bit to the feeding wildfowl, who go about their business with steadfast determination, whatever the elements throw at them and regardless of the volume of the thundering trucks, just like those birds that feed, live and nest amongst the various firing ranges of the MOD.

The dry Summer has hit the Conway reserve hard, and the lagoons have shrunk to a fraction of their normal size despite the sterling efforts of the reserve workers, who are hindered by restrictions on water diversion.  Nevertheless my inexpert birdwatching was a real pleasure, peaceful and fruitful, despite my tiny pocket binoculars.  And not even a Jumbo Jet landing could have distracted me from my fascination as I watched a diminutive little dunlin have a bitter and sustained argument with a towering black tailed godwit, both birds demonstrating their individual characters with a mixture of pathos and comedy.

I rode back along the Sustrans cyclepath to Conwy.  It’s short, but lovely, closely skirting the Conwy river with nothing to block the view of the shallows and the creatures feeding there.  When I go again, I’ll know where to find it, and I think I might be taking a bit of time to have a peaceful moment there.