I spent a happy evening exploring the Quoig area in Strathearn – the floodplain of the river Earn between Comrie and Crieff, south of the A85. Disused railway line, Sir David Baird’s monument and a luscious sunset. Can’t complain 🙂
Tag Archives: river
Around Altnaharra
Then came the churches, then came the schools
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track was the telegraph road
Then came the mines, then came the ore
Then there was the hard times, then there was a war
Telegraph sang a song about the world outside
Telegraph road got so deep and so wide
Like a rolling river
– Dire Straits, Telegraph Road
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules
Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads
And the dirty old track was the telegraph road
Then came the mines, then came the ore
Then there was the hard times, then there was a war
Telegraph sang a song about the world outside
Telegraph road got so deep and so wide
Like a rolling river
– Dire Straits, Telegraph Road
I’ve known of Altnaharra for many years, gradually accumulating little facts about the area. Situated in the middle of the far northern Highlands, it doesn’t get much more remote. Jointly with Braemar, it holds the record for the coldest recorded temperature in the UK – at -27.2ºC I’m glad I wasn’t there at the time.
However, last November on holiday – gravitated north as always – I found myself with a not-completely-planned day where the best weather indicated a visit was indeed possible.
As habitations go, it doesn’t occupy much space in the landscape.The high street (there is none other) is the A836, a single-lane road with passing places. Within about a 200m radius it boasts a handful of houses, an outsized hotel, couple of petrol pumps and a primary school. The village centre is barely a bend in the road with a pleasant Scots Pine tree and the Allt na h’Aire burn from which the place takes its name. I do love the little epiphanies when one makes the connection between the Gaelic names and their anglicised equivalents – in this case I was wondering if the burn in a photo had a name, looked it up, saw the gaelic and the pronunciation dawned on me: “that IS Altnaharra”.
Of course it is also very much Runrig territory; sitting at the end of Strathnaver, it suffered in the Clearances – I wonder what size of catchment area is required to keep that primary school active.
In Glen Nant
One of my favoured locations for a quick hour’s stroll in Argyll is Glen Nant, south of the village of Taynuilt; in particular the Ant Trail which leads you through a small Caledonian forest – not very reserved as many of the trees were felled a couple of centuries ago to fire the furnaces at Bonawe, but it seems folks have repented a bit since then.
Herewith, some more back-to-earth simple landscapes: Ben Cruachan from Glen Nant and a couple of intimate landscape studies.
Glen Clova
A couple of years ago, a photo-friend and I spent a happy afternoon exploring Corrie Fee in Angus; I remembered emerging from the trees in an impressive bowl of a glacial corrie. In August, I sought to repeat the experience, starting from the carpark nearby, but in my haste to get off the ghastly Forestry Commission track (more like a hard gravel road ploughed through the forestry, complete with yellow metal gantries), I wound up taking a different path. It also emerges from the trees into a bowl of a glacial corrie, but felt different and I couldn’t work out whether it was the wrong exit from the woods or what.
Came home and checked the geotagged images to find it was not Corre Fee but Glen Clova instead. That would explain a lot of things! And unsurprisingly, I now use ViewRanger to navigate whilst hiking.
Still, a couple of hours bumbling around in the grass finding interesting photos in a dramatic bit of landscape on a moody afternoon… Can’t complain.
As I was stumbling around in the foot of the glen, I stumbled across this lovely little burn tumbling its way through the hillside:
The surrounding rocks are quite dramatic – I was amazed at the green and purple hues of moss and primitive plants growing on the crags around
And much as I know the forestry is entirely artificial now, it still drapes over the landscape like a cloak.
Wet Reflections
Just a couple of photos from a stroll beside a burn down the bottom end of town today at lunchtime – not great light, in fact it was beginning to rain. But if looking up doesn’t work, look down and take abstract photos of trees reflected in the burn instead…
Glen Affric: abstracts from reality
There’s an art to this kind of abstract – seeing, reducing the scene to an interplay of lines and shapes and seeking a kind of balanced visual weight across the frame. Hence, spatial distribution – nothing so crass as having one subject on which the eye can focus, but a pleasing arrangement nonetheless.
Perth by Night
A handful of photos taken after dark from the Queen’s Bridge in town, waiting for the fireworks to happen.
Newton Stewart
I seem to be back in the old temporary stamping ground for the morning, while the car gets its MOT done… so I went for a stroll around the town – which doesn’t take long – to appreciate the views of the river Cree from the bridge.