By the time we got to Glen Ogle, which is a beautiful valley just north of Lochearnhead on the A85, it was raining;  as we drove higher, the rain turned to driving snow.  After the blizzard passed, the conditions were just spectacular, so we stopped for some photos.

The wind was bitingly cold, and the sky turned a deep shade of grey as veils of snow were swept across the summits, to be replaced by flashes of brilliant blue sky.  As we made our way through Crianlarich and down through Strath Fillan towards Tyndrum, we could see herds of red deer on the highest slopes.

We reached Oban safely, and the three of us spent an enjoyable afternoon pottering along the beach at Tralee Bay.   As usual, a number of interesting pebbles made it back home with us.  There wasn’t a lot of wildlife to be seen – a few ringed plovers and a redshank at Airds Bay, and a heron in some reeds as we walked to Tralee beach.  The wind was cold enough to make your eyes water, but we could feel a slight warmth from the sun, which was very welcome.

On the way home the stars were brilliant, but we saw nothing of the northern lights that were visible as far south as Yorkshire on Sunday night.  Yorkshire!   And we missed it up here!  How on earth did we manage that?   I’m keeping a careful eye on Spaceweather, but sadly the odds aren’t great for a clear night tonight.

Photos copyright © Colin & Jo Woolf

Mountains of Tayside

This morning we were lucky enough to be watching black grouse, red grouse and grey partridges, all in beautiful sunshine up in the Perthshire glens.

It was an early start for us, but it was really worth it.  We re-visited our favourite haunts around Crieff and Kenmore, lovely quiet glens where the morning sun was just touching the snow on the mountain tops with a pinkish glow, and mist was rising from the lochs.

One of our first finds was the most surprising:  in one of the roadside fields was a large group of grey partridges, the adults making their familiar ‘priv-et’ calls as they shepherded several of last year’s youngsters away from danger.  Greys are a much rarer sight than they were when I was a child… back then, almost every ploughed field held a covey of them, and we heard their calls every day.  It was lovely to see them again, and to get such good views.

A number of goldeneye were swimming and displaying on the loch, and a flock of greylag geese (or possibly pink-feet – it was hard to tell at that distance) had congregated on the western shore.  Much of the loch was covered with a thin layer of ice.

As we got higher into the heather moorland, red grouse were all around us, many occupying the higher tussocks so as to catch the first rays and thaw the frost on their backs.  All we could hear in the stillness was a constant ‘go-back, go-back, go-back’, and occasionally ‘down, down’.  Red grouse have almost human-like voices;  deep in the heather, with only their heads and necks protruding, two males were nattering like old gossips as they munched away on their breakfast.

The black grouse that we saw were, in fact, greyhens, and as usual they were balancing precariously in the topmost twigs of birch trees.  Greyhens are large, round and pudding-like, and they perch in the riskiest places without a care in the world.  I’m always surprised that the ground beneath isn’t littered with the ones that have eaten too much, become too fat and plopped off.

As we neared the head of the glen and made our way up the mountain pass, we were met by the sight of distant, snow-clad mountains.  These are the ones to the west of Loch Tay, the highest of which is Ben Lawers;   it’s a large and sparsely-populated mountain wilderness, and beyond lies Rannoch Moor.

It was cold up there, despite the lack of wind.  Icicles were sparkling in the burns, and patches of quite thick ice had formed on the road.  This made for an interesting experience around the steep hairpin bends.

By the time we turned for home, the sun was hidden behind high cloud, and the brilliant lighting conditions had gone.  We were sorry to see how many majestic old trees had been felled by the recent gales… uprooted, in many cases, taking a large chunk of the roadside verge with them.  It’s a sad loss, because they aren’t going to be replaced overnight.

I thought I’d be creative and make a short video of the grouse calling, using my compact camera.  Unfortunately, I mistook the symbols for ‘stop’ and ‘start’, and ended up filming my feet as I walked back to the car.  I’ll try harder next time…

Images copyright © Colin & Jo Woolf

I couldn’t help being just a bit excited at being a tourist for the day!  Edinburgh Castle is famous the world over, and for ages I’ve been longing to go there and see what all the fuss is about.  Of course, you see the castle whenever you go to Edinburgh – you can’t miss it, because it sits high above the city, dominating the skyline – but that’s not quite the same.

Despite the fine weather there were comparatively few crowds in the Royal Mile, and after taking some photos of the architecture we walked under the Portcullis Gate and up the cobbled hill to the castle itself.  Oh, yes, we did pay to get in!  It costs £14 per adult, and you can also buy glossy guidebooks, multi-lingual audio tours and such like.

What strikes you first about the castle is that it’s on so many different levels… there are flights of stone steps everywhere, and pathways leading around a maze of high granite walls with intricate stained-glass windows and gold scrollwork.  Even the lead downpipes had gilded dates on them!  It was all very photogenic.

The views from the battlements were just amazing… we could see right over the city to the Firth of Forth and the coastline of Fife beyond.  Edinburgh was laid out like a map, with Princes Street, the Scott Monument, Waverley Station and Calton Hill all bathed in winter sunshine.

We were impressed with the number of cannons, each projecting through a purpose-made gap in the battery walls;  but we were awe-struck by the size of Mons Meg, a siege gun made for James II in 1457.  One of the world’s oldest cannons, Mons Meg weighs over six tons and is known as a medieval bombard or ‘supergun’.   It (or should that be ‘she’?) was apparently used in battle to subdue the English.  They must have been horrified beyond belief when they saw that coming!

At the heart of the castle are the Royal Apartments, oak-panelled rooms with elaborate fireplaces and beautiful windows.  The rooms are empty of furniture, but are still adorned with large portraits of the monarchs that once occupied them.  By contrast, a tiny chamber barely six feet square was apparently the room in which Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to her son, later to become James VI of Scotland and I of England.

Upstairs, a labyrinth of dark corridors held a never-ending procession of information boards and waxwork displays that gave me the heebie-jeebies.  At the end of them, in a dimly-lit, windowless room, were the ‘Honours of Scotland’, the Scottish crown jewels.  These consist of a pearl-encrusted crown, a sceptre, a sword, and other accompanying jewellery from the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

Also encased with the jewels was the Stone of Destiny, the ancient slab of sandstone on which the Kings of Scotland were crowned.  I much prefer to touch stones, not see them behind glass, but the Stone of Destiny has had far too many people wanting to touch and own it over the years!  It looks a little incongruous beside all the jewels, and if it wasn’t for the fact that every visiting tourist would probably want to be ‘king for a day’, it would be much better off in the open air.

Photography in the Crown Jewel room was prohibited, which was only to be expected;  the atmosphere was oppressive, despite the friendly attendant, and I was quite glad to see the light of day again!

By contrast, the tiny St Margaret’s Chapel, which was founded by David I in 1130 and is the oldest building in Edinburgh, had a pure, welcoming atmosphere with its beautiful windows and simple altar.  St Margaret sounds like an interesting lady, and she definitely deserves a more detailed article at a later date.

It’s going to be hard to decide which photos to publish.  I want to focus on Edinburgh Castle in The Hazel Tree this month, so I’ll save some for that feature.   The first pics are of buildings in Grassmarket and the Royal Mile – photographers could really have a field day here!

All images copyright © Colin & Jo Woolf

Secondly… wow, The Hazel Tree has just been promoted to Freshly Pressed!   If you’re not into WordPress, this means that my latest article, which is about the wild flowers of Carn Ban Mor, is on their front page.  My site stats are going through the roof.   I’m getting a bit jittery now!

It won’t stay this way for long, because the selection changes pretty much on a daily basis.  But I’m enjoying celebrity status while it lasts, and Purdey is thinking about bringing out a New Year fitness video.

A big welcome to anyone who has come across The Hazel Tree or my Journal over the last day or so, and decided to follow them.

Better start work, then… I think I’ve got some content to write!

We had the most wonderful time over Christmas.  Nice food, lots of excitement and some very interesting presents meant that we could ignore the gales raging outside.  We didn’t watch much TV – in fact, it was hardly switched on, except to screen the first episode of Vampire Diaries Season One, which Verity thought (quite rightly) that I might enjoy.  It’s a bit like One Tree Hill, but with less lighting and more blood.  Vampires, seriously?  Come to Scotland in winter, and then we’ll see how tough you are!

A programme that Colin and I really enjoyed, which was aired just before Christmas, was ‘A Night with the Stars’, a physics lecture at the Royal Institution by Professor Brian Cox.  Challenging, mind-blowing, astounding… and very entertaining.  It’s no longer available on iPlayer but you can watch it on You Tube.  There are lots of questions now buzzing around my brain like agitated electrons around a very small nucleus.  For some reason, I really want to know more about quantum theory, which is both good and worrying, depending on how you look at it.

As for our bird and wildlife watching, if these winds carry on there will be no birds to watch, and no trees for them to sit in.  The other morning – I think it was Boxing Day – I went out to look at the few visible stars and heard the robins singing again.  Not their lively spring songs, but soft, tentative little melodies as if they were just practising.  It was 6 am, long before it was ‘light’.

Since I started to write this, the wind has worsened so that you can hardly stand up outside, and the sky is black.  Purdey is bored, frustrated and dangerous.  She has watched the tap dripping for half an hour, beaten up several fluffy toys, chewed some tinsel, and she has just run out bravely to the shed.

How can you expect to work in such conditions?  That’s right, you can’t.

The girls are both here for Christmas.  Colin has at last decided that even he can’t paint any more pictures before 25th December, and even though I still have some work to do on the editing side, it will wait until the New Year.

Leonie brought with her a real Christmas tree – the topmost five and a half feet of a Norway spruce that had fallen down in the recent gales, complete with pine cones and lichen.   I’m not quite sure how she got it in her car!  The tree brought a fantastic pine-forest smell into the house, and it looks magnificent now that it’s decorated.

A big thank you to everyone who has followed and commented on my Journal and The Hazel Tree over the last year.   I’m looking forward to bringing you lots more news and articles in 2012, but meanwhile I’d like to wish all my readers a wonderful Christmas and a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

My header image shows Black Rock Cottage and Buchaille Etive Mor in Glencoe, taken in January 2010.

The roads and pavements are treacherous, even though they’ve been gritted.  By midday the sun was just warm enough to start melting the snow, but now it’s getting dark and the frost has set in again.

Leonie has sent me some photos of the view from her flat at Taynuilt.  These are looking northwards, from Cruachan and Ben Starav right up Loch Etive to the mountains of Glencoe.  The mountains look spectacular!   She has no snow at ground level, though.

The gales were ferocious today.  After reading all the warnings I started to get quite scared, but then I decided there was little I could do about it, so I just sat down and tried to concentrate on work.

In the end, I was quite pleased with myself because I managed to write a two-page article on golf in Scotland.  This means that I feel doubly lucky – we are all still safe and sound, and I know a lot more about golf!

But the storm has been bad… gusts of 165 mph in the Cairngorms, which I can’t even imagine!  Throughout Central Scotland 30,000 people are without power, and wind speeds of 84 mph forced the closure of the Forth Road Bridge near Edinburgh this morning.

We’ve had hailstorms and horizontal rain, and it’s been impossible to open either the back or the front door without feeling as if your face is being blown off.  Sometimes brilliant blue sky came over, but it was gone in a flash, replaced by a menacing wall of grey.

Purdey, perversely, chose to spend all afternoon in the shed.  I went to see her a couple of times and she blinked at me sleepily and just went back to sleep.  Cats will be cats, I guess, but for myself I would have been happier with her curled up on the landing.

Amazingly, we had a postal delivery.  I felt sorry for the post lady, who does the whole round on foot.  She rather put me to shame, because I couldn’t face walking down to the post office with some parcels.

On the west coast, Leonie still has power, but she says that a restaurant has lost its roof on the Oban seafront, loads of trees are down and roads are closed.  The problems are being aggravated by quickly melting snow, which is causing flooding and landslides.  The A82 up to Fort William is closed indefinitely by a rock fall.  That’s a major route up the side of Loch Linnhe, and I can’t begin to imagine how long the diversions will be.

This incredible image, taken this morning by the NOAA-16 satellite and received by Dundee University, shows the shape and strength of the storm over the northern part of the UK.  I didn’t venture out to take any photos, but there’s a pretty impressive gallery of images on the BBC’s News Scotland website.

It’s still raging outside, and on a normal night I’d probably be grumbling about it.  Now, it sounds quite mild.  The winds are supposed to ease overnight, with freezing temperatures returning by morning.

The Met Office has issued a red (severe) warning of wind speeds in excess of 80 mph, and the area covered by this is Central Scotland, from Glasgow right over to Edinburgh.   We’ve had countless gales over the last year, but I don’t think I’ve seen a wind forecast quite like the one on XC Weather at the moment.

We’ve been told to expect structural damage (nice!) and major travel disruption.  Most schools are closed already in the west, and others are going to shut at lunchtime.  Council offices are closed, and motorists have been warned not to venture out.

The BBC website has a live feed with updates about the storm as it progresses.  This will be of little use to us if we lose power, but meanwhile I am kind of transfixed by it, like a rabbit in the headlights, conscious of work that I really ought to be doing, but hypnotised by the sense of impending doom.

Although the gales have already started, the worst gusts are expected around the evening rush-hour, and I’m quite glad that I don’t have a ‘proper’ job.  It’s quite likely that we’ll lose power, but I sincerely hope that’s all we lose!

Purdey came in from the shed this morning, but is now outside again, braving the wind as she checks for new bird species.  While it was still half-light, she meowed to go out and then raced over the lawn at top speed, having spotted something on the ground under the feeder.  It turned out to be a dead leaf.  While I laughed, she hid her embarrassment by sniffing it thoroughly with pretended interest, as if it was the most fascinating leaf in the whole world.

I’m not liking the way the house is creaking, and it’s only 10 am.  I hope we’ll still be intact tomorrow.

It was fine and sunny, with veils of high cloud against a brilliant blue sky.  The snow was melting slowly, with sparkling diamond droplets on every last leaf and twig.

Small drifts had blown against the tussocks of grass in the fields, sculpting interesting shapes.  On the trees, every west-facing branch had a stripe of white.

It’s snowing again now, from a very grey sky.  The forecast is for sleet showers, but because we’re higher up, it will probably just carry on snowing!