The Hunting of the Shark, subtitled An Agony in 2 Fits: Fit The First*

FIT THE FIRST*

"We have sailed many months, we have sailed many weeks,

(Four weeks to the month you may mark),

But never as yet ('tis your Captain who speaks)

Have we caught the least glimpse of a Snark!"

(From: 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll)

Where to begin? Perhaps in the words of 'The Sound of Music':

'Let's start at the very beginning, A very good place to start...'

I have never seen a Basking Shark.

I realise I'm not alone in that gap in my experience. After all, the Basking Shark, although the second largest fish and shark species on the planet (after the Whale Shark), is a sea-living giant, often spending winter months offshore or in deeper waters. Even when it comes closer to Britain and Ireland's coasts in summer time, it is usually off less populated parts of our west coasts. But it does sometimes come REALLY close inshore. With a typical adult basking shark reaching 7.9 metres in length (that's 26 feet in old money - longer than four six-foot-tall fridges laid end-to-end!) and the largest being over 12 metres, plus a stonking great big dorsal fin sticking up out of its back, people do often see them as they cruise slowly around, feeding at the surface of the sea. Top spotting locations around the British coast are Devon and Cornwall, around the Isle of Man and up and down the west coast of Scotland, particularly around the Inner Hebrides. But I've never seen one.

A bit of background basking shark biology follows: Basking sharks (given the scientific name Cetorhinus maximus) are found all around the world, generally in the temperate oceans. They, like Whale Sharks and only one other species of shark (the Megamouth Shark), are filter feeders that eat zooplankton, other invertebrates and very small fish. They cruise slowly through denser patches of plankton with their huge mouth open, forcing seawater out through their gills and trapping their tiny prey on specialised structures on their gills, before swallowing them. Their name comes from their habit of swimming slowly at the sea's surface, feeding as they go, thus looking like they are basking in the sun. Of the many other names basking sharks have been given, the  commonly used name ‘sun-fish’ also reflects this habit of surface feeding in sunny, calm weather.

Basking shark filter-feeding near the surface

(Photo via <a href="https://www.goodfreephotos.com/">Good Free Photos</a>)

Basking sharks have a giant liver, running the length of their body, weighing up to 25% of body weight and packed with rich fish oil. For an average adult basking shark, weighing about 4 and a half tons, that makes for a liver weighing over one ton! This huge weight and volume of oil in the body had led to their historical exploitation through harpoon-based (and other) fisheries, as well as for their skin, meat and fins. The oil was largely used for lighting lamps (not unlike the history of whaling for whale oil). The resultant historical killing has led to significant declines in the populations of these slow-growing, slow-maturing, long-lived, gentle, ocean giants.

Globally, the World Conservation Union, the IUCN, has listed the basking shark as an Endangered species since 2018. Basking sharks are still at risk globally because of the value of their fins to shark-fin fisheries (surely one of the most unsustainable catches of all time), for which they are directly targeted. Quoting a BBC article on basking sharks, they are 'also at risk of propeller damage from collision with boats and of entanglement in fishing gear, particularly the lines for static gear such as pots and creels for catching lobsters and crabs'. Concern over their status in Great Britain led to their legal protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (in 2000, although basking sharks were first named as a protected species on the Isle of Man under the Manx 1990 Wildlife Act).

Truly one of the most under-appreciated wonders of the seas around these Sceptr'd Isles.

The thing is, I've never seen one. So what? Well, the odds ought really to be skewed in my favour for incidental encounters, and not just on account of their enormous size. I am, by training, a marine biologist who grew up, studied, and have subsequently worked my whole career in Scotland; I've specialised in marine fish ecology; I've travelled extensively on Scotland's west coast and to its islands on the ferries of Caledonian MacBrayne, for work and pleasure; I've spent survey time on boats and on the coast up and down the west coast and on the Hebridean and northern islands; I even travelled right around the north, west and south coasts of Ireland one summer. Every chance I get, I will swim in the sea (for fun).

And I've never run across a basking shark. In fact, I keep missing them. Sometimes by minutes.

Earliest ‘encounter’

I think the first time I came across the basking shark was on television sometime in the 1970s, in the 1969 film 'Ring of Bright Water', starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. 'Ring of Bright Water' is a story about a Londoner and his pet otter living on the Scottish coast. Although the story is fictional, it is is adapted from the 1960 autobiographical book of the same name by British naturalist and author Gavin Maxwell. In his attempt to find food for his ever-hungry otter, the hero harpoons a basking shark, cuts it up and freezes it (only to find that the otter won't touch it). In fact, this storyline echoes Maxwell's actual failed attempt of trying to establish a basking shark fishery based on the Isle of Soay (which he had purchased) near Skye between 1945 and 1948. The experience was described subsequently in his 1952 book: 'Harpoon At A Venture'.

In the film there is actual footage of a basking shark (apparently filmed in the Firth of Lorne), purportedly swimming under the hero's rowing boat.

Screenshot of basking shark from the film 'Ring of Bright Water'

He returns later and harpoons a basking shark, kills it and cuts it up on the beach, before transferring it to an old freezer that he has bought. As a real, dead basking shark was shown (see below) being cut up on the shore (following a close-up shot of a harpoon in a real basking shark), I can only assume it was harpooned and killed for the film company by one of the existing Scottish basking shark fishermen of the time. I remember the sense of unfairness I felt in my boyhood breast at the time about the shark being killed and its flesh wasted for nothing (although a fictional account, a real shark was clearly killed).

Cutting up the poor bloody shark in 'Ring of Bright Water'

(Screenshots from the film)

The tagging of the shark

I actually got my first potential professional involvement in basking sharks off to a nearly-flying start. In 1996, I was working for Scotland's statutory nature conservation agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), in the marine and coastal conservation section. On the departure of a colleague, I was asked to take over the role of SNH project manager for a proposed project that hadn't begun, namely a collaboration with two academics at Durham University, Drs Mark O'Connell and Tim Thom, to attempt tracking of basking sharks with satellite tags. SNH provided funding to purchase four satellite tags and the darts that would allow them to be attached to basking sharks, with the aim spending an experimental season finding out more about the behaviour and movements of the sharks around the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde. As well as the tagging equipment, access was purchased, at an academic discount rate, to the Argos satellite run from Toulouse in France. My involvement, which commenced with a visit to Durham to meet Mark and Tim in early 1996, promptly ceased when I changed jobs and agencies in July 1996, moving on to the new Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and the project management role passed to one of my friends back in the SNH marine and coastal section. The subsequent field season around Arran in the summer of 1997 is well-described in detail in the lovely 2021 book: 'A Sea Monster's Tale: In search of the basking shark' by Colin Speedie.

Following on from pioneering Scottish basking shark tracking studies by Dr 'Monty' Priede from the Aberdeen Fisheries Laboratory some 14 years earlier, the Durham University/SNH collaboration was only the second attempt to track Scotland's basking sharks. Had I still be employed by SNH in 1997 and managing the contract, there is a great chance that I would have secured my first sightings of basking sharks then; the project used a network of volunteers (mostly Scottish Wildlife Trust members, and mostly based on headlands and promontories) to make 29 shark sightings that summer. The researchers made a total of five approaches by boat to attempt to tag basking sharks and, although there was success at attaching the tags to two sharks, there were problems with the equipment that meant that, ultimately little was learned about the behaviour of the sharks. Useful lessons were learned, though, about the process of approaching and tagging basking sharks.

I was pleased to discover that, many years later, Scottish Natural Heritage was involved in studies that generated much improved understanding of basking shark behaviour. Since 2012, SNH (now called Nature Scot) has been working with the University of Exeter to understand more about basking shark habitat use and behaviour using a variety of tagging technologies. A total of 61 satellite tags have been deployed on basking sharks, as part of the Nature Scot and University of Exeter partnership project to investigate their movements and results were published in Nature Scot's 2016 Research Report, as well as peer-reviewed scientific papers. Nature Scot was also involved in an international collaboration in 2019, using REMUS SharkCam - a sophisticated Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) designed, built and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA, which generated some amazing underwater film of basking sharks swimming near the Isles of Coll and Tiree. All of the SNH/Nature Scot basking shark work since 2012 is available here.

Near misses

I think the first time I actually realised that I'd missed a great opportunity to see basking sharks was when my wife and I took our old campervan on the CalMac ferry to the Inner Hebridean islands of Coll and Tiree. This is when I first realised that the waters around these islands in summer are a real hotspot for basking sharks. On our first day on Coll, we visited the Post Office and, while Olivia was in buying postcards and stamps, I chatted in the warm summer sun to the Post Mistress's husband. He told me, unprompted, that there had been 37 basking sharks swimming in the harbour bay the week before. Missed by a week or so. Needless to say, the further pleasant, sunny week we spent on Coll and Tiree, and two further ferry trips, resulted in no shark sightings.

The Isle of Coll Post Office

On another campervan trip, this time in the Outer Hebrides, when we travelled in two gloriously sunny, calm and warm weeks from Vatersay in the south, to Lewis in the north, we were on the Barra to Eriskay ferry, and decided to sit on the top deck, leaving our wee terrier Ella in the van down on the vehicle deck. About halfway across, I went down to check on the dog and missed a basking shark which had surfaced briefly and was spotted by my wife (who is also a marine biologist). This one, I missed by about a minute. I should have stayed where I was.

The damned dog was fine. 

On a two week campervan holiday when we travelled around the Irish north-east, north, west and south coasts in high summer, no basking sharks were seen. On Achill Island, however, we took a trip out to the west end, to be informed at the beautiful bay at Keem, that there had been a basking shark swimming around the bay that morning.

But the most frustrating miss was surely on a campervan trip to northwest Scotland, when we were engaged on a seaweed survey for the plant charity, Plantlife Scotland. We were staying one evening in the campsite at the really beautiful Clachtoll Beach, and I donned my wetsuit and went for a late evening swim in the bay, with a beautiful sunset developing on the western horizon. After a great 20 minute swim, I went to the shower block and showered. As I came out of the shower block, a fellow camper approached me from the beach and said highly excitedly, in German-accented English: ‘Did you see the basking shark?’

Me: ???

‘Yes, it swam into the bay just now and swam around. It was wonderful. Amazing!’ It had appeared about five minutes after I got out and went for a shower. My fellow camper had been sitting on the promontory on the right of the above photo and had a great view of the shark. I’m very happy for him.

Clachtoll Bay, Sutherland, Highland Council ((c) Google Earth)

I used to jest that I thought basking sharks were just made up, a work of fiction. My failure to see them, a bit of a standing joke between my wife and me. But, with a fair wind, some sun and a bit of luck, I’m hopeful of a change in my fortunes on that front. My family have given me an amazing gift, in late August, of a three day visit on a boat based on the Isle of Coll, during peak basking shark season, to attempt the spotting of, and potentially swimming with, basking sharks. I’ll be joining a trip with Basking Shark Scotland (an eco-tourism business specialising in marine wildlife watching), and keeping everything crossed, with the aim of breaking my basking shark duck.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:

That alone should encourage the crew.

Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:

What I tell you three times is true."

(From: 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll)

I will find out soon enough if the sea around the Isle of Coll is indeed 'just the place' for a Shark - you'll have to await Fit The Second to find out! There are no guarantees. The trip will be great whatever happens, but we may see basking sharks, we may not. It’s such a beautiful area, with stunning seascapes and beaches, and packed with marine and island wildlife that, whatever happens, it will be an amazing experience and a real privilege to be there. There might be sharks and there might not. Watch this space…

[*Fit The First: in case you are wondering about this unusual phrase, I was tickled to discover that Lewis Carroll had made use of an archaic literary phrase for verses or chapters, namely ‘Fits’, in his poem, ‘The Hunting of the Snark’. I first encountered this use of ‘Fit’ in Douglas Adams’ adaptation of his books, ‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, for BBC radio. Each weekly episode was named as Fit The First, Fit The Second, etc. I’d always thought that this was just a conceit of his own but was delighted to learn, in reading around for this blog post, that he actually did it as a tribute to Carroll’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’! I hope my Fit The Second, to follow my Coll trip, will not be in the nature of the agonies of The Hunting of the Snark!]

A century on from the Battle of the Somme - Wull Grant and one Ayrshire man's story

It's been quite a while since I posted in my blog but this seems a very appropriate time to do so.

One hundred years ago tomorrow, the first day of July 1916, the upper reaches of the River Somme in northern France saw the start of the Battle of the Somme. Also known as the ‘Somme Offensive’, the armies of the French and British Empires fought from the 1^st  of July for the next 141 days against the army of the German Empire. It was to be the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front and, with more than a million men wounded or killed, was one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

British artillery at the Battle of the Somme

There are not many examples of the voices of ordinary soldiers from that hellish event, considering how many soldiers were involved. In an article from Thursday 8^th March 2007, the Guardian newspaper reported on the auction of the diary and photographs of Walter Hutchinson, a stretcher-bearer in the 10th Battalion, York & Lancaster Regiment, who wrote the diary during the first three weeks of the battle. The article began with the following statement:

“For almost a century, poets and historians have struggled to describe the carnage of July 1 1916, the bloodiest day in the history of the British army. Personal tales are easily lost amid the colossal death toll of the first day of the battle of the Somme. Of the 120,000 British soldiers who scrambled out of the trenches to march into a wall of fire, almost 20,000 died.”

The article then goes on to describe the rare personal account from an ordinary soldier, as described by Hutchinson in his diary, and I recommend that you read the article here. 

Mention of personal stories from ordinary soldiers who fought in the trenches at the Somme resonate with me for reasons I will explain. Involvement in such horror must leave an indelible mark on a survivor. My own paternal Great Grandfather fought in World War One in a Scottish regiment at the hell-hole that was Gallipoli and, following a leg wound, was sent home and survived the First World War. My father said that his grandfather never talked about his war experience, and who can blame him? His injury maybe meant, though, that he missed being deployed to France and maybe to the Somme. The Battle of the Somme was, as stated above, one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The mental and physical effects on survivors must have been unimaginably horrible, severe and long-lasting – one British officer, Captain Leeham, talking about the first day of the battle, in 'Tommy Goes to War', said:

“The trench was a horrible sight. The dead were stretched out on one side, one on top of each other six feet high. I thought at the time I should never get the peculiar disgusting smell of the vapour of warm human blood heated by the sun out of my nostrils. I would rather have smelt gas a hundred times. I can never describe that faint sickening, horrible smell which several times nearly knocked me up altogether.”

I never met any survivors from the Somme myself but, in our family, my father talked often, during our childhood and beyond, of an old soldier friend of his who had been sent to the Somme, survived and returned home to Ayrshire in the west of Scotland, a man whom he had befriended, ironically enough, following his own return to Scotland after his own National Service in 1958.

Most of my immediate family hails from Ayrshire, and my father, sister and I were all born in Kilwinning. Before his period of National Service (in Centurion tank regiments in Germany as a gunner/ radio operator), Dad had worked on the Montgreenan estate (owned then by Lord Weir of Weir Pumps in Glasgow) near Kilwinning as an assistant gamekeeper, described as an under-keeper. By all accounts, he was great at the job, his boss, a lovely, calm, old gentleman of a gamekeeper called Donald Campbell, describing him as the best underkeeper he’d ever worked with. The local hostelry near the estate where he and his friends used to go for a pint or two after work or at the weekend was the Torranyard Inn (pictured below today in its current guise as a curry house). It was there he got to know an elderly, retired coal miner called William Grant, or Wull Grant, as he was known.

Torranyard Inn

Wull lived upstairs at the Torranyard Inn, in a room with no running water and no electricity, lit at night by paraffin lamps and with only an outside water closet (toilet). Dad said Wull had silken white hair and skin like a baby. But his skin was marked with blue where coal dust had been sealed into injuries picked up during his time in the mines. He wore a muffler (a woollen scarf) and an old light-checked Tweed suit and used to sit outside the back door of the pub in his bunnet (flat cap) with an old pair of binoculars. I have no doubt that this was probably what got Dad talking with him, as Dad was also a keen birdwatcher and they probably found common ground there. He was apparently one for the pithy phrase. He used to say (from no doubt bitter experience),"Hunger's guid [good] kitchen" and, on hearing a young man at the bar holding forth that '"Money isn't everything", Wull apparently replied "Aye son, but it's a handy thing to have when you go to buy a loaf"! That latter one passed into our family treasure trove of sayings, to be oft-repeated. I think I would have liked Wull!

Over time, Wull shared with Dad that he had been at the Battle of the Somme. Dad couldn't remember the exact military unit that Wull had served in but it was a Scottish regiment, of which there were several present. Not only had Wull been a soldier there but he was a sniper and spent much of his time crawling around in No-Man's Land, looking for targets on the German side. He was out there on the first day of the battle, one hundred years ago tomorrow, and the crossfire across No-Man's Land was so heavy that, while crawling around on his front, he received two bullet holes through his water bottle (which would have been on his belt or webbing, worn at the back and, so, sticking up more than the rest of his body. There were probably few who had closer shaves that day than "Auld Wull Grant", as Dad often referred to him. He served throughout the Battle of the Somme. He told Dad that, once, he spent three days playing a deadly cat-and-mouse with a German sniper before Wull killed him. Although he returned home after the War, Dad said Wull's body was full of shrapnel from shell blasts out there between the trenches.

I tell Wull's story today, not because it was exceptional. Of course it was exceptional, by the standards of our so-much safer, richer and more comfortable times. There would be countless exceptional stories of bravery, courage in the face of mind-numbing terror, of endurance in the appalling misery of the conditions in the trenches of the Somme, if only those stories had been or could be told. Rather, I tell Wull's story simply to honour the memory of an ordinary Scottish man caught up in the first dramatic waves of 20th Century history, dragged from a presumably hard and rather dangerous life as a Scottish coal miner in the Edwardian era to the battlefields of France, to the first major battle of modern, mechanised war, with tanks and aircraft for the first time, poison gas, trench warfare and who survived the battle and the war despite being a sniper, surely one of the most dangerous of all roles in that hellish trench war. Wull survived all of that, returned home to continue his life as a miner in Ayrshire and eventually retired to live above a pub in the most basic of conditions, whiling away his time sitting in the open air watching birds and chatting. Dad said that Wull passed away sometime in the 1960's, perhaps before I was born in the middle of that decade.

Now my Dad is no longer with us and, as far as I know, the only people who know Wull's story are my brother, sister, mother and me. Maybe he has descendants. I don't know. Maybe there are other old men or women still alive who remember him and his story from evenings spent at the Torranyard in the late 1950's and early 1960's. I don't know. I regret that I have no photo of Wull. I have no idea if his military service record was one of the 2 million or so destroyed by fire during the London Blitz in World War Two. But I know he was my father's friend and we know a little of his story. And now you know a little of his story too.

Thanks to his story, which he shared with Dad, I have known about the Battle of the Somme since I was a very small boy and that there was nothing glorious about it. In one reference given in the Wikipedia entry for the Battle of the Somme, a German officer, Friedrich Steinbrecher, is quoted as saying:

“Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.” 

There will be a two minute silence tomorrow morning in the UK to honour those who fought at the Somme 100 years ago. Personally, I will be pausing to remember, as well as all those who fought and died on both sides, William Grant, Auld Wull, and my own Great Grandfather, two men loved and respected by my own father, and what they went through in the trenches of France and Gallipoli.

A fatbike nightride word picture

Thursday night is fatbike night. My night out on my own. The Scottish summer's late evening sunlit riding opportunities have passed for another year. To ride on a November evening is to gird yourself with onion layers of merino, lycra, Goretex. A headtorch precariously wrapped around the helmet. Mighty bright double beam lights on the handlebars, a veritable pair of arclights to cut the night ahead, and a flashing red bobtail behind. One minute to nine, daughter a-bed, dinner digested, dishes done, I roll down the gravel drive, fat tyres kicking out the stones that the neighbours and I so recently barrowed in and raked out. Pulling out onto the road and thankfully it's quiet at this hour, the tarmac ride a necessary evil to take me to the woods and trails. Four inch wide tyres thrum on the blacktop, fish out of water, not really meant for this environment, impatient for the soft, the wet, the yielding of the off-road world.

Crossing over the motorway bridge, I soar above lorries, vans, cars and even motorbikes (with smaller wheels than mine), then it's down the dip, across the first watercourse of the trip, and up the hill to Cambusbarron church. I look left at the junction, see the house where John Grierson, the father of the documentary, spent his childhood. The man who first turned real stories into reel stories, real to reel. Then it's past the pub (and incredulous voices from the smokers outside the door as they spot the size of my wheels and tyres) and then the primary school as I climb gradually towards the quarry gate, rolling by quiet cul-de-sacs, their houses with softly golden glowing windows. No one is out here except me, this winter evening world a largely indoor one.

As I approach the quarry gate, my lights pick out a constellation of reflections from stacks of stockpiled traffic cones, a shoal of silver flashes that slide left and right as my lights swing back and forth, and then past me in my journey's flow. No one's parked here. It looks like I have the place to myself. As I cross the threshold at the quarry gate, it feels like I'm escaping. But I am surrounded by aliens. Non-native, invasive Japanese knotweed dying back for winter on my right and snowberry to the left, it's crop of gleaming white berries like oyster pearls in the light cast sideways from my bike. And I know the small quarry just up on the left is infested with pernicious alien peri-peri burr, out of my sight for now.

I'm struck by how absolutely still it is tonight. Not a breath of a breeze, nor twitch of a leaf. Only the sound of my tyres on the small gravel of the path and the quiet roll of chain on gears and jockey wheels. And, behind me now, less than a mile back, the noise of many other tyres, the sound of the motorway like an constant low exhaling.

It isn't cold, not even cool but, with conditions this still, it must the light cloud cover that's preventing the temperature from plunging like an inappropriate neckline at a wake. I do see a few stars but even these slip from view for now as I enter the tunnel of trees. My headlights arc back and forth with my increased effort as the path's slope steepens, a little at first, then dramatically. I am forced down the gears, already on the small chain ring at the front but, pleasingly after months of riding nearly every day, still having a couple in reserve on the rear sprocket. This is the only serious climb of the night and I begin to leak a little sweat. I am overdressed for a steep climb but, soon enough, I reach the boulders blocking what was once a road for engined vehicles and, jinking past those obstacles, I reach the flat plateau of gravel into which the hanging valley of the upper quarry opens From here, it will be a pretty steady run down to the quarry plant and access road. As I pedal and freewheel across this dark plain, a moving cone of brightness, gravels crunching underwheel, I see the soft houselights of the hill farms gleaming off to my right, and flashes from headlights on cars negotiating the North Third road's bends, undulations and slopes.

Then... looking around with my headtorch, I see a different light, not illumination but two glowing points of my reflected torch, the eyes of something, I know not what at first but which resolves itself into a roe deer ahead of me, and which slips quickly and silently off to the scrub on the right. It's the first deer I have seen tonight but won't be the last.

The downhill run is pleasant recovery after the climb and, all too soon, after a little weaving to find the path and negotiate more bouldery roadblocks, I pass the tall and currently silent white tower of the batching plant and my wheels glide in relative smoothness onto the access road. During the day, huge trucks may trundle up and down here with dusty plumes and roaring diesel engines but, tonight, there's just me and my bike, its whirring freewheel and the road buzz from my fat tyres. Slipping past the old limekilns on the left now, steep enough downhill for me to need to brake, conscious of the large metal gate ahead, which I need to come down off the saddle to walk the bike past.

Another short steep downhill, now on the North Third road but only until I reach the bend by the river, where our ways will diverge. On the way down, I see a searchbeam of torchlight, obviously handheld from its movements, as someone from one of the farms up the hill goes about their business. Then, I reach the river and peel off left on the bend, across the wee bridge. I look down into the fast-flowing current as I cross, my headtorch a poor illuminator as the water seems to suck in the lightbeam, giving nothing back, an aquatic event horizon.

Off the bridge, I wheel into a huge black cavern of tall trees, and the only real muddy patch of the ride, then out into the open air. The farm track, one of my favourite sections of this ride, offers many possibilities. But not for tonight, the enticing delights of the North Third cliff and wood paths. Rather, my ride takes me straight on down towards the Swanswater Fishery. Before I reach the junction offering such choices, a gleam of eyes picked out ahead by my headtorch  presages the passage across my path of two more roe deer, their crossing rather panicked by my rattling, whirring cone of light. The farm track is dry tonight and the usual mix of hard-packed earth, cobbly stones and hollows, not puddle-filled tonight. It makes for a slightly weaving, slightly downhill run as I try to find the smoothest line in the view allowed by my lights. And it is a pretty smooth ride, the four inch deep tyres playing give and take with holes, rocks, bumps and buffeting from the track. As I reach the first ponds of the fishery, the sound of rushing, gurgling water reaches me with an odd doppler effect as I pass over small streams draining through the site. On summer rides through here, the pond banks are dotted with silent sentinel anglers, in their own bubbles of focus and concentration. Not tonight. The lights in the windows of the scattered houses by the fishery provide the only other signs of human life.

All too quickly, I reach another tarmac road and the occasional four wheel drive flicks by, headlamps blazing and windows dark, heading home into the hills. Again, my time on the road is brief, although here, the closeness of the motorway, less than a couple of hundred metres away provides the dominant soundtrack as I sneak along to connect to the next section of path.

Through a farmyard and past the 'big hoose', the path bends down to the Bannockburn, its presence heard and felt in the dark, rather than seen. As I descend the narrow path, the temperature falls some degrees, into a nearly frosty pocket along the burn side. Glistening dew is not far from freezing, if that sky clears a little more. I need to cross the Bannockburn to reach the next stage of the ride, Tinker's Loan, and roll cautiously across the old, narrow and frankly crumbling stone bridge, not the greatest fun in the dark. Another tunnel of trees and a steady climb up Tinker's Loan, my lights filling the narrow space of the path, hedges and tree'd ceiling. A pair of wood pigeons explode from a tree above me, battering out through the branches, their staccato machine gun wing flaps, the percussion instruments of fear.

Winding steadily up, I cross the road that runs down to Gateside and catch an eyeful of the night-time Forth Valley laid out before me. Streetlights, house lights, floodlights, car headlights, beacons flash on pylons pinprick on the retinas before I dip into the Loan again, downhill now and then a final short climb up to the other end of this narrow and surely ancient way. I can smell cows and see on the right, at path's end, solid darker blocks in the darkness, betrayed by odour. Now it really is all downhill from here as I whizz, woohooing, down the Polmaise Road towards home. My tyres fling off the detritus of the offroad world, a shower of flashes flaring in front of my lights. I reach the motorway again and streetlights and the ride feels like it is already over, so I extend the magic a little longer by cutting through the community wood, scattering rabbits from the pathside verges and rousing a late night dog walker from his quiet thoughts. As we exchange hellos, I realise he's the first person I've seen since I passed the pub and that's the first word I've spoken since leaving the house... And then, I'm home.

What's so special about riding alone and off-road at night? Maybe it wouldn't be your thing but, in reflecting a little on my solo bike trip in the dark last Thursday night, I realised that it put my state of mind in a special place. The description that sprang to mind was... Mindfulness. According to Wikipedia, "Mindfulness is the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment" It's all about being in the moment, observing, focussing on the now. And although it was a ride of only 50 minutes or so, not long by typical training ride standards, it felt longer in a good way, a flood of simple observations, awareness of my bike, my body, the environment I was passing through, and no conversation (until I was two minutes from home), leaving me feeling refreshed and relaxed. And all that on top of the physical exercise that was my original motivation.

P.S. What's a fatbike? This is mine!

Here comes the sun (spots and all)

Hello again world. Long time, no write!I thought it was time I reactivated my blog as there's work to do, thread posts to re-ignite and complete and a world of interest to be writing about again! Where have I been? Well, around the time I last posted, I became a parent  and life became a metaphorical timey-wimey wormhole for my free, available time. Here I am resurfacing on the other side of the wormhole (and what a ride it has been!).

And what has brought me back today? Well, the autumn evening sun tonight attracted me to fix the long lens to my digital SLR and take a few shots as the Sun sank towards the western horizon, as seen from western Stirling in Scotland, UK, thus:

Quite attractive - but wait, what are those dotty, spotty things on the sun?

Yes, looks like sunspots - I've never managed to photograph sunspots before, so I was quite excited!

Sunspots but perhaps you can't quite make them out so...

I went and checked online - there are now some great websites showing the activity on the sun in near-real time. I went to NASA's SOHO site - for their Solar and Heliotrophic Observatory - here - which showed this entry for the sun today:

Sunspot activity for today, 10th September

And with not very much squinting and little need for imagination, you can see two of the larger spots, numbers 2157 and 2158, ringed in the following copy of my photo:

Sunspots

Yippee - now all I need to do is find out how, safely, to take much crisper images of the Sun (and to find out how to make my photos show the colour of the Sun - the actual Sun I was looking at was a deep red - not the yellow colour it looks here). I'm afraid I am a  bit of a lazy point-and-press merchant. I fear I need to read the manual for my SLR.  Anyway, a fine end to a lovely day and one with a bit of added scientific excitement.

And what are sunspots? Read this from Wikipedia.

Signs I Like #32: Christmas 2012 Special

My inexplicable near-six month absence from blogging notwithstanding, I emerge blinking into the dim midwinter gloom to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. This sign found yesterday in Marks and Spencer's as we hung about waiting for the turkeys to be discounted!

A grasshopper's eye view?

Continuing the grassland theme from earlier in the week, I tried a wee photographic experiment with my phone camera, seeking a slightly different perspective on this grassland habitat. I set the auto-timer to 10 seconds, pressed the shutter release and laid the phone, lens-upward, in the middle of a bed of creeping buttercups and speedwells. I think the results are quite interesting and definitely the different perspective I was seeking!  The second of the pictures was one of my blipfotos this week.
Please let me know what you think!

Signs I Like #31: Are all committee meetings the SAME?

Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto :: Are all committee meetings the same? :: 12 June 2012

I enjoyed spotting this sign at the University of Stirling earlier this week, considering how many committee (and other) meetings I have sat in over the last 25 years!

Signs I Like #30: Once in a lifetime

Well, it probably will be once in a lifetime that the Olympic Flame is carried through the town where I live. And that is happening here in Stirling tomorrow, Wednesday 13th June 2012. And, despite all the corporate nonsense and over-commercialisation of the London 2012 Games, I refuse to have my excitement quenched. This road sign, foretelling tomorrow's rolling traffic restrictions and heavy-handed security blanket, was in Bridge of Allan's main street, where the Olympic Torch convoy will be going before coming within two minutes drive of my house in Stirling.

Find yourself a grassland right now

Yesterday, I was clearly feeling the love from contact with nature - it spilled over last night into my blipfoto daily post, here. Here's the story:

"This is a fantastic time of year to take a closer look at a grassland near you. Lots of plants in flower, the grass 'heads' all developing too, so much detail if you hunker down and take a good look! Today's blip was taken this morning in bright sun in Stirling's King's Park, well away from the bits where the ecology is ruined to suit the golfers. A beautiful mix of vegetation is on display: the white 'umbrellas' or umbals of pignut, the leggy stems and sunny yellow flowers of the field buttercup, the seed heads of wild sorrell and one of the plantains and the cobalt blue shining starlets of the speedwell flowers scattered throughout. And that's without starting on the grasses.

Go out and find some uncut grassland this week and give yourself a visual treat!"

Here's the picture of the scene that was floating my boat!

What a tongue!

Last night's submission to blipfoto showed Ella Wonder Dog, exhausted after a tough frisbee session and exhibiting her magnificent tongue! Here's the original posting, followed by the picture and a bonus photo showing that wonderful canine tongue: Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto :: What a tongue! :: 8 June 2012

The heart of dreichness

For last night's blipfoto entry, I felt I wanted to share with you, especially if you live outside of Scotland, what the old Scottish word "dreich" actually looks like. "Dreich" means wet, overcast, cool and generally unattractive, particularly in respect of weather!

You can read more here.

Signs I like #29 - Ducks Crossing!

When it comes to road signs, I am, not surprisingly given the primary focus of this blog, quite interested in those related to protecting both wildlife and motorists from unwanted interactions. In most cases, this is primarily to protect the wildlife. In some instances, however, such as deer, there are potentially serious, even fatal, implications of accidental comings-together, both for the animal and the vehicle's occupants. In this series of Signs I Like" posts, I've previously included the funky signs in the Outer Hebrides, warning of otters crossing the roads at "pinchpoints" such as coastal causeways.

Today, the sign I like is on the business park where I work in Stirling where it points out the likelihood of encountering ducks crossing the road. It is particularly important at this time of year as female mallards walk their large broods of ducklings from their hidden nest sites across the business park, down to the small pond at the entrance to the business park. We had a mother duck walking her family of eight suckling past the office window last week - very sweet!

I took this photo in the pouring rain - very appropriate weather for ducks!

Tea for two!

Today's blipfoto Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto

Britain's biggest buttercups - on blipfoto

Here's my blipfoto entry for today - it shows some globeflowers, magnificent giant buttercups: Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto :: Britain's biggest buttercups :: 4 June 2012

Mirth, music, misery and 'monica

A stool, a box of harmonicas, two guitars and some mikes

 Sorry for the contrived alliteration of the title to this post but last night we were entertained mightily by a great gig at the Stirling Tolbooth by James Grant, frontman for Scottish band Love and Money, songwriter, guitarist and collaborator with, amongst others, Karen Matheson of Capercaillie. I've been a fan of Grant's work since 1988 when Love and Money released their "Strange Kind of Love" album which I regard, to this day, as one of the most perfectly conceived and performed sets of songs in modern popular music. I have probably listened to that album more often than to any other over the last 24 years. So, as you can imagine, a chance to see him playing live in our wee venue in Stirling would be enough of an attraction in its own right.

However, while we saw him perform a great solo show last time he came here in November 2009, this time he wasn't travelling alone. He was joined last night by a long-term musical collaborator (and clearly great friend), harmonica player and virtuoso Fraser Speirs, a fellow Glaswegian who has played on many of Grant's and Love and Money's recordings over the years. I mumble along badly on the harmonica and, indeed, have played for several years with a bunch of folk in that very venue (in a back room rather than the stage, I hasten to add) and have wanted to see Fraser Speirs playing live for a long time. So, the chicken's entrails read well for an auspicious evening (a bit tough on the chicken though)...

A solo set of three numbers by James Grant before...

Speirs and Grant in full flow

I won't review the night song by song but this was a much more varied set than the last time we saw JG play here. There were old Love and Money numbers (including one of my favourites, "Walk the Last Mile"), many tracks from his solo recordings, including, after some cajoling and banter, some fun audience chorus singing on "The Scarecrow Song", and some great covers (e.g. Angie, Tom Waits' Clap Hands and others). One great thing about James Grant's live performances is his funny (some would say dry) chat (definitely from the Glasgow school of mirth). I remember a TV interview with JG, maybe in the early 1990's - I can't recall its name - but I remember the discussion of the influence on his writing of a belief that most people live their live in a kind of quiet desperation. I now know that was Henry David Thoreau that said it first but a sense of that still percolates many of James Grant's more recent work. He claims the misery and gloom that are the usual subject of his material demands that he tries to amuse us between songs. But it's mostly gentle, and often self-deprecating, stories and he has a great rapport with his audience, many of whom (maybe most last night?) have been coming to his shows since the late 1980's. I guess it's part of what makes for a pretty intimate experience, one that's probably easier to foster too in a wee venue like the Tolbooth (150-160 seats, tops?) and we both came away last night feeling like we'd been part of something special (actually, that's not uncommon for gigs at the Tolbooth in our experience where you sit so close to the performers and we were in the front row).

Oh, and did I mention that Grant is an exceptional guitarist - one of the things that attracted me to Love and Money in the first instance was the sheer varied musicality of his guitar lines, whether rhythm, picking or lead parts. And his style of playing and singing is complemented extremely well by harmonica.

For a wee flavour of last night's show, here's a recording of Grant and Speirs live, taken from Youtube, a performance of a Love and Money classic, Lips Like Ether, which they also played last night:

Fraser Speirs giving it large on the moothie last night...

This is what a proper harmonica player's gig box looks like!

In case you've never seen or heard Fraser Speirs playing harmonica (although he has played with so many artists that you will almost certainly have heard his playing without realising - check out his remarkable discography on the appropriate tab here), here's a wee treat for you, with Speirs playing a version of 'Lost John' for the audience at Edinburgh Folk Club, The Pleasance, in January 2008 (and with a nice chatty intro too):

Was there ever an instrument more designed to mimic the sound of steam trains? I doubt it. As I said before, I play harmonica (but badly!) and I can tell you there is amazing layer upon layer of technique and breathing control in this performance, and clever use of the mike! Oh and it's great fun too...

And to round off this excitement-fest, in case you've lived a blighted existence and haven't heard Love and Money before (you poor old sod), here's a vintage performance (was this a promo video for the single? I don't know) from 1991's "Dogs in the traffic" album, a track which also features Fraser Speirs, "Waiting for Angeline":

Incidentally, James Grant's own website is here (where he has generously shared the chords and lyrics for all of his L&M and solo work), and Fraser Speirs website can be found here, including a harmonica tutorial.

The Stirling Lines on Burns Night

Today is, as many of you even beyond the borders of Scotland will be aware, the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, born in 1759 in the village of Alloway in Ayrshire (the county, too, of my birth). Robert Burns came to Stirlingshire (where I now live) on two occasions in August and October 1787. He appreciated the importance of Stirling in Scotland's history and reflected this in a number of songs or poems (for example, Scot Wha Hae, By Allan Stream). I'm indebted to a fine new leaflet on Robert Burns' association with Stirling, published by Stirling's Smith Museum and Art Gallery for the above details and for providing me the opportunity to post something appropriate for Burns Night:

On one of his visits to Stirling in 1787, Burns stayed at the Golden Lion Hotel (which is still in business today) where he (mischievous lad that he was) engraved a short poem (known thereafter as The Stirling Lines) on a window pane in the hotel:

Written By Somebody On The Window Of an Inn at Stirling, on seeing the Royal Palace in ruin.

Here Stuarts once in glory reigned,

And laws for Scotland's weal ordained;

But now unroof'd their palace stands,

Their sceptre's sway'd by other hands;

Fallen indeed, and to the earth

Whence groveling reptiles take their birth.

The injured Stuart line is gone,

A race outlandish fills their throne;

An idiot race, to honour lost;

Who know them best despise them most.

The Smith Museum leaflet describes the poem thus:

"These ten lines summarise the ruinous condition of the palace and castle, where the ceiling with the Stirling Heads [carved wooden heads of royalty and citizenry, restored in 2011] collapsed in 1777. The town also lost its sense of purpose after the removal of the royal court to London in 1603 and was in a sad condition at the time of Burns".

However accurate a description of the condition of Stirling was provided by this little poem, it also proved immensely unpopular with some locals, perhaps also for its criticism of the ruling regime, and Burns was forced to break the window! The controversy even dogged his path two years later while seeking government employment, when he was "question'd like a child about my matters and schooled for my inscription on a Stirling window"!

An interesting little side story bringing Burns to life with all his mischief and perhaps a little youthful lack of foresight (or lack of care) about the consequences of his actions, and interesting for us right here in Stirling and especially today, on Burns Night.

Wild food from the park – September

Well, we reached September in our little local wild food project with 8 months of interesting discoveries, experiments and food and drink already behind us and documented on this blog. And, with September being more or less the peak of the natural produce ‘harvest’, we had a reasonable expectation of more good wild food opportunities.

Our opportunity to make the most of these was a bit truncated, however, as we spent two weeks away in our campervan in the first two weeks of the month. While we were away, unfortunately, the crop of blackberries on the bramble bushes peaked (and were picked – by others) and had largely vanished by the time we came home in mid-September. We managed to find a small number of ripe blackberries that hadn’t begun to rot. Plus, a hopeful sight, there were also quite a few green, unripe blackberries that, with a relatively dry, mid spell of weather might ripen (and they did indeed, by the end of October). More later on how we used the blackberries.


Honeysuckle (Latin name: Lonicera periclymum) is a widespread and common plant species of woodlands, growing as an entwining climber up into the trees. Richard Mabey’s ‘Flora Britannica’ describes honeysuckle as having: “one of the sweetest and best-loved scents of all British wild flowers.” He reports that children (and, I can confirm, some adults!) still pick the flowers to suck nectar from the base (although I doubt if Stirling children do this these days, at least not as far as I have spotted). Tess Darwin’s book: ‘The Scots Herbal. The plant lore of Scotland’ says that, as well as having been used for a number of medicinal purposes, honeysuckle flowers can also be made into tea and wine. Honeysuckle is widespread in the wooded areas of our park and we collected blossoms for yet another purpose:

We were really keen, knowing that the flowers are edible, to use them in some way that would make the most of that wonderful fragrance. The other ‘fragrant’ product that we make regularly is elderflower cordial, so we decided we’d have a go at making honeysuckle cordial. A quick search on t’Internet confirmed that people have done this successfully before so we just substituted honeysuckle blossoms for the elderflowers in our usual elderflower cordial recipe and made the cordial by our usual method. Honeysuckle blossoms in the park occur as either pink or yellow and we harvested blossoms of both colours:

The resulting cordial is the most fetching light pink colour and may be the most wonderful drink we have ever produced. It is delicate tasting and fragrant and we will make much more next year! It gets a gold star from me and has been my personal high point in this year-long wild food experience so far:




The pink delight that is honeysuckle cordial



From the Park, we managed to gather together enough brambles, some of the wild plums I wrote about in August, a very few wild greengages that had been growing unnoticed next to the plums, and a few elderberries, all cooked together and strained, the juice then being made into a very dark and well-setting hedgerow jelly:




Some remnant blackberries, with wild plums and greengages.
With elderberries, these became a hedgerow jelly.



Hedgerow jelly in preparation

 We harvested a few more hazelnuts that had escaped the attentions of the local grey squirrels, but many of the nuts proved to be hollow:

We also began to find, right at the end of September, that some of the beech trees were producing beech mast (the hard green cases that hold the beech tree’s seeds in the form of beech nuts). Most beech mast cases were empty or contained hollow beechnut cases but a few had little beech nuts, covered in a fine brick-red fuzz (which is quite bitter, in my experience, and should probably be scraped off, if you can be bothered). We began to collect these in dribs and drabs as a little wild food plan had begun to germinate which would deliver much later in the Autumn.


We had other wild food opportunities in September as a result of our holiday travels. On the way north, we stopped at Coylumbridge on the edge of the Rothiemurchus Forest near Aviemore and took a walk up the bottom two miles of the Lairig Ghru footpath (it cuts through the Lairig Ghru pass, connecting Aviemore with Braemar or, if you take a wrong turning, Blair Atholl!), to stretch our legs, and tire out the dog. The Aviemore end of the path lies within the great Scots Pine forest of Rothiemurchus and there we picked a couple of pounds of chanterelles, at a site we had visited and picked them at maybe five years ago. We ate those as part of several breakfasts during the following week of our holiday:

Rothiemurchus chanterelles plus a birch bolete

Then, the final day of our fortnight’s campervan holiday was spent in the glorious Culbin Forest and Sands on the north-east coast of Scotland, the Moray coast, near Findhorn. Long-established Scots Pine forests provide a habitat for many species of fungi – mushrooms and toadstools, including a number of edible (and much sought after) species. In Culbin, we picked some chanterelles, some (very) large orange birch boletes and, a brave first for us, a dark brown hedgehog mushroom we’d never seen before and which is restricted to northern Scots Pine forests. We ate these in a big mushroom risotto once we were back at home.