Cornaa

A Spring Walk

Wednesday 11th April, 2012

Tim, Alexander and I arrived at Ballaglass Glen rather early.  It had been an uneventful morning - no previous sleepless night, no oversleeping, no emergency trip to the vet . . . just plenty of time to get ready for the first hike with the new camera.  I had a few minutes to fill while we were waiting for the others and amused myself taking photos of the little river flowing past the parking area. 

Then Trevor and Dorothy arrived with another hiker, a friend of Trevor's . . . Teddy!  

 

We set off through the glen and joined the road near the old Cornaa Mill.  Then it was a hard slog up the narrow road which climbs up the steep hill towards the Ards and Cashtal yn Ard, an ancient burial site.  We didn't have time for a detour to see the stones because this morning's walk was all about spring flowers and baby animals . . . although it is impossible to entirely avoid history on the Island, but more of that later. 

 

First the flowers.   The first treat was the brilliant white stitchwort, growing prolifically on the sunny banks at the side of the road . . . with primroses and occasional violets scattered about.

 

Then the road turned downhill to the ford near the Barony Lodge and we took the shady road through the trees down to Port Cornaa.

 

The country areas of the Island change very slowly and these extracts from "Sketches of Locality" by John Quine, published in the Ramsey Church Magazine in 1896/7, are still true of Cornaa today.  (Here is a link if you would like to read the rest of his Sketches http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/rcm/rcm_skl.htm )

"The Cornaa . . . . The valley is open, with a broad river flat, the vista inland has woods on the slopes, farmhouses, and cultivated fields in the middle distance, and beyond soaring high the purple ridge and skiey summit of North Barrule. . . . . At the seaward end the river settles within a prodigious mole of shingle, heaped so high as to shut out the view of the sea; and when a steamer passes along the coast one sees only the moving masts. . . . . There is not a brighter and sunnier valley in the Island. It is a place of solitude, but not of loneliness."
By the way, I was standing on the "prodigious mole of shingle" when I took this photo.

A short way upstream there is a footbridge across the river to a boggy area on the north side of the river where marsh marigolds thrive.  The tall pointy leaves are wild yellow irises but they won't flower until summer.  

There were flowers on the wood anemones too, but their delicate flowers weren't looking very happy after some heavy showers of rain during the past few days.  A lot of the plants are still rather confused by the mild winter and we are getting early blossom on some wild flowers which usually flower much later in spring.  We even saw a few flowers on the wild garlic . . . and these bluebells.

We managed to tear ourselves away from the flowers and continued our walk up the footpath through The Barony.  I can never resist the temptation to take a photo of the huge, fallen, elm tree in the ruins of the Bellite factory.  In 1890 work was started on this explosives factory and a jetty, but after numerous complaints the enterprise was abandoned two years later, before it was completed.  The ruins are also described by John Quine in his Sketches of Locality . . . "A mass of masonry some distance inland, the arrested Bellite Factory, gives a suggestion of old activities decayed. Nature is already softening the harshness of the crude building, and making it part of itself."  

 

Tim took this photo of some very happy cows in an adjoining field . . . sunbathing with their calves in the warm morning sunshine. 

 

And, not to be outdone, I got a shot of some half-grown Loaghtan lambs with cute little baby horns.  They are a local rare breed and the newborn lambs are a very dark brown.  These must have been born very early this season as their coats are not much darker than the adults.

The next part of the walk was another climb up from the valley to the twin burial sites at Ballafayle.  On the east side of the road is the Ballafayle cairn which dates back about four thousand years - but on the other side of the road under the Scots pines is the Quaker burial site which is less than four hundred years old.

William Callow, one of the early Manx Quakers was persecuted, imprisoned and banished from the Island before being allowed to return four years before his death.   At that time, for some peculiar reason, Quakers were not considered Christian enough to be buried in the local churchyard at Maughold.  This burial ground was part of the Callow family farm.  William Callow was buried here in 1676 and up to eight other Quakers may also have been buried at this site.

Then down the hill to join up with the road from Ballajora back to Ballaglass via Ballaskeig.  I couldn't resist these nearly newborn lambs in the fields at lower Ballafayle.  A little later we saw a very newborn lamb - very cute with black blotches and still unsteady on its legs.  Three ewes were taking a maternal interest in it and the poor little thing was very confused as to which one was its mother.

 

And finally, down another hill to the road past the mill house to the parking area at Ballaglass.  I can't see this huge rhododendron tree with the red blossom in the garden of the mill house without thinking of that silly old song about "the biggest aspidistra in the world".  This is claimed to be the biggest rhododendron in the British Isles but someone in the group we used to walk with got a bit carried away and announced that it was "the biggest rhododendron in the world"!