Ballaglass

 

Almost the full autumn experience

Wednesday 14th November, 2012

 

    Dorothy arrived back safely on Tuesday after her trip to London.  She saw "Singin' in the rain" and went to a couple of wonderful photographic exhibitions - the Ansel Adams exhibition in Greenwich, and the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum.  I sent her an email suggesting the Ballaglass/Cornaa/Ballafayle figure of eight walk for Wednesday morning and wrote "We haven't done that since spring . . . and the autumn leaves under the beeches in Ballaglass Glen may be quite pretty.  I don't expect there will be many leaves left on the trees."

 

    I was right about the leaves on both counts.  We got completely carried away and I took nearly a hundred photos during the walk.  Trevor even commented "Everyone goes to Ballaglass for the bluebells . . . but this is even better!"  So this is an email which should carry a Government Health Warning . . . If you have an allergy to wet leaves - delete before viewing!

 

    We started along the upper path from the car park towards the top end of the Glen  . . . walking over a carpet of beech and elm leaves.  The only thing missing from the "full autumn experience" was the crackle of crisp leaves underfoot.  The leaves were too wet and the best they could manage was a damp rustle.

We were heading towards a row of three of the oldest trees in the glen.  I wonder when they were planted.  I had thought that they were all horse chestnuts but now I am not so sure.  The first one we came to was definitely a chestnut but there didn't seem to be many horse chestnut leaves under the other two.  I will have to check next year when they have their new leaves.

We crossed the bridge at the top of the glen and headed up the steps towards the electric tram station.  Dorothy was lagging behind, reluctant to leave the river.

While we were waiting for her, I took a photo of the men outside the station . . . not quite Grand Central!  The gate is a fairly recent addition to keep the sheep out.  Sheep are rather good at escaping from their fields and used to shelter in the building.  I don't think the tourists appreciated having to wait for their trams in a litter of sheep droppings.

We walked along a muddy footpath outside the stone wall above the glen.  Tim was muttering about the mud.  I think he felt slightly cheated.  I had taken Danny instead of Alexander because I said that there would be a lot of road walking . . . and we hadn't walked along a single road so far.  The poor man didn't get much sympathy.  I just said "Whoever complains most during a walk has to plan the next one!" 

 

Happily, the next section was on tarred roads.  First up the hill past Cashtal yn Ard, down to the ford near the end of the Glen Mona footpath and then along the road to Port Cornaa.  On the way down the hill towards the ford, I climbed up onto a bank and took a photo of Port Cornaa in the valley below.  The tide was in - but it didn't look as though the path would be under water.

 

When we reached the shore, we saw that the tide had come in further and it was touch and go whether we would reach the bridge with dry socks.

Tim took the last photo of me and Danny - and I took the next one of him!

After crossing the bridge, we made our way up the track through the Barony Estate.   we passed this weird beech tree.  I had always assumed that the thick limb which juts over the path was a side branch but Tim looked at it carefully and said that he thought it was the main trunk which had been damaged and had grown at an odd angle.  I think he is right.

I have photographed these beech trunks before but I can't resist them.  They look almost like legs with little "toes".

A little further on, we stopped for coffee but we didn't time it well because there was a brief shower of rain.  I wondered whether it would be a good idea to scrap the Ballafayle section of the walk if it was still raining when we reached the track back to Ballaglass.  The rain stopped before we reached the junction, but Dorothy was looking a bit tired after all her travelling and I asked whether she would prefer to return to the cars.  She admitted that she was feeling "a bit feeble".  That is the last word that I would use to describe Dorothy but we headed back to the glen, went in the lower gate and wandered up the river - taking even more photographs.  Dorothy is standing on a mysterious structure.  It looks like the support for an old bridge dating back to the pleasure garden era but there is nothing visible on the other side of the river.  Perhaps the other pier got washed away during a flood . . .  but there are no traces of a path either.

 

And finally, one more river photo - taken from a wooden bridge further upstream:

 

 There was another shower while we were putting our backpacks in the cars so it was lucky that we didn't finish the planned route.