Ballafayle

Two weeks of winter gales

Monday 4th February, 2013

 

We did walk last week but it was a cold, very windy day and we chose a sheltered walk in Glen Roy.  It wasn't very photogenic.  My hands were cold because I had forgotten to take my gloves and I was walking fast trying to keep warm.  I wasn't tempted to loiter taking photos - hence the lack of a walk email. 

 

Tim took a few photos, including this one of a lot of curious sheep watching us walk past.

 

This morning the Met. office said they expected a dry day with only isolated wintry showers but they warned of high winds: "West 25-30 gusts 40, increasing 35-40 with gusts 50-55 this afternoon, then gusts to about 60 in exposed places this evening & tonight." . . . and those numbers are miles per hour.  At least the update was an improvement on the previous forecast when they were expecting gales or severe gales earlier in the day.

 

I had been thinking of walking in the hills on the west of the Island but that plan was changed and we met at the shore at Cornaa.  It is a walk that involves rather a lot of walking along tarred roads, so I thought of taking Danny instead of Alexander who sometimes stages a go-slow strike if he is expected to do too much road walking.  But it was obvious that Alexander knew that it should be his turn.  As soon as he saw that we were preparing for a walk he got all excited and bounced around and gushed.  Then he parked himself in the passage next to the front door and waited to leave.  I didn't have the heart to leave him behind.

 

The tide was right out at Cornaa and even the deepest gulleys in the salt marsh area behind the shingle bank were drained of water.

We walked up the path through the trees on the right of the river valley and turned up across the old Manx electric tram tracks to the road which runs from the Hibernian to Dreemskerry.  The trams still run along the tracks from Ramsey to Douglas but are used almost exclusively by tourists.   That must have been their main purpose ever since they started running at the end of the nineteenth century.

 

At the road junction there is a very modern home, recently completed, with a magnificent view over Ballaglass Glen and the North Barrule ridge . . .  obviously built by an eco-conscious owner.  It is set into the hillside and is connected to solar panels.  It is the type of house where one might occasionally need to mow the roof.

We continued along the road past Ballaskeig farm.  Alexander behaved surprisingly well.  He only stopped once  . . . when Trevor stopped to open his backpack to get out a windproof jacket.  Schipperkes always associate backpacks with food and picnics and hate to miss out on any possible treats.  The wind was much stronger than it had been down in the valley at Cornaa.  It wasn't just wuthering, it was buffeting us and howling through the overhead power lines.  But there were compensations like the deceptively peaceful view across Port Mooar to Maughold Head and the lighthouse.

When we reached Ballajora, we turned up a narrow road which runs up the hill to the Quaker Burial Ground and Ballafayle Cairn.  There is a group of Scots pines in the burial ground.

On the other side of the road is the Ballafayle Cairn http://www.iomguide.com/historical-sites/ballafayle-cairn.php  which dates from somewhere between 2000 and 1500BC.  So it must have been built about four thousand years before the eco-house.  The Island is a curious mixture of ancient and modern. 

 

Until fairly recently there were more Scots pines around the cairn (as you can see from the photos accompanying the link) but most of them blew over a few years ago and the site has been cleared.  Feeling the force of the wind this morning, it wasn't surprising that the trees had blown over.  It was more surprising that the trees across the road in the burial ground were still standing.

The gate on the far side of the cairn leads to a field with a stone seat and a memorial to Sir Charles Kerruish, a well known Manx politician and previous owner of Ballafayle Farm, who died in 2003.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1437990/Sir-Charles-Kerruish.html  The others went through to see the memorial while I was taking photos at the burial site.  Alexander kept a careful watch to make sure that we weren't missing out on a picnic opportunity.

I put my gloves down while I was taking this photo and when I went to retrieve them only one remained.  The other one had been blown over the wall and was making its way down the road.  I managed to retrieve it.  Once we got down to a more sheltered place where conversation was possible, we had a brief committee meeting and decided to head back through the sheltered Barony Valley instead of going over the Cashtyl yn Ard hill as the wind was getting stronger.  We are hoping for a calmer day next week so that we can get up in the hills again.  I told Dorothy that we need a "killer walk" to compensate for the shorter walks that we have been on recently.