Ramsey

Twelth leg of the Raad ny Foillan - and finally . . . to the lighthouse!

 

26 October, 2009

 

    Linda joined us for the last leg of the walk.  It wasn't another "pretty" day - but it wasn't windy and the clouds weren't as threatening as they looked.  The occasional rain was light and patchy.

 

    We parked by the shore, in front of the Grand Island Hotel.  Linda said that she had heard that the owners had applied for planning permission to build apartments on the site - but the permission was conditional on the facade being preserved and the developers wanted to demolish the whole building.  Apparently, it has been suggested that the motive behind boarding up the building is that they intend neglecting it until it is in such a bad state that it is no longer worth preserving.  I had mixed feelings looking at the old hotel.  It still had pretensions of being grand when we first moved to Ramsey and was patronised by coach parties of elderly tourists and the type of person who liked going out for afternoon tea - and croquet.  I suppose I should welcome the end of the hotel as it is a relic of a society based on class and privilege . . . but it was sad to see the overgrown lawns and deserted building. 

 

 

 

  There are some old photographs of the hotel and opinions on its fate at the following site   http://www.bbc.co.uk/isleofman/content/image_galleries/grandisland_gallery.shtml?1 

 

  Before we left the car park, we took a few photographs of Ramsey . . . showing a dark and moody view of the gulls and clouds over Ramsey Bay with the outline of Maughold Head, the Brooghs and Slieau Lewaigue in the background . . . 

 

 

 

. . .  and the road back to Ramsey with the top of North Barrule obscured by low cloud.  

 

 

 

  Then we started the long trudge along the shore to the Point of Ayre.    The first stretch is a bit boring - but as we walked along, and the cliffs got higher, we came across some colonies of sand martin nests scraped out of the clay.  The birds use their feet to scrape out little tunnels in the cliff face.  The tunnels can be two to three feet long and are enlarged at the end to form a nesting chamber.  Like the Grand Island, the colony was deserted because the sand martins leave for equatorial West Africa in August or September.  But they will be back next Spring. 

 

 

 

 

    Soon after we passed the steps up to the road at Dog Mills, Trevor realised that his camera was missing.  He had taken some photographs in the car park and thought he had put the camera in his backpack - but it was missing.  Trevor ran back to the car to see whether he could find it, while the rest of the party wandered slowly along the beach waiting for him to return. 

 

    We reached Shellag Point at the end of the Bride hills - the highest part of the clay cliffs on the north east of the Island.   I took a photograph of the eroded and crumbling cliff face and when I got home I noticed that Leo had been fossicking at the base of the cliffs and had managed to get into the picture.

 

 

 

 

  There are a number of "points" around the north of the Island.  I had always assumed that a point would be an area of land visibly jutting out into the sea but only the Point of Ayre really qualifies on that basis.  Shellag Point, Rue Point, Blue Point and Jurby Point are marked on gently curved coastline - although the name Jurby Point has been replaced by the more accurate Jurby Head on modern maps.  After mulling over thoughts about "point-less" or "disa-point-ed" points, I wondered whether there had originally been visible points which had disappeared due to coastal erosion.  I checked some old maps to see if I could solve the riddle.  The very early maps just showed the island as a roughly oval shape.  The first almost recognisable map was published by John Speed in 1605 and was based on a survey by Thomas Durham carried out in 1598.  In Speed's map the Island is shown as abnormally elongated and "Shellack poynt" and "Ieorby (Jurby) poynte" are drawn as prominent bulges in the coastline but these early maps can't be relied on to be accurate. 

 

    There are other inaccuracies in the early maps - apart from the proportions of the Island, for instance Brown's Directory of 1894 remarks that "In the old map of the Island . . . . Point Cranstal is called "Shellack Poynt", and a small village named "Cranston" is marked close to it, but it has long disappeared."  I checked and found "Cranston" on Speed's map  - but it is marked in the same place as the existing village of "Cranstal" and was obviously just a spelling error by the Dutch engravers.  There is more confusion because, in the modern maps, the name Cranstal is used only for the group of houses, which includes the two little thatched cottages, on the road from Bride to the Point of Ayre.  Previously, the nearby hamlet on the coast - now called Phurt - was also referred to as Cranstal or Port Cranstal.  For instance, Mate's Isle of Man Illustrated 1902 mentions that "The little cove of Cranstal, a mile from the lighthouse on the shore of Ramsey Bay, is also more than worth a visit."

 

    I took a photograph of the rest of the party on the beach near Shellag Point just before Trevor arrived back with the disturbing news that he hadn't found his camera.  He had remembered putting it down on the wall near the car and thinking that he should be careful not to forget it.  We all hoped that some kind person had seen the camera on the wall and had taken it to the police station - with the exception of Dorothy, who was quite excited about the prospect of helping him to choose a new camera!

 

 

 

 

    The beach north of Ramsey is littered with history.  There are sections of rusty pipes, remains of the pipe line which carried brine along the beach from the Point of Ayre to the salt works.  Deposits of salt were found in the north of the Island at the end of the nineteenth century, during exploratory drilling in a fruitless search for coal.  The brine was pumped to Ramsey until the salt works closed down in 1956.  There are also the remains of buildings, victims of coastal erosion, which have fallen from the cliffs above the beach.   We found a complete set of concrete steps with a bit of bent and rusty hand rail still attached.  Then we were puzzled by a square brick structure which looked too big to be part of a chimney. 

 

  Further along the beach we found some pieces of brick wall which had been worn into an artistically wavy shape by the sea  - even Leo seemed surprised to see them there. 

 

 

 

 

  I wondered whether they were the remains of the fishermen's cottages described in Mate's Isle of Man Illustrated 1902  http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/mat1902/p054.htm  - but they may have been too far south.  According to chapter 6 of "The Isle of Man: celebrating a sense of place" "The Bride commissioners were expressing serious concern in 1951 about the coastal road and cottages at Cranstal which in 1925 were 100m from the sea, but by 1951 had lost their pathway and were a mere five metres from the sea.  The cottage nearest to the sea lost its seaward gable in October/November 1961 and only a portion of the back wall was left standing by March 1962.  By 1975 it had disappeared completely and the gable end was all that remained of the second cottage.  This now lies on the beach."   There is a photograph of the coastal erosion in that area, taken in February 1951 which may show the lost cottages in the middle distance  http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/mnh/biblios/coast.pdf

 

    As we passed Phurt, the cliffs, which had been gradually getting lower, were not much more than head height and the strata of pebbles and clay could be seen clearly on the eroded surface.

 

 

 

    The last part of the walk has improved immeasurably in recent years.  Since the incinerator was built south of Douglas to dispose of the Island's rubbish, the tip in the old gravel pits near the Point of Ayre has been closed.   Instead of being the source of unpleasant smells and wind-blown litter, the area has been smoothed over and covered with earth and the vegetation is growing back.  Only the hordes of gulls who thought of every rubbish lorry as their own "meals on wheels" are sad about the change.

 

    The last few yards of the walk pass the old jetty where gravel was loaded onto ships.  It has historic interest because an old concrete boat was used as the foundation for the jetty but we were more concerned with getting back to the car and returning to Ramsey in search of Trevor's missing camera.

 

    So, finally - after twelve walks which were all interesting in different ways - we came to the end of our journey. 

 

 

 

PS On Monday afternoon I got an email from Dorothy saying:

 "Hello,    Trevor was delighted ( I think) to get his old camera back when he called at the police station.     This has dashed all hopes of an early update of his compact, that we were seriously discussing before he was reunited with his old out of date, faithful, old camera.              Bye,   Dorothy"  

 

    So - another case of all's well that ends well.