Scarlett

The seventh leg of the Raad ny Foillan - mud and memories and speckled woods

7th September, 2009

   

    Dorothy is back from Alaska and we are starting to head north this morning.  It feels as though we really are half way through our journey and are on the home straight at last.

 

    We parked near the Scarlett Visitor Centre, outside an old farm building which was used many years ago as a film location when they were busy filming Treasure Island.  Perhaps it was pretending to be the Admiral Benbow Inn.  One morning while they were filming there, we walked past with Chrissie and she charged at a cage of hens - which was in the shade under a pantechnicon.  Fortunately the film crew thought the hen incident was amusing - and she didn't get into trouble.  Chrissie was good about sheep but always held a grudge against hens.  I wondered whether she mistook them for hadedas (a type of ibis) which she spent her early years trying to chase out of our garden in Kloof.

 

 

 

    From Scarlett we walked along a narrow road round the edge of the bay and then past some pretty, old cottages which must have been built for fishermen.  Some are still permanent homes but others have been turned into tourist accommodation.  This road leads into Castletown and the second photograph was taken after we crossed the footbridge across the entrance to the harbour.   It shows the boats moored in the river, Castle Rushen, and on the left is part of the quaint, police station with its distinctive conical roof.

 

 

 

    The next part of the walk was the dreaded detour.  The real Raad ny Foillan follows the road around the bay towards Derbyhaven and then turns onto a footpath on the sea side of the airport, continuing towards Santon Gorge - but a section of the footpath has been closed until the end of the year because the runway at Ronaldsway is being extended into the sea.  So there was no option but to walk along the busy Douglas to Castletown road on the inland side of the airport until we reached the outskirts of Ballasalla.  Then we turned down the road which leads through the small Balthane industrial estate towards the Turkeyland Quarry.

 

    Our detour meant that we joined up with the Raad ny Foillan proper after it passed the promontory fort at Cass ny Hawin (Santon Gorge), so we missed the first part of the walk along the south bank of the Santon Burn.  But we didn't miss the mud.   Our footpath had been churned up by the heavy hooves of cattle but it wasn't too bad and the hawthorns lining the path were very decorative with their glistening red berries. 

 

 

 

    It was along this path that we encountered the first of the speckled wood butterflies - the first of many.  Duncan, our neighbour, who is a butterfly expert, told me that they were first seen on the Island about three years ago.  I saw my first speckled wood in Ballaglass in the spring of 2008, and it was the only one I saw that year.  This spring we saw a few in Ballaglass, when we were photographing the bluebells, and later in summer I saw one in Brookdale and another in Laxey Glen - so they are not common in the north of the Island yet.  But they are obviously thriving in the south east part of the Island and far outnumbered any other butterflies on our walk.

 

    We had been thinking of stopping for a tea break at the site of a keeill (early Christian chapel) between Cass ny Hawin and the footbridge over the Santon Burn.  I spent hours trawling the internet and our bookshelves, trying to find out the name of this keeill - but with a total lack of success.  It is a very secluded keeill hidden between gorse-covered banks and the trees on the slope above the burn.   The peace is only disturbed by the jets landing at Ronaldsway.  When we arrived at the keeill, we were bemused by the sight of a bunch of flowers and some grey granular substance - which we guessed must be the ashes of some departed soul who had particularly loved this place. 

 

 

 

   It seemed disrespectful to sit among the ashes eating snack bars, so we continued on our way and braved the real mud along the banks of the burn further upstream.  I must admit that it is not as bad as it used to be because the worst bits are now crossed by narrow  raised wooden walkways - but they are never quite long enough.  After crossing the bridge over the burn we headed back towards the sea along the north side of the gorge.  First, there were more raised walkways to negotiate.  Danny got bored and jumped down into the bog and then discovered that he  couldn't jump back up again because the ground was too soft, so he had to wade through the mud until we reached more solid ground. 

 

  We stopped for tea in a little clearing in the gorse at the top of the cliffs overlooking the mouth of the Santon Burn.  This spot always reminds me of an incident on a previous walk when we decided to climb down to the river and wade across.  We took off our boots and Tim threw his across the river.  Unfortunately one of his socks, which had been stuffed into his boots, fell out midstream and was last seen heading out to sea in the direction of Liverpool.  By the way, the odd shaped green bank above the opposite cliffs is the defensive bank of the Cass ny Hawin promontory fort. 

 

 

 

   The next photographs were taken a short distance along the path beyond our refreshment site.   The first one shows the view to the south and the work in progress on the runway extension. 

 

 

 

  The second is the view to the north and our route along the cliffs to Port Grenaugh.

 

 

 

   We hadn't quite finished with the mud or the speckled woods (or the memories).  We were still passing the odd butterfly - and the path down to Port Soldrick was extremely slushy.  The Manx call nearly every little bay a port - and Port Soldrick is one of the most secluded ones that can be visited safely.  There is no road access so only intrepid hikers come here.  There are other even more secluded bays but most of those can only be reached from the sea or by even more intrepid rock climbers.  The blackberries on the brambles growing at the edge of the shingle were ripe, and very sweet, but I only had time to eat a few before hurrying after the others to climb up the next slope.

 

 

 

    After Port Soldrick the path is reasonably level until the descent into Port Grenaugh.  The last photograph shows Tim and Trevor approaching Port Grenaugh.  The bank of another promontory fort is visible on the horizon. 

 

 

 

    We started with one Chrissie memory so we may as well end with another.  It isn't strictly a walking memory but it does involve Port Grenaugh.  We left Chrissie at the boarding kennels in Port Grenaugh during one of our overseas trips and the taxi driver agreed to stop there so that we could pick her up on the way home from the airport.  When the owner of the kennels let Chrissie out of her prison, she didn't even stop to say hello to us but ran straight to the taxi and jumped in.  The poor little lady was so desperate to escape from that dreadful place that she was even prepared to risk being abducted in a strange car!