A personal best

This week work has been particularly demanding with the weekend eating up 28 hours plus. During the week I was either recovering before my evening shifts or attending day time meetings but such is life and I enjoy the variety my work throws at me, never quite knowing what will be in front of me as I start my shift. So yesterday was my first swim for 10 days and time was short. I almost didn’t go as there is much to do around house and garden but hey ho that is not going to go away and will be there for another day.

I started badly and was going to give up after a couple of turns of the bay but then something kicked in and I got into the rhythm completing the distance whilst fulmars skimmed over me and the sun shone . It felt wonderful and I would have liked to stay for more, maybe a seal would arrive or I would see dolphins further out but work beckoned. A quick time check revealed that I had managed the distance in approximately 30 minutes. I don’t have a stop watch so this is approximate but it is certainly the way I want to head and although conditions were benign and very unlike what is ahead of me it does give me a bit of a margin.

it was near perfect weather. The walk to Hackley Bay was exceptionally beautiful with the wild flowers appearing in their best. Lady’s bedstraw, speedwell, thyme and orchid by the bucket-load. The violas are still going strong and whilst the thrift is beginning to show signs of age it still waves its purple head as I pass. Here and there lousewort flowers are less showy but add a splash of pink to the picture. I come across a huge patch of butterwort in a damp runnel, their purple flower spike rising above the pale lemon coloured “starfish” leaves. The zygomorphic flowers of eyebright (the flower that figures on my JMT calendar for June) are relative easy to spot with their pouting lower lip. Patches of bell heather flower in drier spots with its relative the cross-leaved heath in the damper areas. Bright green crowberry with their shiny black berries against pale grey lichens show that nothing can beat nature’s colour scheme. Then there are the lemon flowers of the mouse-eared hawkweed that bring to mind my good friend and former walking companion, Heather who is always on the lookout for this particular hawkweed.

I didn’t have time to stop for photographs although if I had spotted a small copper (butterfly) I may have been tempted. On this front there were a few small heath butterflies, a dark green fritillary and various micro moths. This is disappointing. April and early May seemed exceptionally good for butterflies with the overwintering species making a strong start but perhaps the run of stormy weather set other species back. Still like me they have a couple of months to improve!

 Dark green fritillary taken a couple of years ago

Work has taken over somewhat from my schedule of training so as some people have been asking me why the John Muir Trust not some other “more deserving” charity such as sick children, cancer research etc I will explain.

The Trust drew on the inspiration of John Muir born in Scotland but who emigrated, at the age of 10, to America where he went on to become America’s most influential naturalist and conservationist. He wrote extensively and beautifully about wildnerness areas.

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.“
- The Yosemite (1912), page 256.

We all know someone who has suffered or died from cancer (last year 3 people I knew died one a particularly close friend). This raises lots of emotion and our natural instinct is that we want to do something to stop this happening in the future. We do not like to see our friends and loved ones suffer. The same can be said of many other illnesses such as Multiple Sclerosis, Motor Neurones Disease, and Alzheimer’s. We give readily and rapidly to the associated charities. So I have no doubt that if I had chosen one of these deserving causes I would have reached my target no bother. I am more than happy to donate to these through other people’s challenges but I feel that we cannot sit back whilst our environment is trashed in the name of progress, economics, sustainability or whatever the latest buzz word is . The adjective has changed over the years but the result is depressingly the same... .a reduction in what is termed the core wild land of Scotland (None of our land is truly wild, the land and vegetation we see now is the result of human modification over centuries) However in recent years there has been a rapid growth of “built” structures in the form of bulldozed tracks, wind farms (and their associated tracks and infrastructure) pylons, large hydro schemes such as the one at Glendoe. SNH (Scottish Natural Heritage) has published figures showing a decline in total wild land from 41% to 31% in the period 2002-2008 i.e. 25% in 6 years. By 2009 the wild land area had further decreased to 28% meaning in 1 year an area 14 times the size of Glasgow had been lost. The John Muir Trust is campaigning to reverse this damaging trend through its Wild Land Campaign. http://www.jmt.org/wild-land-campaign.asp

I joined the John Muir Trust as I was concerned about my own impact on the hills. I was part of the exponential rise in the numbers of people heading for the hills to bag their Munros, escape the pressures of daily life, commune with nature, bird watch, or all of above. I saw the effect of this in eroded and scarred hill paths. So when I came across the John Muir Trust at a RSPB event at Vane Farm I joined and immediately felt that I had come home. I get the chance to repair some of this damage through John Muir Trust work parties. I am also part of the bio diversity work of the Trust, monitoring the habitat on one of our properties on Skye. Work parties are a great mix of people with an amazing amount of knowledge, interests, skills and backgrounds. There is always lots of laughter and new things to learn. Work parties also go to some of the Trusts partnership organisations and through them I have built up friendships on Knoydart and Harris.

I learnt gradually about the work of the John Muir award in bringing 100,000 people in contact with wildness and learning about wild places and how to look after them. The John Muir Award is an amazing educational tool bringing awareness to people of all ages, abilities and background coupled with a real sense of achievement on the way. http://www.jmt.org/jmaward-home.asp

I love the wild places of Scotland and these places are fundamental for the well-being of the health of both our country in the wider sense and ourselves. To quote from the 2020VISION http://www.2020v.org/index.asp “healthy ecosystems mean healthy people”.

Records

Having gadded about for most of April and managed a fair bit of safe training swims, May saw me very firmly at home and trying to fit in training around my work. I am managing to get to Hackley Bay 1-2 times a week and have had more practise of swimming in a swell. I love the cycle, the walk across the NNR and along the cliff to Hackley Bay with the wild flowers, butterflies and the colonies of nesting seabirds on the cliffs. 

Noisy fulmars

 Whilst I swim I have been visited by a seal and I am accompanied by the noise of the bickering fulmars

Curious Seal

This week I have seen 3 records set on my money raising page. I received a donation from a 92 year old my oldest donor so far (can anyone beat that!) who formerly sailed all around the west coast. He remembers sailing through the Corryvreckan in the 1930s sailing west to east with the ebb tide. He is reassured that I am swimming at slack tide between the flood and ebb of a neap tide. This is by far the safest time to do such a swim and why I am limited to the date of 23 rd August.

The other records broken this week were by the same person. The donation came From Canada via Scotland (the furthest yet) and was the largest at £100. Can you beat any of these! Seriously I am happy to take any sponsor, large or small or in-between it is all important.

Next venue for swimming will be Ullswater,a place my family visited on our travels in the 60s visiting farming friends of my parents. I remember watching new bornorphaned lambs being fostered by ewes whose own lambs had died (it was a bloody process ) . We swam in tarns. My first pet, a beautiful grey kitten I named Fern, came from this farm.