At last, after an hour’s walk through wild bog, I reach the woodland that drifts down the hillside to dip its toes in the sea. As soon as I enter the woodland it envelopes me, the small trees are so dense it’s impossible to see more than a few feet ahead and the path narrows so that I find myself squeezing between the trunks of these young trees, most so small that I can encircle their trunks in the fingers of my hand.
It’s late September and already there is a slight coolness in the breeze, it will soon be Autumn on the Isle of Mull and in a few short weeks the days will short and the trees will shed their leaves. There has been no rain today, yet the air I breath, as I move through the woods, is thick with moisture and the leaves on the trees and the long thick grass that I push my feet through are beaded with bright water drops. The woodland teems with life. The air buzzes with insects and the grass is alive with frogs and scuttling beetles.
This is rainforest, the closest thing to jungle I have experienced in the UK. The green canopy pulses with life, sadly this oasis of the wild is restricted to a few acres on the western tip of the Isle of Mull. I am walking into Tireregan nature reserve on the western most tip of the island, a long finger of land that points out into the far Atlantic where the tiny island of Iona sits defying the oceans gales. The finger of land is known as the Ross of Mull and, to give you some idea of the scale of this place, it’s a mere 40 mile drive from the small slipway where the car ferry from Lochaline deposits its passengers. That’s forty miles of single track road where you’ll spend more than a little time waiting for sheep and cattle to step out of your way or simply stopping to admire the stunning views across the fiord of Loch Scridain that sits between the peninsula and the “mainland” of Mull. These forty miles will take you at least 90 minutes to drive, longer if you’re lucky.
Mull is just one of many islands on the west coast of Scotland that offer adventures in wild and mysterious places. If you’d like to explore these magical places for yourself a great place to start is Scottish Island Bagging by Helen and Paul Webster
It is a wild place and is home to otters and even whales on occasions. I stopped several times on the drive to the reserve and spent half and hour watching Oyster Catchers feeding on mussels at the edge of the receding tide. The path to the reserve is not marked on the OS map and when I arrived at the end of the road, a farm house at Knockvologan, I followed the only obvious track I could see and quickly found myself at a tiny isolated beach that was beautiful, but obviously not where I was meant to be. I’d read on a website that the start of the track was marked by a beautifully painted sign but this was nowhere in evidence.
I pulled out my map and did the only thing I could, I headed for where I thought the path should be. It is quite tricky navigating towards something that the map is adamant does not exist but, after about 20 minutes weaving my way between bottomless bogs, I arrived a muddy line of boot prints that could only be the non-existent path. The little track quickly climbed around the side of a small hill and I entered chest high bracken. Walking through bracken is without doubt one of the most unpleasant pass times I can think of. I didn’t walk, I fell, tripped over endless unseen tendrils that trapped my legs and conspired to hurl me to the ground with each step. The best I could hope for is that I fell roughly in the right direction.
I’m glad there was no one else around at this point for, if there had been, they would have been treated to an undignified sight. That of an old man, swallowed by vegetation up to his shoulders, beside himself with rage, swearing and beating the bracken with his walking poles. But there was no one else around and, after ten fury filled, minutes I regained the path. Almost instantly my efforts were rewarded, the god of Ornithologists had taken pity on me and treated me to the sight of a female Hen Harrier quartering the ground not twenty feet from me. For me any sighting of a Hen Harrier is something to treasure. The female, sometimes known as a Ringtail because of the distinctive ring markings on her tail feathers, is larger than the male and camouflaged in russet browns to blend in with the heather.
Last year, close to one of my favourite bothies, I enjoyed many sightings of a male, smaller and with much lighter plumage, as he hunted for voles along the banks of the small river that runs past the bothy door. He probably had mated with two females and was compelled to hunt tirelessly in order to feed the ever hungry offspring of his bigamy. This year he had been absent from the bothy burn, perhaps poisoned or shot or maybe simply our cold wet summer had left him too little feed to breed successful so he was absent from the skies despite my constant searching. So I was pleased to see this Harrier hunting and felt that even if I saw nothing else on my walk, this sighting would be enough to make it worthwhile.
A few hundred yards later, a Golden Eagle flew low across the hillside, pausing long enough for me to find him in the lenses of my binoculars and get a close look at his savage talons. Most birds, in my experience, enjoy toying with bird watchers. You see a bird you want to look at, perched on a post only a few yards away. It waits while you fumble with your binoculars, sits perfectly still as you find it in the circle of your lens, pauses while you focus. Then, just as you get in sharp focus, it takes of and leaves you staring at the top of a fence. This eagle, however, wasn’t she and seemed to enjoy the attention.
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I press on, weaving my way through the bog, balancing on bits of wood laid over quagmires, hoping not to slip. I pass places where Pine Marten passed, perhaps only hours before leaving their prints in the mud. There are other prints too, smaller and sharper, perhaps stoat. At last I make my way across the bog and on down through the misty woods to the small isolated beach of peerless unwalked sand. There are only my footprints now as I cross the sand with the weaving gulls above and the salty smell of sea spray filling my head. This is September and I am the only person on the beach, perhaps the only human being for several miles, I wonder what this place is like in winter with only the wind blown sand to keep it company.
On the way back I followed the path back to where it left the road and I should have started. The way was barred by a gate that appeared locked, but wasn’t and was also disguised as a scrap yard by having a disused snack van slowly decomposing and returning to the mud blocking the way. You have to remember that this is one of ten best places to visit on Mull, or so a website told me. I found the “beautifully painted sign,” propped up against a wall so nobody could see it.
You have to remember that this is the west coast of Scotland and one of the joys of this place is that nobody takes anything too seriously. Especially not the start of tracks to nature reserves that don’t exist and even, would you believe, old men falling over in chest high bracken. Maybe that’s just as well.
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