Most of what I write about on here is modern up to date subjects about (mainly) wildlife, gardens & village events, though with the present pandemic not many of those are happening at present.
As you are aware by now we live in a pretty remote section of the southern end of the Cairngorms National Park, roughly a mile above the village of Blair Atholl & when I say “above” I mean up in the hills in Glen Fender. That means that of course any river that flows through the glen is bound (as ours is) to be called after the Glen, or the Glen is named after the river not sure which way is right. SO about 50 yards below our house is the River Fender, which feeds into the River Tilt, which feeds into the Garry, continues onto the Tummel which lastly joins the Tay & on to the North Sea., Our little contribution to the Tay system is what is known as a spate river, one day it can be a wee trickle, 24 hours of rain it turns into a raging torrent, with all the water coming of the hills, a day after that it can be back down to a trickle.
in the section of river below us is a series of weirs and a manmade channel leading off this with pipework going onto a blue hut. When we moved in we were told that this was a feed that went down into the village via a pipeline & filled the steam trains in the sidings & engine sheds, beside Blair Atholl railway station. It wasn’t until I went to write this blog that I discovered it was far more important than this, in fact it was at one point in time the water supply for the whole village, with gravity filling 3 water towers down there. A lot of the structure up with us is still there & this is what I would like to share with you today.
The above is the storage tank that held the water it is a concrete tank that sits at ground level I would say just over a 3 feet deep & covers the full size of the hut. Not full of water anymore, just a storage area.
About 150 yards up the hill from the storage tank, is what I presume was the control hut that controlled the level of water in the reservoir.
A pipe below the water level feeds the flow into the channel covered with the blue tarpaulin & that is the other side of the hut from the previous shot, any surplus water flows over the weir & continues on to the River Tilt.
Allowed myself an indulgence with the two shots of that weir by giving the blurred effect on the water, just a show off of artistic licence.
Upstream of this the river has recently been widened to allow extract of the gravel & larger stones from off the river bed. I often go down to this section when I am a bit fed up, take my smallest fly rod, a very light line & extremely small fly & have a cast for the 4oz (if your lucky) wild Brown Trout that inhabit these pools. Of course they go straight back, but the fun of doing this will lift any fisherman/women. My ambition has been in all the years I have lived here that on a hot day I would go down here & have a swim. Two things have stopped me:_1/ We don’t get that many hot days & 2/ What ever the time of year water coming of the hills is freezing, I know I am a big softie, one day maybe I will.
As a little bit of absolute pleasure I would like to leave you with the garden of Jock down in the village, every year he devotes himself to this garden, it is not very big but boy it is so full. If you can enlarge the shot & just look at the detail that is within, a pilgrimage to see it every year is an complete must. Love the Seldom Inn pub.
