16th.
What a find to start the new blog off with, a Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar, so unusual a defence mechanism. Making itself look like it is a creature with huge eyes is enough to frighten most birds off of eating it. In fact those eyes are on the rear end of the caterpillar, on the head end you can just see the two antennae with the white tube???? in between. So you can see from the first shot if it was attacked from the side it still has a pair of eyes as it has when it gets a birds attention from the rear, Huge beast it is as well at least three times bigger than your average caterpillar so would make a wonderful meal if it did not have this defence.
17th.
Went to The House of Bruar today for our wedding anniversary lunch and discovered these two horses were the main attraction amongst the hoards visiting this retail complex. I was aware that they were in Pitlochry Sunday and was pleased that I caught up with them at Bruar. These two and their crew started off from Gloucestershire mid June and are travelling all the way to Elgin in the far north of Scotland arriving on the 27th of this month. On the way they are raising money for various charities including the Firefighters Charity, so well done them.
18th.
Atholl Estates have provided this wonderful old building in the village as a visitors information centre, as you can see it is corrugated walls and roof, but is well maintained and very well laid out inside with a large log fire in the middle for warmth to winter visitors. I shall show you inside at a later date as today it had a few holiday makers inside and not really convenient or appropriate for me to interrupt their visit. As you can see a sunny day for once, as this blog states we are off for our first trip out of Scotland for at least two years, so although this site is about the Cairngorms lifestyle we live, to keep up my 365 shots this year you will have to have five days of Sheffield’s finest.
19th.
I started this blog with the heading about going away, well we have been down to our son in Sheffield, though not strictly not within the remit of Cairngorms Life but is within the remit of keeping my different photograph each day.
Sheffield is a wonderful city surrounded by countryside and hills and very beautiful place to live. The above shot shows that the difference between our normal view from our bedroom and the one we have here. What you can see from the shot is the distant hills and greenery all around, it has some wonderful parks wildlife has thrived and continues to expand, despite the council wanting to cut down trees.
20th.
Today we went to Canon Hall Farm, that is the one that has been on the television (Channel 5) with the two brothers. Such a professional set up, my son had booked the tickets as they are limiting visitors at present, even so there were hundreds there. The beauty of this set up is that it did not feel at all crowded and was just a real pleasure to go round. Though the above are obviously not normal farm animals they were a huge attraction and such fun to watch. under cover were the goats and pig breeding units with excellent viewing platforms to see all that was going on. Food wise we had a snack lunch and again excellent service and food. What I am saying if you are young or old and in the Barnsley area it is worth a visit.
21st.
The above are part of todays visit to Creswell Crag on the Nottingham/Derbyshire border, these are magnesium limestone rocks that surround this lovely piece of water with a few large Carp in it. The caves that are in these rocks are the oldest known caves containing art drawings of Bison and horses, some 20,000 years old. We didn’t go in any of the caves, but we did see loads of wildlife including Spotted Flycatcher , Warblers (don’t ask me which ones) were catching flies off the water, Wrens and some cracking butterflies. Once again a snack lunch there and it was just what we needed after the walk round.
22nd
Today’s visit was to where our sons partner works and once again shows what beauty Sheffield has to offer, this is Sheffield Manor Lodge . The first shot is the Turret House, the home back in the day of Bess of Hardwick the person who looked after Mary, Queen of Scots when she was imprisoned there. A well kept house which has artefacts of the period and volunteers dress up in period costumes and will guide you round. All around the remaining ruins are flower beds and meadows of wildflowers as seen in the second shot, a very enjoyable place to visit and the Rhubarb Shed Café within the complex does the best butties you could imagine.
23rd.
Back home today it is a long journey with the dreadful A66 to negotiate along the way, had a couple of stops and made it home safe and well after about 7 hours in total. Never used my car once while down in Sheffield but this was the exact mileage for the whole journey on arrival home, very pleased with the average speed, just wish I had been able to round it up to a nice 60. 🙂
24th.
Well something a bit different, this months challenge on the photographic forum I am on is on “household objects”, so do you know what this is? well it is a cheese grater up close, not sure how it will get on as some of the entries are really good, will let you know in the next blog.
25th.
On the 18th I showed you a picture of the outside of the village information centre, so today I have come inside, the four shots demonstrate what we have to offer in the area. Starting from the top :-
The bird on the left is a Golden Eagle and the larger one is a White Tailed Eagle that have recently been introduced across Scotland. I have in fact seen one fly over, being mobbed by Crows and it was so large that the Crows looked like Starlings mobbing a buzzard, the size difference was incredible.
2nd and 3rd shot show the information boards showing nature and things to do and see.
Lastly as the centre is open all winter this large wood burner is used to keep it cosy and it does.
26th
Another cracking warm day, busy in the garden in the morning, table tennis in the afternoon and an evening up at the fishing pond/loch. Not fishing but clearing some of the undergrowth to allow us to fish without getting snagged up. As usual the request went out to all forty odd members to come up and get stuck into the task, but also as usual 5 of us turned up. The hour spent cutting before the midges forced us to stop was very beneficial and I wonder how many non attending members will take advantage of that over the weekend? What surprised me was even though with three strimmer’s going and all of us close to the bank the trout were still rising fairly close in, I think it must have been all the insects we had disturbed were landing on the water and the fish were taking advantage of it.
27th
Guess we are coming ever closer to Autumn though we have had a wonderful summer type weather all this week, this time of the year we tend to get an abundance of mushrooms up here. On todays walk I found these two, the first has been well nibbled at by something I would think slug or mouse. I would in the past spent hours looking through my reference book trying to identify the type, but off fishing tonight so just had a quick scan, think the first is a member of the Bolete group, maybe a Orange Birch as I found it in a birch wood? The other I have no idea but was in pristine condition in a boggy meadow area, at my age I nom longer eat mushrooms I have found unless I know exactly what they are and give me a few weeks and I will be going to our secret spot to pick Chanterelles, which I love.
28th.
So this is the weekend of the Blair Castle International Horse Show a show that attracts 100,000 visitors over the 4 days, starting on Thursday and going through to Sunday night. Usually I would go down to it after 4pm as you can get in for free, but this year(due to the pandemic) that has not happened so I thought I would show you the morning queue to get in that more or less closes the village down to normal village traffic and everyone walks leaving the car at home or in streets away from the main road.
First shot is the entrance into the village from the A9, next is the section from the Tilt River bridge up to the castle entrance and lastly the pedestrians arriving by train joining the cars to travel the half mile up the castle drive. Then of course this flow reverses as people start to leave after 4pm.
29th.
Not much blooming in the garden this time of the year as our garden is very much a Spring early Summer garden, but this Purple Loosestrife keeps the bees happy and adds some colour to the garden.
30th.
As I looked out of the window this morning on a cloudy, cold start to the day I saw the distant herd of cows and the vision made me laugh. Okay the two furthest standing cows spoil it, but it looks like the laying down cows are forming wagons from the wild west in a semi circle , ready to repel anyone who decides to attack them during the night. Reality is the only thing they will see in the day is the farmer coming to inspect them.
Most unusual in a small village like ours, but it has two open and moderately active churches within in it. The first shot is of the Church of Scotland which is on the Inverness side of the River Tilt and the Episcopal Church on the other side of the river. The Episcopal Church has the wonderful name of Kilmavonaig and is a beautiful looking small church both inside and outside.