Imagine you are at the edge of the sea on a day when it is difficult to say where the land ends and the sea begins and where the sea ends and the sky begins. Sea kayaking lets you explore these and your own boundaries and broadens your horizons. Sea kayaking is the new mountaineering.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query storm+gathering. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query storm+gathering. Sort by date Show all posts
Friday, July 24, 2009
The amusing story of the novelist and the lost cave of Knockbrex
I paddled across Fleet Bay and took a break at the sandy cove of Knockbrex. Not far from the beach is a fine large mansion which was built by a Manchester businessman Mr James Brown in 1895. It was built on the site of an older mansion, which was part of the Selkirk estate but Knockbrex dates back to at least the 1650's when it belonged to the Gordon family.
The Scottish novelist, Lucy Bethia Walford (1845-1919), lived here for three years when her father took a tenancy from the Selkirks. She described Knockbrex (which was one of the the finest mansions in these parts): "though unpretending, was very much the kind of house we liked. Every window had a view : on the one hand, of a wild and storm-beaten district, wooded after a fashion on the hillsides, with the hills rising into mountains beyond ; while on the other was the famed Solway Firth, across which we could at times distinguish on the far horizon the faint outlines of the Isle of Man."
She and her brothers had "arrived at Knockbrex full of the wonders of a sea cave containing fossil remains said to be of great antiquity, of which he had heard as being in the neighbourhood." Despite much searching, she never discovered it. In her book, Recollections of a Scottish Novelist (1910), she recounts an amusing (though a century has not been kind to the humour) story of how she attempted to find it.
She and her family were all dressed in their finery on their way to a gala when they heard they were passing the house of the elderly man who owned the cave and looked after the fossils. There was a large number of carriages outside the man's house and they thought the fossil museum must be very popular. The house was crowded with men in black clothes and she thought they must be a gathering of ministers, though some looked very young. She became annoyed when her requests to be taken to the owner of the cave were ignored. Finally a young man ushered her in to a darkened room and said "This is the owner of the cave!"
The man was dressed in his Sunday best but was clearly well past his own best as he lay quite dead in his coffin. She recounts "We fled indignantly and precipitately ; nor did we once give way to mirth till far away and out of sight. But we never saw the cave, then or thereafter."
Well Lucy sounds very much like the kind of gal that describes a mansion as "unpretending"!
I have been visiting the Knockbrex shore regularly over the last 40 years and I have never found the cave either. It was a quite lovely afternoon so I decided to take another look for the wondrous cave....
09/06/2009
Saturday, May 22, 2021
28th April 2021 #2 Sunshine and sleet on the Sound of Sleat.
It has been a cold start to the year and the NE wind brought a series of Arctic squalls to the Sound of Sleat. These brought a bonus of dramatic lighting conditions though trying to erect our tents on the exposed reef took a bit of care in the accompanying wind.
Fortunately the worst of the squalls seemed to pass and we got our camp in order.As the tide was still low...
Then the skies darkened with the approach of yet another squall. We rushed to our tents and were deafened by alternate lashings of rain and sleet on the thin tent walls.
As the storm passed, on its way into Loch Hourn, we emerged from our tents into the watery evening sunlight.
Graceful rainbows arched over the still dark mountains, which had a dusting of fresh snow on their summits.
We set to and got the fire going as we swapped yarns and...
Thursday, June 10, 2021
29th April 2021 #3 Skyfall and rainfall in Loch Hourn.
As we paddled east along the south shore of Loch Hourn the mountains closed round us.Loch Hourn is a flooded U shaped glaciated valley and in some places the mountains fall straight into the sea as here at Creag an t-Sagairt (roughly translates as pulpit rock).
All was deceptively quiet as we passed Eilean a' Phiobaire (Piper's Isle) but a storm was gathering.