Kincardine Kirk and Tulloch Moor

The Kirk of Kincardine is in  a very tranquil setting close to the Spey between Street of Kincardine and Colylum Bridge. It is approached  by a short track from the B970 north of Pityoulish. The Barony of Kincardine was held by Stewarts from 1374 to 1683 and covered the whole of Glenmore and the Kincardine Braes.

Grey Granite visited the kirk with the intention of photographing the leper's squint but was charmed by the setting and pleased to be able to enter the kirk which has an interesting history, outlined on an information board in the porch.

The attractive gateway to Kincardine kirkyard.

The immense tree on the left is a single laburnum  which must be centuries old, there are also several ancient  yews in the kirkyard.

Although Grey Granite was unable to find it, the kirkyard is said to contain a stone in memory of Sir Walter Stewart, grandson of Robert 11. He was the third son of the Wolf of Badenoch and was knighted for his success at the Battle of Harlaw  Grey Granite's interest in this arose from the tomb of Gilbert de Greenlaw,  who fell at Harlaw, which she recently came upon at Kinkell.

The east wall of the kirk, the small rectangular window is a lepers' squint.

Lepers' squints were features of pre-reformation kirks,enabling lepers to participate in the mass without infecting other worshippers. It is probable that there has been  a place of worship on this site since the 7th century. The foundations of the current building date from the 12th century. During the 15th century the building was partly destroyed when a group of  raiding Cummings took refuge in the kirk, from a group of perusing Shaws bent on revenge. The Shaws were reluctant to desecrate the church building but fired a burning arrow into the heather thatched roof. All but one of the Cummings died in the fire. (Other version of this story cite Stewarts and Grants as the protagonists in this incident.)

Rufus beside a mortsafe at the south gable of the kirk. A second mortsafe is hung on the wall outside the kirk door.

This hollowed out stone is thought to be a font in use long before before the Reformation, at which point it may have been ejected from the Kirk. Grey Granite has read of this stone this described, erroneously, as this photograph shows, as' a dew cup which does not dry out'. 

Commemorative window in the north wall of the kirk

Grey Granite isn't sure if this amazing stove is still how the kirk is heated.

A dwarf elder bush,  (Sambucus ebulus) this particular bush growing on the approach road to the kirk,  was recorded as growing here in 1875  and is known as the ''Baron Lady's Flower'   The information panel in the kirk porch describes  how,  according to tradition, it was a death bed wish of  the wife of the 5th Baron of Kincardine,  a daughter of Cameron of Lochiel, that she be buried in her native soil. This bush is said to have grown from seeds contained earth brought from Lochaber for her burial. The species is rare on Speyside but relatively common in Lochaber. 

After leaving the kirkyard we walked for a short distance over Tulloch Moor before being defeated by torrential showers which brought snow to the high tops of the Cairngorms.

Stag's-horn Clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum) growing among bear berry on Tulloch moor.

September on Speyside

The Speyside Way looking towards Dunlain Bridge

Grey Granite has just returned from a restorative week spent wandering about familiar places in the Nethy Bridge area. 

Evening sunlight lights up rowan berries on the Speyside Way just north of Nethy Bridge Station.

Rufus preferred exploring the woods, where there were interesting smells to investigate, to our Speyside Way walks. He is currently much embarrassed by his disastrous hair cut resulting the prospect of several months of  bad hair days. 

Rufus also enjoyed paddling in this accessible section of the Nethy. 

The great drifts of Field Scabious flowers we found growing on the banks of the Nethy seemed to attract vast numbers of bees.

A late harebell

The start of the King's Road Mill trail, one of Grey Granite's favourite walks through Dell Woods.

This ancient track was built by royal decree  in the 13th century in order to improve communications between Nethy and Tulloch. The track leads up through the pine trees where there is a good chance of seeing red squirrels, roe deer, crested tits and other birds at the feeder a short way up the track. Formerly the area was extensively used for logging operations. Logs were floated down the Nethy to join the Spey to reach sawmills on the coast.

Pines in Dell Woods, the undergrowth consists of heather, blaeberries, scrubby juniper and bearberry.

 bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) 
There were beautiful waxy white flowers and scarlet scarlet berries on the shrubby plants.

During the course of the week an increasing number of bearberry leaves turned as bright a red as the berries.

An area of natural forest regeneration between the King's Road and the Tulloch Road.

Reflections in Loch Garten

And in Loch Mallachie

Gray Granite spent a considerable amount of time photographing the fascinating lichens on the trees in Dell Woods and by Loch Garten

Not quite ripe hazels in  Beachen Wood, Grantown

Look for signs that summers done

Walking in the  Buchan countryside, pleasantly cool after the heat of France Grey Granite is reminded of the anachronistic children's hymn which, in  a former life, had to be retaught each September in preparation for  Harvest Thanksgiving.

Look for signs that summer's done, winter's drawing near

Watch the changing colours come, turning of the year....

See the fields are bare and brown, feel the nights turn cold

Lamps are early lit in town, hunter's moon shines gold  

Mormond Hill from Pitblae

Field upon field of grain has now been harvested and skeins of geese are regularly heading towards the RSPB reserve at Strathbeg, red berries are appearing on rowans. 

Grey Granite went to the Waters of Philorth, where in  a damp patch between the dunes  there is a large colony of her favourite wild flower, the Grass of Parnassus. This is an annual  autumnal pilgrimage.

Kinkell Kirkyard

Grey Granite found Kinkell Kirkyard quite by accident, noticing the Historic Scotland sign on the way to Inverurie from Keith Hall where Rufus was at the dog groomer's being spruced up.

The ruined kirk is situated in a tranquil setting close to the west bank of  the Don, adjacent to a farm which seems to specialise in growing turf. Jervise (1875) records that 'a ferry boat has long plied upon the Don, opposite the old kirk'. Today the location is dominated by the huge paper mill on the far bank of the Don,  the graves of several generations of the Tait family,  who founded the paper mills and ran them  for 137 years, are in the kirkyard.

At first sight the kirkyard,  in which  very few  gravestones remain, and the rather long and narrow rectangular kirk ruins seem unpromising. First impressions, however, are deceptive.The church was rebuilt from an older church around 1520 and was dedicated to St Michael the Archangel. It remained in use until 1771 when the parish was restructured and the church was partly demolished to enable the stone to be used to build a new church at Keithall. The church had a 'great window' in the east end, only the carved stonework of  the north side of this remain.  A collection of carved masonry stones is laid out at the west end of the chancel.

Within the ruins is this extraordinary recycled gravestone, considered by Douglas  Simpson  to be the only authentic, contemporary memorial of the Battle of Harlow. Originally the slab commemorated at Knight, Gilbert de Greenlaw, who was slain at Harlow on 24 July 1411 and whose image, wearing highly detailed armour, is  incised  in the yellowish sandstone. The knight is cut off at the knees. This truncation probably occurred in 1592 when the stone was re-used by  John Forbes of Ardmurdo whose memorial inscription in Latin runs round the margins of the reverse side of the stone.

The carving on the reverse side of the Greenlaw stone includes the three boars heads and a hawk of the Forbes  of Ardmurdo crest. The inscription round the edge reads 'Here lies, bright with honor, and adorned with saintly piety of character, John Forbes of Ardmurdo, fourth successor of his name (?) who died 8th July 1592, in the 66th year of his age.' Beneath the arms is a text in Greek  (Philippians 1 verse 21)

A replica of a bronze panel depicting the crucifixion, the original dating from 1525  having been lost. This is on the wall of the church close to the Greenlaw stone, the initials AG occurring in several places on the panel are those of Canon Alexander Galloway, rector of the church in the 1500s. His initials also occur on some of the fragments of carved building stones on display at the west end of the ruin. Jervise suggests that the frequency with which this eminent clergy man's initials occur indicate that the church may have been intended as a memorial to him. At the time of his death in 1552 Galloway was a professor at Kings College in Aberdeen in addition to being rector of Kinkell. He is said to have written an account of the natural history of the Hebrides in which he described Claik Geese and the trees on which they grow.

The sacrament house at the east end of the interior of the kirk is protected from the elements by a modern perspex canopy, it too has Canon Galloway's initials in several places and is flanked by what Jervise describes as 'two graceful scrolls' . Grey Granite thinks that these, being unmatched give an unbalanced cobbled together  appearance to the cross.

A slab in the east gable of the church commemorating Dame Mary Gordon, wife of George Skene, minister who died 1st August 1712 aged 32.

The Key to Happiness

'Life's so interesting.....I think the key to happiness is doing something you like doing.'

Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, interviewed in today's Scotsman

Grey Granite and Rufus both fully endorse this theory.

A Kew Gardens Miscellany

At each end of her excursion to France Grey Granite spent a brief period in Kew. She took the opportunity to revisit Kew Gardens and to relax on Kew Green. 

In almost 4 decades of visiting Kew Green this is the first time Grey Granite has been there in summer and she enjoyed sitting in the shade of the plane trees, reading and watching this quintessentially English scene. The Green retains the air of being a village green despite the metropolitan setting and is a popular venue for informal games, picnics, dog walking and, bizarrely, yoga classes. The church in the background, St Anne's, dates with a multitude of extensions, from 1711 when it was built, largely at her expense on a site donated by Queen Anne.  On  a previous visit Grey Granite was distressed by the stark contrast between the obvious affluence of the church (trumpeted in a notice giving weekly running costs ) and the poverty of the vagrant sleeping in a side porch entrance, his worldly goods contained in a battered pram.

Toothwort,(Lathraea squamaria)
 This was growing in the beneath a hedge verge alongside the National Archives close to the two lipped door snail reserve.
Like all parasitic plants it lacks chlorophyll.


On the very hot Late Summer Bank Holiday Sunday afternoon Grey Granite revisited Kew Gardens, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Kew Palace and the Nosegay Garden

Once known as The Dutch House,  Kew Palace dates  from 1631 when it was built by Samuel Fortrey, a Dutch merchant and is the oldest surviving building in Kew Gardens. It has associations with the royal family who used it as  royal residence from time to time between 1728 and 1898.

The Queen's Garden constructed in the 1960's in the style and with the plants of a 17th century garden.

The Olympic Rings in front of the Orangery.Grey Granite had looked in vain for the rings when flying into Heathrow earlier in the year. She was pleased to see that many children were playing in them.

The elegant orangery dates from 1761 and was once the largest glass house in England

The Palm House, an iconic Kew gardens building, built in 1884 -88 to a design by Decimus Burton, the Palm House is now considered to be the world's most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure.

Traditional carpet bedding by the Palm House

Somewhere in France: Chez Blanchard

La Rochefoucauld

Grey Granite suddenly found herself journeying to an unknown destination in France,  so precipitous was this journey that on arrival she had no notion of where exactly she was. This, together with the extreme heat and traumatic circumstances surrounding the expedition, proved to be very disorientating. Only on her return to Buchan was she able to research the beautiful Charante region with its rolling fields of sunflowers and sweet corn.

 Chez Blanchard

The beautifully restored farmhouse. This was originally the front of the house and overlooks the yard .

Outhouses in the yard, inhabited by hens.

The courtyard, where we ate every day was originally a barn. The tree with beautiful pink flowers is an albizia, a form of mimosa

Monty the affable Burmese cat, named for both Monty Don and Field Marshall Montgomery, sometimes favoured Grey Granite with his company.

Grey Granite spent considerable escapist time reading the 'Suspicions of Mr Whicher'  on a shady seat  opposite this vista. The temperature reached 34c which was almost unbearable.

Beth Chatto influence in the gravel garden

The pool

The pergola, with formal box hedging beyond, reminded Grey Granite of the Italian garden at Glamis Castle.
In the distance are cypress and poplar trees. When there was the slightest breeze the poplar leaves murmured soothingly. In the evenings one could hear cicadas.

A trumpet vine rambling over the roof of a small shed

Grey Granite spotted this strange fruit,  a pomegranate, glowing like a Christmas tree decoration, in a garage forecourt on the outskirts of Limoges.

Back in the UK - pomegranate flowers- a bush in Kew palace garden