snow has fallen snow on snow

Rufus enjoying the snow on day one, it is now up to his oxters

Snow has been falling in Fraserburgh since last Thursday and about 10 inches have accumulated. Rufus bounds through it like  a small deer, pausing from time to time to dig Grey Granite's feet out. To his  great consternation  his favourite green ball sank  without trace under the snow when Grey Granite threw it for him yesterday. This is a great loss.Walks are shortened and restricted to Fraserburgh which neither he nor Grey Granite particularly enjoy but there is far too much snow for Grey Granite to take to the road in the car. Side roads in particular resemble sledge runs. Since the arrival of the snow there have been great squadrons of geese - skein upon skein flying in noisily. 'The lang, lang skeins of beating wings come fleeing frae the north'. Increased numbers of wild birds are drawn to the feeders in the garden: starlings, chaffinches, dunnocks, blue and great tits and a solitary robin. On our last decent walk through Philorth woods, when there was just a covering of snow and the atmosphere  in the silent woods was magical, crows were huddled on the telegraph wires like notes on a stave. Grey Granite cannot help wondering how many of the birds will survive if , as predicted, this cold spell continues for another couple of weeks.

Whooper Swans

This morning as we walked  from Monthooly Dookit up the Knoggan Brae and back round by Coburty, we were accompanied by constant small flights of whooper swans trumpeting as they flew over the howe and transforming a driech morning. There were groups of about 7 to 10 swans flying low, not appearing to be moving in any particular direction, some flew towards Aberdour House, others towards Peathill. I have never seen so many swans in flight, all were astonishingly beautiful and the effect was quite magical and dreamlike, especially in this the bleakest and most familiar patch of Buchan.

The Neep Fields by The Sea

 

This morning we walked from the Monthooly dookit, through showers of sleet and winds gusting to 50 mph,  along the back road to New Aberdour, turning back just short of the Mains of enjoyable walk with splendid views across Aberdour Bay where several large boats were sheltering. The wind was side on and We were surprised to see that a small patch of neeps growing at the side of a field was golden with large quantities of corn marigolds. The 'gules' still flowering amongst the neep shaws, in sharp contrast to the generally

Aberdour road. Despite the mainly foul weather, this was an

once we were wet it didn't much matter except for the stinging of the worst of the sleet.Looking down towards Dundarg Castle we could see gulls and cormorants on the sandstone rocks to the East of the ruins. There were curlews crying in the parks.

dull browns faded greens of the parks, seemed to be of another season and reminded me of Violet Jacob's poem;

'Ye'd wonder foo the seasons rin

This side o'Tweed and Tyne;

The hairst's awa;October month

Cam' in a whilie syne,

But the stooks are oot in Scotland yet,

There's green upon the tree

An' oh! what grand's the smell ye'll get

Frae the neep fields by the sea'

Autumn Walk




We are told that 'what the sea takes it keeps, what  it gets it gives back' . The sea must have carried this pine tree a considerable distance before washing it up at the Broch.

  This morning we had the beach almost to ourselves and walked along it to the Waters of Philorth where we cut across the boardwalk, followed the track up to the main road before turning left to take us to the mains of Cairnbulg Road. This road is actually a pleasant, gradually ascending  lane with grass growing in the middle and a superb  panoramic view over towards Mormond Hill and round towards Windyheads and Troup. - a tapestry of shifting shadow and light as showers moved across it, to be photographed on a clearer day.






Rufus insisted on trying to climb on to the old road bridge over the Water of Philorth whilst Grey Granite was photographing Cairnbulg Castle. In doing so he succeeded in flushing out three hen peasants.



Cairnbulg Castle, glimpsed through the trees at Philorth Bridge

Our object for this walk was to find and photograph the carved stone we had seen previously in the dyke near Mains of Cairnbulg. The weather forecast had led us to expect a bright day with good light for photography. Since the carving is indistinct we needed this. Alas,  the morning gradually dulled and by the time we were walking up the brae by Mains of Cairbulg it was raining heavily.


We found the granite stone, apparently a milestone, in the bank near 'Islamor'. 


We turned right at the road junction, before descending  past Invernorth House and Ashburn to join the Line. There was a wren in the hedge near Ashburn and a small flock of finches feasting on the knapweed heads by the bridge at the Line.The sun broke through the clouds as we recrossed  the Water of Philorth catching the plumage  of a flock of curlew feeding in Wet Fold. The sun highlighted  the sheen on the silver velvet of the embryonic catkins which are already  forming on grey willows along the embankments. There are also signs of catkins on the alders and silver birches along the Line and large green buds on the sycamores. Spring is already in sight,putting in mind a line  from Edward Thomas:
'Now I know that Spring will come again, ....however late I've patience'.

 

Lay Morals and slugs

'It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire. Although neither is to be despised, it is always better policy to learn an interest than to make a thousand pounds; for the money will soon be spent, or perhaps you may feel no joy in spending it; but the interest remains imperishable and ever new.'


from Lay Morals, by Robert Louis Stevenson 1850-1894.

Grey Granite found the above quotation on the Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland
whilst trying (unsuccessfully) to identify this interesting slug, found on the Line this morning and records it as an endorsement of the immeasurable pleasure to be derived from cultivating ones  interests. (However anorakish and futile they may seem to be to the uninitiated)

The slug has been identified by the Conchological Society

as the Great Grey or Leopard Slug (Limax maximus) and is of sufficient interest to be recorded in the national data base of slug distribution.

Whooper Swans at Strathbeg

From the Tower Pool Hide at Strathbeg this afternoon we were able to watch thousands of whooper swans (wintering here from Iceland) and lapwings, smaller numbers of shellduck, mallards and greenshanks on the water. Several herons stalked the pools. Two  huge skeins of pink footed geese arrived noisily just as we approached the hide and settled in a field on the far side of the water. The whole area was as busy as an avian airport: there were constant arrivals and departures of plangently trumpeting swans. The lapwings grew restless and wheeled and tumbled in the air, the low afternoon sun catching their wings.

A small skein of geese approaching  Strathbeg from the North

In the wildlife garden near the visitor centre we saw a large flock of tree sparrows, one of the reserve's 'star species'. Alas, there was no sign, on the apples hung out for their delectation, of the waxwings we particularly wanted to see. It appears that almost the whole  contingent of migrants to Scotland is feasting on berries in Portsoy.

Linda Norgrove;The Guardian, 30.10.2010

Grey Granite finds the dignified stoicism of Linda Norgrove's parents to be highly refreshing in the culture of, emoting, sensationalism and blame in which we live.

Linda Norgrove's parents refuse to blame US for death

Parents give US credit for admitting kidnapped aid worker was probably killed by grenade thrown during Afghanistan rescue







Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 October 2010 09.59 BST Article history


John and Lorna Norgrove talk about their daughter Linda Link to this video The parents of Linda Norgrove, the aid worker killed during a failed rescue attempt in Afghanistan, said today that her kidnap was their worst nightmare but they did not blame US forces for her death.






In their first full interview since she died, John and Lorna Norgrove said it was "very creditable" for the US to admit their daughter was probably killed by a grenade thrown by a US navy Seal as they tried to free her in a remote mountain village in eastern Afghanistan.






"The rescue attempt it would appear to us was so close to being a total success and at the end there was what appears to have been a human error," John said.






Initially there were conflicting accounts about her death, with strong suggestions from western sources that she was killed by her militant Islamist kidnappers, possibly with a suicide vest, to thwart the rescue mission on 8 October.






But General David Petraeus, the commander of Nato and US forces in Afghanistan, revealed in an early morning phone call to David Cameron that she was probably killed when a Seal threw a fragmentation grenade close to where she was lying.






Video footage of the raid showed that Linda, 36, had been fatally wounded as she lay on the ground to shelter after escaping from her captors during the chaos of the battle with the elite US special forces unit Seal Team Six.






Speaking three days after her daughter was buried a few miles from their home, Lorna said the family refused to enter the blame game. "Linda is dead; there is nothing we can do to change that."






John revealed that the couple had warned Linda of their fears that she might be kidnapped, a possibility that was their worst nightmare. But he said she was committed to her work in Afghanistan, was experienced and knew how to evaluate risk.






They would never know whether Linda would have survived if the rescue had not been attempted. "We don't think anybody is ever going to have a really clear picture, taking into account both sides; whether it was better to mount a rescue attempt or to carry on negotiating for a ransom with extremely dangerous and militant criminals.






"We do think that it is very creditable of the Americans to own up that there has been a mistake when they could so easily have covered the whole thing up [but] we have obviously got to wait for the outcome from the report which the British and American military are making."






Today's interview was released to mark the launch of a new charity the couple has set up in their daughter's memory, the Linda Norgrove Foundation, which will champion education projects for Afghan women and children. The couple have donated $100,000 (£63,000) from their own and Linda's savings to launch the fund.






It is expected to pay for university places for women and support girls' schools, with guidance and support from the US aid company Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI) that Linda was working for when she was kidnapped on 26 September.






Lorna said Linda's death "has changed our lives completely and we feel we need to move forward and do something to help continue her work, her humanitarian work, and to this end we are setting up a charity".






The couple, who run a croft on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, said they had tried to dissuade Linda – an accomplished and highly qualified aid worker with experience in Peru, Uganda and Afghanistan itself – from returning to Afghanistan with DAI.






"But there was no way as a parent I would stop her doing that. I knew that she had grown to love Afghanistan and love the people, and I knew that that's where her heart was," Lorna said. "She wanted to do humanitarian work there and I think that was what was so important to her and what she felt she had to do."






John said they had been apprehensive when she first went to Afghanistan for the UN in 2005. "At the time I said to her that our worst nightmare was that she might be kidnapped, but at the end we had to accept that she had been adventurous. She had done risky things before.






"After a while we accustomed ourselves to the fact that the risk was there and came to the conclusion that she was very capable at judging the risks and minimising them and she was far better at doing that on the ground in Afghanistan than we were at home on the croft in Scotland."






He said they heard of her kidnapping after climbing a nearby mountain on "a beautiful Sunday". They came home "to be met by the police who told us that Linda had been kidnapped. And from then on it was an absolute emotional rollercoaster.






"It's very difficult to explain to anybody who has not been through it but it felt like sometimes when you are busy and talking to people the pain almost seemed to go away and then it would just come in floods of emotion."






He said he pulled through that period "by imagining the elation of meeting up with Linda when she returned home in Stornoway airport and just imagining how that would be. So it came as an absolute nightmare to us two weeks later to have a visit from the police at 3 o'clock in the morning one day to say that she had been killed in a rescue attempt."






• Donations to the foundation can be made online at the www.lindanorgrovefoundation.org.uk website or by cheque to the Linda Norgrove Foundation, 3 Mangersta, Uig, Isle of Lewis, HS2 9EY.