Hebridean adventure 2

Something of a strategy seemed to be needed as to where we might spend the coming night although at this point in our travels we barely had a plan beyond this. Somewhere, some time in the future we would arrive on Barra, the southernmost of the Hebridean islands, from where we would take a ferry back to the mainland, but we had nothing booked and no urgent need to be home at any point in the next few weeks. We had discovered that we enjoyed visiting remote beaches and most of these seemed to be located at the end of tiny single track roads, so after studying the map for a while we decided to head for the tiny crofting village of Cnip, simply because it met these requirements.

The beach here gave us even more delight, some amazing patterns across the sand caused by dark grains carried there in runoff from the surrounding land, although by this time the wind had arrived which, together with the odd shower of rain, meant we were spending less time outdoors than before. This turned out to be a memorable place and I refer back now to the earlier blog here where I explain why this particular place will always hold a particular good memory for me.

On our journey to this campsite we paused to inspect the standing stones at Callanish, a place where there are multiple stone rings, leading to immense speculation as to the purpose they served and the justification for the effort in raising them back in the days before humans had the mechanical devices we have today. The assumption that they are evidence of religious worship of some kind does not sit well with me but without their creators on hand to ask we will never be sure.

The Hebridean islands are known for their exposure to winds arriving from the west along with depressions which have crossed the North Atlantic pushed along by the jet stream. An easterly breeze is unusual and winds coming up from the south are also less common but they do bring warmth to this northerly outpost. What we now experienced were stronger and stronger winds coming from a south easterly direction. A run of such days followed, with the van being rattled and shaken during the night. The bikes stayed on their rack (although their rain cover needed re-securing many times) and our walks often ended with wet clothes and shoes when we were caught out by sudden downpours. Our strategy of driving to remote beaches continued, however, one of which, at a place called Hushinish (or Huisinis in Gaelic) took us along fourteen miles of a single track road barely wide enough for our van's wheels. Not that our van is particularly wide. Nothing like as wide as some of the many enormous motorhomes that were constantly passing us. It seemed to make little sense to bring such a vehicle here.

Sheep seemed to prefer grazing on the grass bordering the road whilst standing on it, as did several herds of Highland cattle, the ones with those enormous horns sticking out sideways just above their eyes. A tarmac road will absorb heat from the sun, which is perhaps why these animals behave this way, but they clearly are very used to big motorhomes passing by and will make little effort to move when they approach. This is an unexpected challenge to exploring in the Hebridean islands, but not one to be bragged about in case the tourists are discouraged from coming.

By this time the stock of food we carried with us was beginning to get a bit low so the community shop in the township of Tarbert seemed a good place to head for. We soon discovered, however, that Sunday closing is observed faithfully on both Lewis and Harris so instead we pressed on southwards until we reached the turnoff to Luskentyre (Losgaintir in Gaelic), another narrow single track road leading to yet another glorious beach. If ever there was a tourist hotspot then this might be it. The narrow road was littered with overnight parking spots and the road ended at an unmanaged parkup/campsite with very basic toilet facilities.

The beach here is bordered by massive boulders of Lewisian gneiss, rocks formed over three billion years ago and one of the oldest rocks still visible on the surface of the earth today. Such rocks underlie much of these islands and are quite stunning to see dotted about although I would guess that few visitors are motivated to come here for that reason.

Hebridean adventure 1

Like many of the things we do, very little planning had gone into this adventure apart from deciding on a date for departure and buying the ferry tickets. This left us with a vague plan for how we might get to Ullapool for the ferry crossing to Stornoway, a long drive from home, and with a 10:30 am ferry departure we knew we would need to stay the night somewhere close by in the town. But that was it. Once we had loaded the campervan, lashed the bikes onto the back, added a stock of food and water to keep us going for a few days, why not just hit the road northwards.

Glencoe seemed a reasonable place to stop for the first night, a campsite known as the Red Squirrel that we have used many times before. Heavy rain showers drummed on the van roof at intervals throughout the night but we slept well after a meal in the Clachaig Inn then carried on the next day to our Ullapool campground.

That evening we were treated to a magnificent sunset followed by a calm and peaceful night and the forecast for the next day was for light winds, something quite rare in these parts. As it turned out the ferry crossing was uneventful, across a calm sea and by the time we docked in Stornoway we had a plan, of sorts, for our first night in the Hebridean islands.

Our choice of camp spot was dictated by its distance from the Butt of Lewis, the northernmost point of the northernmost island which has a reputation for violent storms and crashing waves. A five mile bike ride seemed about right for us and what little wind there was blew us along quite easily. The return was also a piece of cake, thankfully, and a good chat with a local crofter ended the day nicely. The fact that the tiny site we had chosen offered nothing except an electric hook-up, which we didn't need, mattered little.

What we did get was perfect peace, not another vehicle in sight, and an interesting morning walk to the nearby beach. The only thing missing was the wind, something for which Lewis is famous, and we knew that we could not expect this to last forever.

Dawn came on day two, still with only gentle breezes, so we decided to explore another beach, this one being on the northern tip of the island of Great Bernera. The drive there gave us our first taste of minor roads here, twisty strips of tarmac which rose and fell with the landscape, although as yet we had not met any serious hills.

Once again we found a remarkable sandy beach, so good that Kate was tempted in for a swim, only to be greeted by a curious seal who was also looking for a bit of fun. Two days on the island with plenty of sunshine and light winds. It could not last, of course, and sure enough the forecast showed we could expect fresh winds coming up from the south for the next few days at least.

Hebridean adventure 0

The beach at Cnip (Kneep in English) stretches far away, pure clean sand with ripples left by the retreating sea and small puncture marks left by raindrops which fell earlier in the day. The ever present wind sweeps across the landscape keeping us cool but never too cold as it arrives from a southerly direction where a warmer climate rules.

We are on Lewis, the northernmost of the Outer Hebridean islands, camped for the second night of our latest holiday/adventure. The campsite lies amongst the dunes behind this vast beach and on arrival we find a notice in the window of the facilities building giving instructions to new arrivals. We call the telephone number provided and speak to a man whose name we later discover is Fin Morrison, this being a local name. His accent is strange to us, faintly Irish to our ears, but he tells us where to find an empty pitch for our campervan saying he'll be by later to collect payment. The site is quite spread out, grass covered sand with markers to ensure adequate spacing between pitches, and it is far from level so it takes us a while to find a spot where the van is not leaning too much.

We settle in and cook ourselves a meal as the wind whistles through the dunes then, just as we are tidying away, we notice a black saloon car has driven up close to us and an elderly gentleman emerges. His face is lined with age and his beard in need of a good trim but I guess (correctly) that he is Fin who I spoke with earlier. We open the door for him and begin to answer his questions as he writes out a receipt for the twenty pound overnight fee.

"Where are you from?" he asks. His reaction when we simply say "Argyll" is one of sadness for it is a place where the Gaelic language is rarely spoken, something that is clearly very important to him. We comment that we try to embrace the culture associated with the Gaelic language and I mention that I play in a band.

"Do you play fiddle?" he asks, so I confess to playing a concertina.  At this his eyes lit up and his interest seemed to spike. He wants to know more.

"What Scottish tunes do you play? Do you play waltzes?" He names a tune, which I don't recognise so I ask him to sing it for me. In hindsight this was a rather cheeky request but without hesitation he begins to sing the tune for me. Unfortunately I have to confess that I don't recognise it so he tries again, this time asking if I know Leaving Lismore. This one I know, of course, as it is part of the repertoire of the Fyne Thyme band.

At this point something amazing happens. We are parked on a remote windy campsite on the west coast of Lewis and suddenly I am singing a tune I know along with a local man who has come to our door to collect camping dues. Once started he continues singing, as do I, both parts of the tune, in perfect time and pitch until we reach the end. To him this is clearly better use of his time than collecting camping dues and for me I am filled with emotion as we come to an end. I thank him and he departs quickly, finally remembering what he came to do. I can only hope the song we shared has meant as much to him as it did to me. To think that I can join together with a local man and provide him with pleasure in this way leaves me thrilled and buzzing inside, a feeling that I take away with me on the rest of our journey through the islands.

Think like a bird

Sometimes a new idea just pops into one's head and it sits there brooding for a while until it is difficult to recall what prompted its arrival in the first place. So where did the idea of having a bird bath in our garden come from? On reflection it may have been something the AI algorithms on YouTube came up with and threw at us after we had been watching something completely different. Someone had set up a camera beside a shallow concrete bowl supported above the ground on a short pillar. The video and its associated commentary described the variety of behavioural traits demonstrated by our feathered friends which left us with the impression that a bird bath is a must have.

A little research gave us a set of requirements. The bath must be shallow, the water must be changed frequently to avoid spreading diseases, and ideally it should be kept cool, away from direct sunlight. Our garden pond is mostly too deep to meet these requirements - it is unlikely to serve the needs of a blackbird let alone a tiny bluetit. Many people would have rushed out immediately and bought a tailor-made bird bath and indeed once you start searching online it appears as if the world is full of them. But this is not our way of doing things. We like to think first about how we might construct something ourselves using stuff we have lying around that might satisfy the size, depth and strength requirements. This is called re-purposing.

Which led us to consider one of the first requirements, changing the water. At present we have a garden water butt which is filled automatically with rainwater diverted from the gutters of our shed roof. The butt itself has never needed topping up from elsewhere (rain is one of the features of our climate here) and any overflow is diverted again into a watering can placed on the ground below - convenient for use on the tomatoes in our polytunnel. So might this water follow a more tortuous route via a shallow bowl placed such that its surplus water flows into the watering can as before? This arrangement would ensure that the water in the bowl, our bird bath, would change each time it rained, which is quite often here. So there we have it, the beginnings of a design concept. Now we just have the small matter of  finding a suitable shallow but watertight container.

This is a moment for thinking outside the box. Too much research into bird baths gives us fixed ideas so instead we search high and low with our requirements in mind. An old steel dustbin lid comes to mind - right shape, size, everything - but today we all have plastic wheelie bins with hinged lids. Think again. What we do have are a number of storage boxes, many of which have shallow lids. Is there one tucked away somewhere that is not serving a useful purpose? It turns out that we do have such a thing, in reasonable condition and watertight. All it needs is a supporting post and some old bits of scrap wood to keep the lid at the correct angle. To divert the water butt overflow into this required some old guttering pieces and I already knew I had some of these lying about. A bit of thumping and banging and we had our bird bath.

So how do we tell the birds what it is for? Are they clever enough to seize the chance of a good clean up? Probably not, and being quite close to the back of the house they are likely to be cautious. So to encourage them to visit the area we add a little snack bar - a place for some tempting bird seeds.

This involved a few scraps of old wood and a some screws. Here is the finished article.

So where are the birds? We normally see them everywhere but suddenly they are gone, nowhere to be seen. We realise that a bird would think anything new is scary so it will take time, days or even weeks, before our latest assemblage of parts is going to be put to use. Rather than stand around all day waiting for the action to start we decide to fix up an old security camera so we can watch the action remotely. We now get notified whenever a spider crawls across the camera lens...but it's a start.

Nearly a week goes by before our patience is rewarded. A small but interested robin flies in for a peep, triggers the camera briefly before flying off again. Although curious he is far too cautious to feed, let alone bathe, but he does seem to be thinking about it.

A few more days pass with nothing on the camera except rain drops so I add a single fat ball to the feeder tray. Then suddenly, at around five in the morning, the big guys arrive. 

The gull takes a quick sip of water then jumps forward and grabs the fat ball which he carries back onto the steps so he can break it up and eat it. Close by, but keeping their distance, are two crows who lack the initiative to use the feeder themselves but they reckon that the gull will drop what he has if they pester him enough. Sadly for them this is not what happens. The gull stands his ground, breaking up the fat ball until he can swallow the last remaining lump. Then off he flies. The same gull returns later for some seed but is clearly unimpressed with the bath idea.

A few days later though and our Robin is back, the one bird who can out-think the whole bird community, storing away the location of food in his memory bank then seizing the moment to grab a snack when nobody is looking. As for the diverted water bird bath this is tested to its limit by torrential rain showers and we are pleased to see the structure still in place after Storm Floris lands on us. We are intrigued to see who will be the first to bathe there.

A Fine Time

A while ago I wrote here about my interest in playing music and how this had come about. Since moving from Carradale into a (slightly) bigger Scottish village I have teamed up with other players who share my enthusiasm and with whom I feel encouraged and emboldened to squeeze away at my concertina more often. This has taken part of my life in a new direction so I thought maybe it was time to record here where things have gone and what doors it has opened for me.

OK, so we are not talking here about fame and fortune working as a musician. But in Scotland we have a thing called a ceilidh (pronounced KAY-lee) which is a traditional social gathering, a lively event where people come together to celebrate, often with traditional Scottish folk music and dancing. Ideally the music comes live from musicians in a band playing together but this does not necessarily imply a professional performance of music and in the case of myself and those who I team up with this is certainly not the case. Our objective is simply to produce something which is sufficiently listenable to and rhythmic so as to generate enough enthusiasm for those in the room who might like to dance. There are a number of traditional set dances which are well known enough and these have tunes which are associated with them such that so long as we can play those particular melodies then there is a good chance that someone will rise from their seat and give it a go. If they are joined on their feet by the requisite number to make a 'set' then that is all we need. All the musicians have to do is to keep playing long enough at the right sort of speed until the dancers feel they have completed the dance. Some dances have a regular sequence of moves to be followed but other than this it is simply a matter of guesswork and intuition, the tunes being repeated to extend the dances if necessary. This might sound quite straightforward, and it is, although keeping time is not as easy as one might think as we have to listen to each other's playing at the same time as playing our own instruments. 

After one dance is finished it might be important to allow the dancers to have a rest (particularly if there is a more senior age profile) so the band might follow on with a slow number, something melodic with a nice harmony or perhaps a song, to fill in until the next dance. This gives us the chance to show off in a different way, to demonstrate musicianship on our own instruments with different arrangements of lesser known tunes. The band in which I now play, The Fyne Thyme Ceilidh Band, has fiddlers (some might call them violinists but when playing traditional music they become fiddlers), guitarists, a keyboard player, a drummer and, of course, my concertina. The noise we make when playing together is sufficient for a small venue although we do use some amplification to help us balance the sound better if there is likely to be a large crowd. And there is one other thing that our band tries to do and that is to invite younger players to join us, either to play along with us or to contribute their own music if they can. We hope that this is of benefit to them such that their confidence will grow and music will become an important part of their lives.

We all have favourite tunes - melodies that touch something hidden inside us that makes us feel good - and to a musician if a tune also falls easily to the fingers then this is an added bonus. But not too easy, or else the challenge of playing that tune is lost and the satisfaction of adding emphasis or 'feeling' becomes too simple.

Just recently our band's repertoire has spread slightly as we play some tunes from another part of the Celtic world, Brittany. The harmonies and the minor keys are interestingly different and it feels satisfying to diversify in this way. We discovered a french website devoted to those learning the diatonic accordion, something we might call a melodeon, but with two different notes on each button, much like my own instrument.

On the same website is a detailed explanation (in french) of how it is possible to know when and where to place one's fingers on a musical instrument without consciously thinking about it. All musicians need this trick, particularly when playing fast, so that the conscious thought process can get on with doing what it does best, putting expression into the music. It is all about constructing connections in the brain between hearing a particular sound and the placement of one's fingers to make that sound. Then if you are reading from written music, there is a further connection involving sight where the dots on the page are associated with particular notes and sequences thereof. All these sensations are reinforced by repetition until they are wired into memory and can be called upon quickly with no conscious thought. Some might think of this as 'finger memory' but it is really our brains that are doing it and in reality it is probably no different from riding a bike or learning to walk on two legs without having to think consciously about avoiding falling over.

Aside from memorising a set of tunes, playing with other musicians requires patience as well as being able to listen to and watch those alongside you. Clues taken from each other's body language is what makes us into a 'band' rather than simply a few people playing instruments at the same time. If I were to inadvertently speed up midway through tune I would need to be brought back into line with a glance from someone else or by seeing their foot stamping on the floor and I must also be prepared to make similar signs myself at times.

All of which needs to be ready for our next gig, coming up in a few weeks time, an eightieth birthday party for a local man. We have a mix of tunes on our set list, ones that are within our musical capabilities and which we have practiced together to improve our confidence. Will I be nervous? Of course I shall, but hopefully my brain will feed my fingers the right instructions without me having to worry about anything.

More about Volunteering

I am dressed protectively in my overalls and thick gloves as I work to scrape away the thick layer of moss and ivy growing on a low sloping roof at the back of a building that has been purchased by our village community with the intention of using it as a meeting space or a work area for the benefit of local residents and businesses. Meanwhile work also continues on the renovation of the inside of the building - wall and ceiling refurbishment with new electrics and plumbing to make the building more usable. With the help of another volunteer, I find myself pulling years of vegetation growth to the ground so that in due course the roof can be repaired. The moss is a living carpet and within it are thick bodied worms the size of small snakes along with human detritus such as tea lights and drink cans that have been thrown there and are now trapped and completely submerged under the layers of living material. Once removed, everything is bagged up and carted away, the vegetable matter ending up in our compost bins at home where we hope it will rot down so it can be used in the garden. It has been an exhausting job but it is quite satisfying to see the end result of the efforts of a morning's work on the roof, which is now exposed to the daylight for the first time in many years. Somehow, participating in these work parties has become a regular Saturday morning feature of my life, a time when I am always doing something different and never working alone. The muscle aches that follow this are always in different places, which makes it interesting, and the company of others who are similarly motivated is very satisfying. A week or so later I was working inside the same building patching holes in the plasterboard walls whilst others were fitting a new suspended ceiling and threading cables for the new electrical system. After a couple of hours work we all sat around for a natter whilst drinking tea and eating cake or biscuits, an important part of the day.

To my way of thinking this is simply spending time doing things to occupy my day, things that are within my capabilities, either physical or mental, and which place demands upon me that I seem to be able to cope with and which give me some satisfaction, even pleasure. I receive an email message asking whether I am available to assist in the running of the Scottish Series, an annual yacht racing event that has been based in the harbour of our coastal village for many years and for which I have previously offered my services. My own experience on boats has been useful to the organisers and has seen me going out on the water during the racing when support boats are needed to lay the race buoys and otherwise assist wherever help is needed. Which is how I found myself as crew on a rigid inflatable boat (RIB) doing this once again not long after we had returned from our cycling tour of Holland. This year, however, would turn out to be a tough one as there would be strong winds and some vicious rain squalls associated with these, not a time when I would normally choose to be out in a small boat.

Day one, after loading the race buoys on board our boat and lashing them down so they wouldn't fly off whilst we were motoring out to sea, we joined the race committee boat as they anchored at the downwind end of the race course and for the rest of the day took instructions from them when needed. The race buoys used now are automatic, battery powered things with small propellers beneath a watertight box supported by an inflatable floating collar. The clever electronics enables them to be controlled remotely and kept in place or moved about to cope with wind shifts. Our role then, once they are launched and the races are underway, is to be on hand as a safety boat, something that was needed quite early on when one of the sailing boats broke its mast. We zoomed down the course to help and soon had a tow line rigged to bring the boat back into port. Plenty of sunshine gave us a warmish first day and although there was still a lot of physical stuff for us to do, like collecting up the buoys again after the last race, the day went well.

Day two was a different animal. Rain showers and stronger winds which meant a tough day for us bobbing around in an open boat. Day three brought even stronger winds, forecasted to rise to over forty knots at times, and our race fleet made the decision not to race. This simply meant that the role for our RIB changed and we became support boat for another fleet of larger yachts who were sailing a much longer course. We motored downwind at speed to a place where the seas were unpleasantly rough, a place where the waves were constantly throwing water at us as we followed the fleet tailenders back up the course. Added to this the rain squalls kept coming, spitting water into our faces with maximum energy. This was a tough day and quite a scary experience. I do not profess to have the best sea legs and quite how I survived such a bashing about I do not know. My body had reached its limit by the end of each day but somehow it recovered enough to be back on the water for the last day, with slightly less wind and smoother seas. This was volunteering at its limit, something that perhaps I should consider leaving to those with youth on their side but again overcoming these challenges is rewarding and enjoyable.

Venturing out to sea might be too extreme but we both find ourselves volunteering to help on a beach close to home where the winter storms have thrown up more rubbish than anyone would have thought possible. This is an organised event with a keen group of litter pickers. Everything we find here has spent some time in the sea but the waves will often throw smaller bits up into the trees growing close to the shore from where it droops down like brightly coloured rags. Just about everything we pick up is one sort of plastic or another, broken into tiny pieces and scattered about everywhere you look. Although we do sometimes find something unexpected, like a silver spoon or a toilet bowl, by far the majority of what we are picking up is from ropes or nets used by the fishing industry around these parts, a rather depressing thought which keeps us company as we work.

Our village of Tarbert is known for having a castle in which Robert the Bruce, once king of Scotland, resided from time to time.

He was responsible for some of the renovations and improvements to the castle structure although, sadly, during a later period of abandonment much of the stone structure was removed and used elsewhere in the village for house construction. The stones that remain standing today do not do justice to the man himself but the castle and its grounds are still a very popular visitor attraction, maintained by volunteers from the community and this again provides a regular outlet for my surplus energy. This might involve cutting away unwanted vegetation from the footpaths or ripping out brambles from amongst the trees in the community orchard but those involved in this are always eager to help and the atmosphere is always warm and welcoming. Who knows what else we might get involved in.

Waves of heat

Suddenly these phenomena are all over the news. Every day we read about somewhere that is getting record breaking temperatures and the effect it is having on people's lives there. Not just people either. A whole sea, the Mediterranean, is now experiencing temperatures way in excess of what we might expect in our local swimming pool and this can only be having a negative impact on the creatures that normally live within it. As usual, of course, there is something of a disconnect between the negative health impacts that this brings and the advertisements encouraging those that can afford it to take holidays in these places. Surely one would never deliberately travel to a place which is experiencing temperatures exceeding forty degrees Celsius... but many do. We are bonded into a way of life where a holiday in the sun is a desirable and this enables us to ignore anything negative about the place we would be travelling to.

So what is this thing, the heatwave. It turns out that this depends upon where you are. The definition starts by setting a baseline maximum temperature for every part of a country and when this is exceeded on three consecutive days then that is a 'heatwave'. Here in Scotland the threshold is a mere twenty five degrees whereas people living in London must endure twenty eight degrees for three days before they can call it a heatwave. None of these are anywhere close to the forty degree heat that Spain has been getting but then each of us has our own threshold and ours is quite enough for us to live with.

When we first moved to the west coast of Scotland we sort of knew what we were going to be letting ourselves in for in terms of weather. That it is a good place to erect a wind turbine or two is a clue to one of the main weather features common to the area we now live in. There is an ocean lying to the west of us, the Atlantic, with no land to slow down the wind before it reaches us so we are used to feeling its strength, our houses being built to cope with this. The air it brings our way is moist and relatively warm, coming as it does from the south west, so our climate is less extreme, both in summer and winter, than one might expect at our latitude. Rain is a constant friend, in quantities which might cause floods elsewhere, but here the steep wooded hills absorb much of it as well as providing a short runoff into the sea. We have had long dry periods of late which makes the vegetation vulnerable to fire but beneath the ground the moisture stays captured so the recovery time is always short. Our clean air, freshly scrubbed after its journey across the Atlantic Ocean, means the sun can be fiercely strong when it shines on us but the breeze is rarely absent so we would normally miss the extremes of heat that others might get.

It turns out, however, that this natural pattern of weather can go wrong. As I write the sky is completely cloud free in all directions, of itself quite unusual here, and the breeze has almost deserted us. What there is of it arrives from a south easterly direction, having crossed a land which is already scorchingly hot, so the cooling benefit is lost completely. We hide indoors, curtains closed to shut the sun out, and keep ourselves topped up with fluids as per the heatwave guidance. This is not normal for us and we know something has gone wrong when yet another day follows the same pattern of exceptional heat. We cannot complain, of course, since these temperatures are far from what others have to contend with when they arrive at their Spanish holiday destination but being locked into such a static weather pattern even for just a few days is rare here so it brings home to us how the world is changing, even for us.

Then suddenly everything changes. Our last day of scorching sun is accompanied by a cooling breeze, the first indication that a change might soon arrive. And so it does. Two days later you wouldn't know there had ever been a heatwave. It is cool enough outside to need a coat and the rain comes down in bucketfuls, drenching the ground, refilling the pond and watering the apple trees which were starting to whinge about having too few leaves to shade their (few, tiny) apples. The constant exhaustion we have been feeling gradually diminishes and we can start planning more energetic activities instead of staring at the TV in a living room darkened by the drawn curtains. Out of the blue I get an invitation from a friend to go sailing in his Mirror dinghy, something that sounds quite attractive now I know I won't get heatstroke any more.

Gardening

We have a killer in our garden pond! Over the course of the last few summers we have spotted both damsel and dragonflies around the pond without really thinking much more about it. Sure, the dragons are impressive beasts, almost the size of a small bird, and their ability to manoeuvre so quickly in mid air is hard to believe unless you see it close up. They have quite short lives as adults so it is easy to ignore the question of where they come from and how they grew to be such beauties. But spend time sitting next to a healthy garden pond in the early months of Summer and you may get to see exactly where they come from, where they have indeed spent most of their lives before taking to the air. During the course of sitting at my observation seat by our pond I had already spotted the tail of what I originally thought might be a newt beneath the water but the absence of any tadpoles earlier in the year eventually led me to the conclusion that I was looking at a nymph, the young form, of either a damsel or a dragonfly.

The time is right, so thinks the nymph, as he crawls up the stem of an overhanging plant or a reed until he is far enough from the water to begin his transformation. What squeezes out of the nymph's body is something far bigger, with a long black and yellow body and clear inflatable wings which are initially kept close by the body. This creature climbs a short distance away leaving the nymph carcass, a brown unattractive thing, dried out and hanging. The new creature's wings are pumped up using fluids from its body until they can be spread out at right angles to catch the sun which helps them dry out and solidify. This all takes a while but already he has learnt the skill of hanging on when the stem wobbles about in the wind. Soon he or she will fly off, maybe grabbing a bite to eat on the wing, before seeking out a mate who is equally attracted to the pond and willing to begin another generation of dragons.

Despite the surface of our pond being almost covered by a layer of algae, which is certainly not the most attractive look to human eyes, when seen through the eyes of an insect it is clearly a healthy environment, suitable for some breeding and also providing food for the youngsters. The nymphs are underwater killers and they can live for years in that form before emerging, so there must be a supply of food for them during that period. We can only imagine what triggers their emergence from the water but as I write there are at least three nymph bodies that can be seen and two fully grown dragonflies are hanging near them preparing themselves for their first ever lift off. What has happened, without any human intervention, is that nature has created a dragonfly breeding ground, right in our garden.

As for the algae, I must confess to having introduced a 'walk' of five Ramshorn snails (note the collective noun) with a view to controlling this. Yes, you can buy them online and they arrive in a bag ready to go. 

The first order got lost somewhere and never arrived; we are saddened to think of their ultimate fate. Perhaps the 'Live Creatures' sign was a bit too scary or maybe they were taken to a zoo somewhere. A second order arrived safely and they seemed happy when released into the pond and disappeared quickly beneath the algae. If they survive, something I may never know, then perhaps either they or their offspring might one day run out of algae to eat, giving me a clear view of the bottom of the pond again. [Update: Snail just spotted alive and well.]

On to the next project. Looking back at an estate agent's picture of the back of our house there is a length of solid looking decking surrounded by a wooden railing. One can only guess that this was created as a 'sitting out' area, a place where the owners could catch the evening sun before it disappears behind the hill. But we have never used it as such, perhaps largely because we are discouraged by the healthy midge population that live close by and come out for a feed whenever the wind drops sufficiently for them to fly. In any event there was clear evidence of rot in the decking timbers which rendered it rather unsafe to walk on. So we thought let's rip it up.

We soon discover, however, that this will be a major physical exercise since it is largely held together with long screws that are too rusted to extract. Instead we have to slice the decking up into pieces using a powerful circular saw then wrench each section free from the supporting posts. These are lengths of a reclaimed BT telegraph pole, impregnated with stinky creosote, and have been concreted into deep holes in the ground. It is hot and smelly work but gradually, section by section the decking disappears so it can be carted away to the local tip.

To do this means that each section has to be small enough to fit into our small trailer without overloading it too much then the pieces lashed down so they don't fall out on the journey to the local recycling centre. The wood is sodden, much of it crumbling into dust, and it takes five loads in total before the job is done. We no longer have decking we don't use and all we are left with is the decision about what to do with the space beside the house which is seeing the light of day for the first time in years.