WINTER "BLOG"
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We - meaning Kathleen and myself, Sinclair Dunnett - often get asked "What do you do at the end of the season?". I guess a lot of people think that from late October to early April we live a life of ease, or even swinish sloth. We do wonder ourselves what happens to the five months which pass from the last tour one season to the first tour the next. So at last we're keeping an intermittent record of what we do from autumn/fall to spring.
Our household consists of Kathleen and Sinclair; Lubomir Fiala; our feline friend Juno - who is trying to climb into the text - and our girlies. |  I will tell you more about myself when my humanoids get time. I have a comfortable life without working very hard, I don't understand why they are so busy. |
26 October
We set off sooth in our little rig - Italian car and Polish caravan:
November
Shortly after WW1 the government set up the Forestry Commission, charged with growing a 3-year strategic reserve of timber should Britain be again blockaded. I see the name Forest Enterprise now, and am not sure whether this is just rebranding, or if the Commission has been subdivided in some way.
ANYWAY - after an area of trees has been felled FE can issue “scavenging permits” which let the permit holder gather offcuts, “lop & top” etc from the cleared area. On our 4th attempt we got such a permit in late November and Luboš and myself set off west to gather firewood. (Who’s Luboš?, I hear you cry. He's our friend and lodger from the east of Czech Republic and lodges with us. More anon.) In January 2005 - just a few weeks after the St Stephen’s Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean - a hurricane hit parts of NW Scotland. It was very localised, but did knock over a lot of trees in bits of Wester Ross. The easiest firewood was recovered some time ago but there is still a lot if you're prepared to work hard for it.
In the meantime Kathleen carries on with our accounts . . .
The British Trust for Ornithology [BTO] is in its last year of a major 5-year project to survey - or at least attempt to survey - all the 10km squares of the UK and Ireland (in collaboration with the Irish Wildbird Conservancy (IWC). Ideally participants should make 4 visits - 2 winter, 2 in the breeding season - to survey the birds in their “tetrads”. I have adopted 10 tetrads in some of the remoter parts of Caithness and Sutherland* - about 40 km2 in total (16mi2). It may not sound like much, but some of these tetrads require a considerable hike to get to them - or - where I’m lucky -I can get closer with my old but trusty Peugeot mountain bike. (A “tetrad” is an area of 4 km2, ie 2×2 km.)
*Caithness and Sutherland are the two most northerly counties on the mainland of Great Britain.
In mid-November Luboš and I headed up to the east coast of Sutherland where there is a stunning camping and caravan site at Crakaig:
December
The snow lay for a dozen days or so. I still had 4 tetrads of my bird survey to do in Caithness, but I knew that, even if the public road were open*, the private road beyond would be impassable except to a tracked vehicle or an Alaskan trapper on snowshoes.
However by Sunday Dec 12 there had been a significant thaw and I head north with the bike on the roof of the car. Six miles through difficult conditions on the hill road, and six miles back, with a five-mile hike through broken snow in between. And even then I only get one of my four tetrads done.
*This road - Dunbeath-Braemore - became famous in the great snowstorm of January 1955 when the crofting community was cut off for 6 weeks.
Next week more snow fell and we had hard frost - hard frost in this country means anything below 20°F (-7°C), rather hilarious to Canadians, Alaskans or folks from the mid-west of the US.
The media are full of stories of stranded travellers. Journalists overwork the word “chaos” when disruption might be more appropriate.
I had been booked to guide a score of Canadians round Loch Ness a few days before Christmas. They were due to stay in a beautiful self-catering complex on the Black Isle at an elevation of about 600'. This may not sound much, but at our latitude of 57°N this can make the difference between light rain (at sea level) and impassable roads (at 600') and I had warned them, when they booked, that they might have trouble getting in and out of their lovely lodge, on a "B" road which is one of the last to be cleared. The group - 3 generations, as I understand - have just cancelled; ironically because London Heathrow airport is closed - NOT because of significant problems in the Highlands! For me it was only a small piece of business but a string of others have lost significantly through this; and of course it’s very sad for the Canadians who have geared up for months for this special trip.
On the one hand, should we welcome two severe winters in a row as indicating AGW is not happening? On the other hand, the last two winters - only slightly more severe than I remember as a child in the 1950s - have caused huge economic disruption in a society which relies on "just-in-time" deliveries - spare parts, food, consumer goods flying up and down the highways day and night. Furthermore many people expect to go away for a winter break abroad - something almost unknown fifty years ago.
The "Festive" Season
We visited various people, and had various guests. A very dull Bill of Fayre on TV this year compared with a year ago when, i.a., there was a series of BBC programmes on the The Private Life of a Christmas Masterpiece. These went into depth on various paintings associated with Christmas including Gauguin's God's Child and Bruegel's Census at Bethlehem. Also Anna Netrebko playing Mimi in La Bohème. I am aware that most fans (afficionados?) watching opera know all about most famous operas before they see it. Being operatically (almost) illiterate each new opera is an adventure and surprise for me. I loved the movie of La Bohème, despite the sneers of various critics. I had a good cry at the end when Musetta turned from vamp to heart-of-gold. And certainly Ms Netrebko has the face and figure to maintain the interest of the tired businessman, as Robertson Davies said somewhere in The Cornish Trilogy - oh, quite apart from her wonderful voice.
New Year 2011
Still plenty snow but Luboš and I headed west on 2 January to get another load of firewood. Quite appropriate, in a way: Good King Wenceslas was from Bohemia, part of what is now Czech Republic. Is Luboš GKW, and am I the " . . poor man...gathering winter fu-oo-el..."? Maybe not a perfect fit.
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The permit for gathering firewood is good value but, as with many things, to do the job most efficiently you need the right tools (chainsaws by the way are quite rightly forbidden). However you can haul out thickish branches much more easily with a pair of claws closed by a pantograph mechanism - see right: This "very clever instrument" as Luboš called it has the wonderful name of PULP TONGS. How can you grasp pulp with tongs? - it would be like trying to eat soup with a fork. It also recalls Keats' lines in The Eve of Saint Agnes:
Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve I presume they are pulp tongs because one can pull small trees with them, suitable for turning to wood pulp, rather than lumber. And what a help they have been! - but cost about £ 14 each . . . |  |
| The supermarket we currently use is Morrisons where Kathleen recently discovered a delicious budget ready meal: chicken tikka masala, complete with aromatic rice. The rice has turmeric and cardamom and cloves and is yellowish in colour. There is always too much rice so our girlies get the excess. We have taken to calling it “winter rice” since we believe it’s easier for the girlies to find yellow rice against the white snow. You can just make out some yellow "winter rice" below the beak of the middle bird. |
January 8, a walk with the local Ramblers group on the north shore of the Cromarty Firth. An easy walk, learned some new things about the wartime defences there. (For 20 years or more I’ve told people the Fleet Air Arm was operating the Sunderlands and Catalinas from the Firth - apparently it was RAF Coastal Command. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa . . .)
We are preparing for a trip to the Continent later in the month. Usually at this time of year I do a trip to Poland for Naturetrek; this year it is cancelled for lack of bookings. But we are going anyway, since we enjoy Poland in winter and will catch up with friends in the Netherlands and Germany.
13 January
A phone call from Lonely Planet magazine. They may want me to guide a trip for them in Poland in early February. Could be a handy bit of winter work. Have discovered through Piotr, my oppo in Gdansk, that KAUNAS is the best gateway to north-east Poland. Kaunas - oh yeah? Well, have found it is in Lithuania and is half the driving time to most of the features we visit in Poland compared with using Warsaw as a gateway.
Firewood, trip planning. DFDS ferry Newcastle-Ijmuiden, in Noord Holland. Campanile Hotel on outskirts of Delft. Endless e-mails with Lonely Planet magazine, the Polish National Tourist Office in London, and long SKYPE calls with Piotr in Gdansk. (Lonely Planet magazine, by the way, is a BBC publication and is independent of the travel guide series, though sharing the same logo.) Improve the log store with corrugated iron sheeting. Catch up on e-mails, find Continental kettle (no!), double-check Panda. It appears to be impossible to change headlight bulb; FIAT dealership in Inverness could not show us how it was done.
24 January
We leave Inverness with the Panda full to the gunwales and stop at the Duke of Gordon hotel in Kingussie for breakfast. Then on to Perth where we have advised Arnold Clark - who sold us the Panda - that we want to find how to change a headlight bulb.
A technician appears, primed for the task, though he admits he has never changed a bulb in the bug-eyed housing. A cross-head screwdriver to loosen several screws is stage 1. Then we would pull the moulding out from its medial end, overcoming (breaking?) some spring clips. Lastly we would insert a broad-bladed screwdriver between car body and the lateral end of the housing to pop the last clip, using a piece of cloth to protect the body work . . . (We didn't actually do this, we were just talked thro' it.)
France, among other countries, requires - quite reasonably - that motorists carry spare bulbs. But what is the point when you nearly need to be a trained mechanic to do the job? - this used to be a recurring theme in the Honest John section of the Daily Telegraph - or Torygraph, as it is frequently called. Even in vehicles where you don't have to do semi-major dismantling you may need fingers like a concert pianist's to change some bulbs.
On to Newcastle in good time for the ferry and a pleasant overnight crossing.
We have several very pleasant days in Noord and Zuid Holland catching up with friends and visiting the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The Mauritshuis is a great repository of Dutch Golden Age painting. If I get back next year I would prefer a whole day rather than two hours. Its most famous painting is Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, one of my favourite paintings. People often associate Calvinsim and strictness with this period in the Netherlands but there are lots of fun paintings here too such as Avercamp's On the Ice. Jan Steen's Girl eating Oysters and Mieris the Elder's Brothel Scene are also much gayer than you might imagine from the land of the Nederlands Gereformeerde Kerk. (I hope you enjoy the Oyster Girl link!)
We found a lovely restaurant in Delft and never tire of that city.
On to Germany. Lose our way slightly and have to go across country to get back on the E30. No harm done, we find pleasant smaller roads and are astonished at the proliferation of photovoltaic arrays on the roofs of many buildings. The scheme may be government-subsidised, but if polymath Ray Kurzweil is correct (see below) this should be a good investment.
Back in Scotland a month later I read an article in the March 12 Economist where Kurzweil observes:
". . . [that] the rate of expansion of solar energy has been doubling every two years for the past two decades which, he insists, means that solar power will meet all energy needs in 20 years. When the human genome project started, sceptics argued it would take centuries to scan an entire human genome using prevailing technologies; in fact, thanks to exponential advances in sequencing technology, it was done in less than 15 years."
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To Celle (near Hannover) and our old favourite, the Hotel Am Braunen Hirsch, for several nights. A visit to the grave of my oldest cousin, Dennis, at the Commonwealth War Cemetery and then, contrastingly, to REAL. Dennis was a professional soldier, a cavalryman in the Royal Scots Greys, and was killed by a landmine in May 1945 after the cessation of hostilities; which made his death doubly bitter to his family. When we first knew REAL ten years ago it was Wal-Mart, the famous US megastore. We got, i.a., catfood for a picky cat cheaper than we could at home and huge bottles of gherkins for friends in Inverness who were gherkin junkies. (A fortnight in the USSR in 1982, when we had gherkins with every meal, put me off them for ever.) Apparently Wal-Mart didn't flourish enough in Germany, maybe because of its strict no-Sunday-trading laws. (Only shops open are the minimarts in fuel stations.) |  |
One day we head north to Hamburg, meet up with a friend who guides us to the greeting point on the south side of the Elbe for ships coming to Hamburg harbour. Our Hamburg friend (just aa well JFK never gave a speech there) expresses mild irritation at the penetration of English into everyday German life. Now that she has said it, we do see "Coffee To Go!" everywhere; also a "FLIRTPARTY" advertised on lamp-posts. One that particularly amused us was a place whose board proclaimed: TAT2. (Clue: it's to do with body adornment - what is curious is that it is a pun in English, not a Wortspiel in German - TATZWEI wouldn't make much sense.)
At the hotel in Celle we get a number of English-language news services - BBC World, CNN. Egyptians have been massing in Tahrir Square for some time. I wish them well, but I wonder if the almost continuous TV coverage is necessary; there are other things happening in the world.
February
On to north-east Poland and the great forest there, Puszcza Romincka. Until 1945 this was in East Prussia, and was Kaiser Wilhelm's favourite hunting area; he shot over 2,000 stags here.
Kasia - to use her Polish diminutive - and I are in maybe a small minority that we enjoy snow and sharp frost. Maybe not the minus 55°F I worked in one day in northern Canada decades ago (yes, I'm a temperature bore), and certainly not for months on end. But six weeks of it would be just fine, and you can be fairly sure of that in NE Poland. With sunshine, snow and sharp frost Puszcza Romincka is just out of this world. Even if you don't always see wolf, and only occasionally lynx, you see their tracks and, as one guide said, they're seeing you.
However on this visit the skies were overcast much of the time
and the temperature rose towards the end of our visit. Indeed, one night there was heavy rain, taking away a lot of snow and rendering the landscape less then delightful.
Sunday 6 February
We - Piotr, Kasia and myself - headed
north to Kaunas in Lithuania, my first time in that Baltic State, last bastion of paganism in Europe. In contrast to Greek, Roman, and Scandinavian religions almost nothing is known of the pre-Christian religion, or religions, of the Baltic States.
Kaunas (KUN) is a small, flyer-friendly airport and a significant hub for Ryanair. Kathleen left mid-afternoon for her non-stop flight to Edinburgh and Piotr and I went to the city centre to find an hotel.
Book now for Naturetrek's next winter trip to Poland! |  |
13-16 February: four days of driving west (avoiding con men at rest areas on the Berliner Ring and Lithuanian tailgaters) . Ferry and then north from Newcastle back to Scotland where Kathleen met me at our niece's and we caught up with grand-niece and (very new) grand-nephew.
Firewood! - again! - before permit expires. And then off with the 'van again to east Sutherland for four nights to finish my winter bird counts:
Vehicle checking, conferences with Graham [Hercus] on the 2011 programme of tours, web work. Work on HOSTGA website (of which I'm now the webmaster). Organising educational outings for HOSTGA members and the spring multi-day outing for the local bird club.
March
On Wednesday 9 2" of snow falls but is away by the end of the day. Then on Friday the news of the tremblor and tsunami hitting Japan, putting day-to-day problems into perspective, and pushing Libya off the front pages for a bit.
The leader in the Spectator of 19 March is remarkably bullish, telling us we're a bunch of idiots if events in Japan make us hesitate about more nuclear stations in Europe (I paraphrase). There will be elections shortly to Holyrood (Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh) and, rightly or wrongly, the disaster in Japan will no doubt reinforce First Minister Alex Samond's anti-nuclear power stance.
The Economist
of 26 March has a scathing leader on the low level of competence the Japanese Government has shown in response to the disaster:
"While . . . severe shortage of fuel spread through northern Japan, oil companies were sitting on huge supplies which by law they had to keep in reserve. If ever an occasion for their use was justified, it was this catastrophe. Yet the government took ten days to beg for (not order) their release. From the start, Mr Kan should have declared a state of emergency. Even now, clear lines of authority for handling the many-headed crisis have not been properly established."
Interesting that the Economist has the crisis as "many-headed" rather than "hydra-headed"; maybe their market research shows the Labours or Hercules have poor penetration in their current readership.
To be continued . . . .
Sinclair Dunnett
PUFFIN EXPRESS,
Inverness, Scotland
e-mail: Puffin Express
Our chickens . . .
The section below is a slightly edited part of our Xmas letter from 2009. We'll be adding more hen stories in due course.
A couple of big events this year (2009) . . .
| First, the fun one. We got six “Shaver Brown” pullets. This started as a joke (by S) which K took seriously. They were delivered on 6 June and it was about 12 days till we got the first egg and soon the girlies got into their stride, with 6 eggs/day for a while, then 5/day later in the year. Just now in December it’s four eggs most days. We do hang a rechargeable lantern by the coop as darkness falls - that gives two hours more light. Ideally they should have 14 hours light for optimum egg production, maybe we’ll arrange that once they’re in their permanent run. Currently they have an integrated coop/run/nest-box with a larger run added by ourselves. They also get out into our yard (¼ acre) every day for anything from an hour to most daylight hours. |  |
A hen stares at nothing with one eye,
Then picks it up. Out of an empty sky
A swallow falls and, flickering through
The barn, dives up again into the dizzy blue
- a lovely poem, please read the rest of it.
This can only be a small part of their diet but must be “psychologically” important to them. Oops, didn’t we say we weren’t going to talk ’bout the chickens no more, no more . . .
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