Mountain Botany

It seems a very long time ago that The Ghost and I hatched our plans to hit Speyside and some mountains in search of a bucketload of plants and adventure, though in reality it was only a few weeks back. I finally finished work on Friday 6th and aimed The Gibstermobile towards Aberfeldy, some 200 miles to the south east. Despite getting bogged down in a bit of campervan nonsense, I arrived pretty much on time. No word yet from The Ghost, who was travelling up from deepest darkest Hampshire. I texted "I'm in Aberfeldy, whereabouts are you now?" to which he eventually replied "England". Oh dear.   

Figuring I had a bit of time to kill before he arrived, I walked to the River Tay by Aberfeldy golf course in search of Beavers. As you do... 

The River Tay at Aberfeldy. Beavers live here. Somewhere...

I chatted with some folks trying to catch trout, but they didn't know where the Beavers were. I chatted with a fella walking his dogs, he didn't know either. I wandered up and down the river for a while until I finally accepted that, unless they were wearing hi-viz jackets, it was now too dark for me to see any Beavers. I quit in search of food in downtown Aberfeldy.

Probable Beaver haul out points on the far bank. Either that or the Water Voles here are huge

River Tay in the gloaming

Eventually my partner in pan-listing crime arrived in Aberfeldy, some twelve hours after setting off from Southampton. Traffic along his route started crawling at Winchester and stayed crawling right up into Cumbria, the poor fecker. Still, he was here now and ready for action! Two minutes later he began to gently snore....

The following day dawned dull and grey. We had two options; hit Ben Lawers today or hit Ben Lawers tomorrow. After that we were heading northwards into Speyside. Ben Lawers is one of the most botanically interesting mountains in Scotland, we simply had to attempt the summit before we left the area. In the end common sense prevailed (i.e. I won the argument) and we started preparing for our ascent of Scotland's tenth highest mountain. 

I've only ever been about halfway towards the summit, but The Ghost had already summited Ben Lawers a few years back, hence had already seen some of the alpine-arctic plants to be found up there. I was quietly expecting a complete botanical tickfest, maybe thirty species that I'd never encountered before. We only had one thing to contend with, apart from the uphill route march, I mean. The weather.

Before long the clouds descended upon us, or maybe we ascended into them. Either way, we were soon inside an eerie greyness that cut visibility down to just a few hundred metres. At least it wasn't raining, I thought. It started raining. The rain then became ferocious. Sideways ferocious. Oh how we laughed......

But before the rain hit us, we had actually found a decent haul of plants. Now that I live way up north, many of the plants we were finding were familiar to me, hence I was able to confidently point out a good few 'lifers' to The Ghost, species such as Alpine Meadow-rue, Scottish Asphodel, Sibbaldia and Dwarf Willow.  

The purplish-coloured mature leaves of  Alpine Meadow-rue

Sibbaldia amongst far fresher-looking Alpine Meadow-rue leaves

Scottish Pearlwort (it roots at the nodes) and my first new plant of the day

Alpine Mouse-ear was my second lifer of the day - it's very common here in trackside grasses

We were heading for a boggy area that reputedly held Water Sedge and Russet Sedge. Rather annoyingly, heavy sideways rain arrived a few minutes after we did, hampering our search a little. Happily it soon passed through, though The Ghost was well-equipped for just such an occasion

Gah! An umbrella??? The cheating so-and-so!

I don't really get on with umbrellas, in fact I wouldn't be seen dead with one. But Ghostie was putting his to good use, even if he did look a complete plonker sitting in a bog halfway up a mountain. Still, he soon found one of our target sedges, maybe I ought to consider purchasing an umbrella for myself....

Russet Sedge in all of its glory. In Britain this only occurs in Scottish bogs

Up until this point the going had been steadily uphill but nothing too arduous, just never-ending. But now we started to gain height in earnest. The visibility hadn't improved any, so views were somewhat restricted. Every once in a while a person would hove into view ahead of us, or we'd hear disembodied voices without ever seeing a soul. All very eerie. However, the plants at our feet were different to those growing on the lower slopes, it was all starting to feel distinctly montane!

Dwarf Cudweed - there was lots of this growing in barish soils

Stiff Sedge - masses of this and my fourth new plant of the day

Flowering patch of Cyphel at the side of the track

And then there it was - the summit cairn! Our target area lay a few hundred metres beyond the summit, we were almost there. Pity the views were less than spectacular.

Within a couple more minutes I was at the top of Ben Lawers, Scotland's tenth highest Munro, and feeling celebratory. I took a wee vid, spoiled somewhat by the noise of the wind, but you get the gist of it

Caught up in my excitement, I accidentally slipped up and have now revealed The Ghost's true name. He'll haunt me forever now, I'm certain. Anyways, we wandered the track across the plateau for a few hundred metres more before arriving at an area full of broken rocks, cliffs and ledges. At least I think it does, visibility was definitely worsening. But we were here now, and we had hopes of finding some very special plants indeed. But first of all, I noticed that the Dwarf Willow was covered in a fungal rust

This is Melampsora arctica, a rust specific to Dwarf Willow

Alpine Clubmoss - quite a bit of this distinctively coloured plant growing at altitude

I stuck my head into a deep cleft between two large rocks and found myself looking at Pyrenean Scurvygrass - lifer!!! I called Ghostie to come see it, took a couple of rather blurry pics and moved out of the way to let him have a look.  

I did warn you they were blurry!

Ghostie consulting the key....

"Why are you so certain it's Pyrenean Scurvygrass?" he asked. "Because it's not English, Danish or Common - like, duh!" was my reply. "OK, so why do you think it's Pyrenean rather than Mountain Scurvygrass?" he responded. Only one answer to that. "Er...mostly coz I've never even heard of Mountain Scurvygrass..." We studied some leaves, we looked at the shape of the seedpods, we ummed and aahed. Ghostie took some proper pics, we needed to check more keys and look online when back in the b+b (we later decided that it was, in fact, Mountain Scurvygrass - a mega rare plant, though well-known at the top of Ben Lawers, and one that wasn't even on my radar. Sweet!)

We failed to find much else though. Visibility was worsening all the time. I worried we'd finish our descent in darkness, and voiced this concern several times. Eventually Ghostie agreed that we needed to start our return leg down the mountain. Happily for us, he knew of a shortcut to be had. We struck off along the shortcut trail and after quite a while ended up at the cairn on top of Beinn Ghlas!!! Not that we realised that's where we were at the time, but clearly we weren't on the shortcut path back to the carpark. For reasons that I won't go into right now, cutting cross-country seemed a logical move. We would soon bisect the return path if we just walked in a straight line. Simple, what could possibly go wrong? 

We walked in a straight line and found ourselves standing at the top of a cliff, we couldn't even see the bottom. We couldn't find our bearings due to the poor visibility. Going back up to the cairn way above us, then backtracking the ridge to Ben Lawers' summit seemed an awful lot of effort. Surely we'd come across the return track any minute now. 

An hour later, after being turned around by yet more precipitous cliffs and gullies (all of which we had to climb uphill to bypass), I was becoming increasingly concerned we'd be spending the night on the mountain. I wasn't massively worried for our safety or comfort. We could find a flat area between rocks. I had a 10ft x 10ft tarpaulin and an emergency survival bivvybag in my rucksack. Not much food, but I had plenty of drink. No toilet roll, so any 'number two's' would necessitate using handfuls of sedges, but not that much of a hardship really. I figured we could take turns using the bivvy bag, we'd be alright. I was mostly concerned that one of us would slip on the steep slope, straight over the edge and into a ravine. Ghostie was turning his GPS on and off to conserve battery. I had mine turned off, ready to use when his died. I had a compass, and I knew how to use it. Problem was, we had no map and we couldn't see any features to gain a bearing anyway. Meh! I had my trusty emergency whistle, but I didn't want to lure anybody else stupid enough to be out on the hill towards the cliffs we were perched above. Anyway, that would be admitting defeat. We pushed onwards, surely we must be very close to the path by now.

We took a rest beside a random large boulder. We had to catch our breath, sit down for a moment, have a team chat. I looked around for somewhere to sit and stared in amazement - I was looking straight at a Holly-fern growing in the hollow between two rocks about four feet away!!! Holy cow, what a truly amazing stroke of luck! Holly-fern was high on both our hitlists and now we'd stumbled across several plants by sheer chance! Ha, how very serendipitous was that? 

Holly-fern, I've been hoping to find this for a few years now

But if you thought I was pleased to find the Holly-fern, you have no idea how pleased I felt a few minutes later when we emerged from the gloom onto the return track back off the mountain. Ah man, thank feck for that. I recognised the section we were standing upon as being within a mile or so of the Ben Lawers summit. Some bloody shortcut that had been, ha! Anyway, with a renewed spring in our step, we began our descent. The spring soon evaporated, to be replaced by a dull ache in my right knee. Arse, we still had miles to go yet. I wasn't the only one with aching knees and we took several short breaks on the trek back downhill. Incredibly, the clouds cleared revealing a beautiful view up a long glen. Miracles never cease. A long while later we were back at the car, then back in Aberfeldy, back in the crappy pizza place I visited last night and finally back in our room. 

"I told you we wouldn't be spending the night on that mountain" said The Ghost. 

I contemplated throwing him out the window, but my legs ached too much. Tomorrow was another day, I wondered what it would throw at us. We still had several more mountains to visit, I wondered if I'd survive the week intact.