Stuck in the snow.......

This was my car on Thursday morning, having abandonned it at 10pm the night before on my way between Spean Bridge and Laggan. The snow drifted from one side, and the snow-plough completed the job by sealing it off from the roadside on the other. This was after 30 minutes digging........I was coming back from Corrour Estate and a visit to see a tenant farmer at Ben Nevis, and badly mis-judged the weather situation. I should have stayed the night in Spean Bridge. Having got out from this, I got to Newtonmore, where I had to wait for another day and a half because the A9 was blocked with drifts.

Snow can be scary, and people can easily die in this sort of situation if they make the wrong decisions. I got away with it this time........but I lost a couple of days.

Reversing out.......

You can see that after 45 minutes of having the engine/ heater on that my car suddenly looks a lot warmer looking. Having freed three wheels, I was able to reverse my way back out of the drift, having cleared the bit behind the car first. You can see here the depth of the snow.

Corrour Forest

This was one of my destinations last Wednesday. With the snow on the road, Corrour kindly sent a landrover to pick me up. Corrour have recently bought this ex-FCS plantation, and hope to gradually restore it to a native woodland/ open bog habitat over an appropriate period of time.

Corrour Logo up close........

Building a Tree Nursery

These volunteers are finishing off a tree nursery for the local schools to grow native trees, as part of our Growing Up With Trees programme. If you would like to volunteer with us check our website for the next events in your area. http://www.scottishnativewoods.org.uk/

It takes about 20 wheelbarrow fulls of soil to fill these raised bed tree nurseries.

These are tree nurseries on raised beds. The netting will keep rabbits out and the ground is covered to prevent weeds emerging which could outcompete the tree seedlings. These tree nurseries were built by local volunteers for the nearby schools to use.

Falls of Moness in the Birks of Aberfeldy

Some birks........

Looking along Loch Glascarnoch

This is the view along a frozen Loch Glascarnoch on the road to Ullapool last week. There is a nice little group of Scots Pine trees in the middle of the photo.

Ardessie Falls near Dundonnell, Ullapool

Wild goats on the way to Ullapool.

These wild goats were on the road up to Ullapool. Goats are particularly good at stripping broadleaved trees.

New born kid, only a few days old....

And another one..........

room with a view

Some people have mountains and snow to look at from their office window but down here in the lowlands we have woods and sea.  It is good to see the semi-natural ancient woodland in the glen (centre in the shot) coming into bud.  The beech hedge in the foreground still never shed all its leaves but it frames the ruins of Innerwick Castle quite nicely (far left in shot).  The sea in the distance is fairly calm today.

Working Farm Woods

Here are a few pictures from a visit to some of the young hardwood plantations at Bolfracks Estate.
A busload of people came from Argyll & Loch Lomond to see what's being going on & these shots demonstrate some different ways of extracting timber.

Alan Thompson's has been involved in horse extraction for most of his life, and this traditional approach still has its place on the right site.

More recently, a number of machines have become available for small scale extraction. They are easier to move & cheaper to buy than industrial forestry equipment, and are designed to have less impact on the site. This is Willie Shorthouse's tracked Forcat which is based in Breadalbane.

This Alpine tractor is based in Sunart. Jake Willis is using the mounted winch to extract to roadside without the need to go into the wood.