Mar 13th, 2016

Author: donich_admin

If I ruled the World…

Every day would be – well – like today, because I think I would call it the first day of spring proper in Lochgoilhead. I was reading somewhere that in Scotland the ‘real’ arrival of spring and summer are typically two to three weeks after the nominal ‘calendar’ start of the season. So 1st March was supposed to be the start, but this year (here at least) the real start date was today.

R and I had been going to climb Beinn Lochain today, but the cloud was down at about 350m and we wouldn’t have got much of a view, so instead we set out to find a path we knew existed but had never walked – between Lettermay and Cormonachan. We found the path and set off. By 8:30am it was quite warm and spring like. Every ditch, pond and puddle was packed with busily copulating frogs and slimy with spawn. After a while we heard a great honking noise and a huge V of birds passed overhead heading north – I’m not sure whether they were geese or Whopper swans.

Primroses were out on the banks, and there was a general ‘green’ smell of growing things. When we got home, I noticed that the first few narcissi are out in our garden.

The heron is back on the pond daily (I wonder why that would be??) and the badgers are back in the early evening. So spring on the Donich has now officially arrived.