Beehives and bogs

The moor, for which read 'bog'.

    "The peat, springy and spongy, gulps down the paths that run across it unless they are kept in regular use. So it is that many of the thousands of footpaths that seam the Western Isles don't exist as continuous lines in the land, but instead as trails of intervisible cairns or standing stones.

A ruined boathouse

    Many of these trails indicate [the way to] the shieling, the stone-built shelter used as a home during the summer grazing months... But bad weather could make navigation out to the shieling difficult, and the moor itself held the perils of bog and deep water. So it was these routes became cairned onto the moor as guide-lines, designed to avoid boglach (general boggy areas),

The door to nowhere

of blàr (flat areas of moor that can be very boggy), or most dangerously, breunlach (sucking bog disguised by the alluringly bright green grass that covers it), and lead the walker safely to tulach na h-airigh - the site of the shieling. Hansel and Gretel again: the stones that would guide you safely home."

River-washed dogs

    In that passage from The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot Robert Macfarlane is talking about the area of Lewis in which we were staying last month. While our menfolk were on the hill one day, Harriet and I and the dogs set out to find the primitive shielings, or 'beehives' as they are known. Despite following the virtually featureless stalking track for the required distance, as instructed by a man who knows the area well, we missed the mark somehow and never found what we sought. We did sample every class of bog mentioned above, Pippin falling foul of the breunlach and getting herself spectacularly clarty - luckily there was ample opportunity for a cleansing dip on the way back to solid ground.

    There's more from the excellent Robert Macfarlane here.

Comments

[craftygreenpoet]

Those paths sound familiar from our visits to the Western Isles!

[Claire]

This is definetely on my tbr list. Look forward to reading your thoughts on it.

[Cornflower]

Yes, you need the eye of faith!

[Cornflower]

I'm loving it, Claire!