Drumbeg Peat Road in December
The weather after Christmas 2022 was not encouraging, but we did manage a walk down the Drumbeg peat road on the morning of 28th December. The air was chilly, the track quite wet, despite its sound construction, and the sky overcast, but nevertheless it was good to be out and about.
After you have climbed up from the fank beside Loch Drumbeg, the going is quite level, through a typical Lewisian gneiss landscape (map, photo 1). This area falls, irritatingly, in the narrow gap between the two geological maps of Assynt, the Special Sheet to the east and that for the Point of Stoer to the west. However, the gneiss is obviously cut by linear mafic dykes in places, with their speckled blue-black rock plastered with lichens.
Boggy areas alongside the track are covered with greyish tussocks of black bog-rush, evidence of base-rich water leaching from the underlying rocks.
It was quiet, with no birds either seen nor heard, but in the background there was a continuous muted roar from white surf crashing on to the shore of Eddrachillis Bay to the north. Nearer to hand, a substantial burn, the Allt Poll nam Muc, tumbled noisily down to a bay on Loch Drumbeg.
Lochs
The track snakes between several small lochs. To the east is the intriguingly-named Loch Poll a’Mhuic (loch of the pig) and then, on both sides of the track, a cluster of three un-named lochs that feed it. That nearest to the track (NC121308) is often the most interesting, and so it proved on this occasion.
Broken ground on Its western shore supports a small area of woodland, mainly downy birch (photo 2). However, right on the edge of the loch, seemingly rooted below water level, are two old aspens, whose smooth branches, with pointed buds, were reflected darkly in the still water (photo 3).
There are also several ancient rowans. A dead branch from one of them was stained a vivid blue-green, where it had been rotted by an ascomycete fungus, the green elf-cup Chlorociboria aeruginascens (photo 4).
Another rowan contained the untidy old nest of hooded crows (photo 5), surprisingly close to the ground for this canny species, but probably not so obvious when the tree was in leaf.
Bad na Labhairt
A short distance further on, the track passes through a notch in a ridge, and the view opens out. On the horizon to the south is the substantial (225m) local landmark of Cnoc an Dubharlainn, whose name derives from a long-abandoned, shady (dubhar) settlement on the southern edge of Loch na Loinne.
In the foreground are the narrow, reedy waters of Loch Bad na Labhairt (loch of the place of oratory). On its west side there is a grassy area, enclosed in a dyke and containing the ruin of a building (photo 6). No-one local now seems to know when this area was last occupied, back in the 19th century or earlier, or how it came by its name. However, it looks fertile and must have been important to someone.
We took a coffee break at the start of the cross path to the Culkein Drumbeg peat road, looking out over this last loch. The path starts on an obvious outcrop of mafic dike, with a rich variety of lichens, including our favourite species of rock tripe Umbilicaria torrefacta (photo 7). We also found nearby a small patch of the leathery leaves of bearberry, an ericaceous shrub whose local distribution has probably been much reduced, in the past, by muirburn.
We then turned back to make for home, looking forward to a hot lunch, with one last look, as we approached it, at the trackside loch, with its glassy smooth surface (photo 8).
Ian M. Evans and Gwen Richards
All photos by Gwen Richards