Exploring Quinag: Bad nan Carbad
Botanical recording is a good way of exploring a landscape like that of Quinag, but there is only a short season in the north-west when it is really productive, from June to October. However, it is addictive and I sometimes find myself taking a look at areas well outside the season.
Such was the case on 28th November 2022, when clear skies were forecast, albeit with the sun low in the sky. At Bad nan Carbad, about 1.5km west of Skiag Bridge, there is a sliver of land along the A837 which is the only part of the Quinag estate in the 1km square NC2124 (map, photo 1). It is a triangle, 200m long and just 100m broad at the eastern end, bisected by the road, here running on made ground between towering Torridonian crags and the shore of Loch Assynt.
I parked on the verge along to the east, with some difficulty, since tarmac was being laid between there and Skiag Bridge, and spent just over an hour exploring the two sides of the road (photo 2).
Southern side
I started on the southern side (NC21992492) and the first surprise was the size of two trees at the base of the bouldery bank sloping down to the loch (photo 3). They comprised a huge old aspen close to the water and an old rowan a little higher up. The aspen certainly pre-dates the doubling of the carriageway in the late 1960s, and the rowan may well do so.
Continuing along that side, I came across a by-passed stretch of the old single-track carriageway, with an alternative parking place alongside it. The old road surface looked quite productive, with wild thyme on its northern bank and goldenrod elsewhere.
I then dropped down to the loch shore at the westernmost end of the triangle (NC21772499), the only spot where it was readily accessible. I was interested to find Lewisian gneiss exposed here, on the waterline, under a layer of glacial debris. This area has a few sapling hollies and, looking up the hill to the north (photo 4), I could see the possible seed source, an old female tree, covered in berries, on a crag about 75m away (photo 5). However, there was red deer dung in the area and the saplings were being browsed.
Northern side
Crossing the road, I then made my way back along the northern side of the road, mostly in the ditch along the foot of the sandstone crags, since traffic was fast in this area. I was intrigued to find a single plant of colt’s-foot on the shady side of the ditch. Further south this is typically a plant of disturbed ground, as here, but locally it is much commoner in its ‘native’ habitat, on river gravels.
The crags, which run very close to the road, are high and dripping with water in places (photo 6). They must contain base-rich layers, since, as noted elsewhere on the Torridonian of Quinag, there were stands of black bog-rush on the rocks and at their feet.
Another such indicator was the presence, in a small crevice, of a single plant of common maidenhair spleenwort, with its fronds closely appressed to the substrate and crowded pinnae (photo 7). This is subspecies quadrivalens, which grows on basic rocks, as well as mortared walls around Lochinver, and is the commoner of the two found in Assynt.
Back to the old road
Extricating my car from the edge of the roadworks, I then returned to the parking place alongside the section of old road (photo 8), to take a closer look at the boulder bank around the two old trees. This proved very productive, with bluebell, common polypody, golden-scaled male-fern, honeysuckle and wild raspberry.
Clambering back up to the old road surface, I found more black bog-rush and then on, the edge of the road, quaking-grass and an old blackened fruiting stem of field gentian. This area will certainly repay further examination earlier in the year when orchids and other plants are in flower.
The bright, low, light was not ideal for botanising, but in just over an hour I had logged some 72 species. Not a bad haul for the end of November, from the equivalent of a 100m square of disturbed ground with a busy road running through the middle of it.
Ian M. Evans
All photographs by the author