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Walking Group One 25th April 2024
Five hardy souls collected today at Happy Valley for the first Hill Walk of the year .The temperature was cool with a North Easterly wind blowing and a hint of rain on arrival.
Off we set heading towards Russadale Quarry, spotting a Buzzard on the way.Turning into the footpath we remained sheltered from the wind all the way to the top of the hill.
The sun was out at the Quarry and a Greenshank was feeding at the edge of the Lochan. Then it was up the Peat road to the summit with spectacular views across Stenness and Harray Lochs, plus a view of the Closed Road beyond the Watch Stone. On the other side we looked over the Flow and down towards the Oil Platform and South Ronaldsay
Then it was back down after a stop for a snack and finally a walk around Happy Valley itself. The Daffodils planted by James and others were looking lovely and the Bluebells are days away from opening. Then it was on to a well deserved lunch at the Pier Cafe, having walked 4 miles and gone up 800 feet (and down again )
The next walk will be on Friday 24th May and hopefully more hills and views.
Keep moving.
U3A Botany Group - February 2019
by Peter Slater - 17:04 on 06 February 2019
Botany group meeting on 5th February 2019.
After our successful outing to Happy Valley in the summer, when we learnt the features of various tree species in leaf, we decided to hold a winter meeting and learn to identify ones without the leaves to help us. Rather than braving the winter weather (it was in fact rather nice that day!) we met inside at Peter’s house. We are really lucky to have Jenny Taylor, Orkney’s leading expert on trees, as a member of the group, and she brought numerous twigs from different species for us to learn about, as well as literature including a species by species key she had prepared for us. Some points are easy enough: do the dead leaves stay attached (beech, and sometimes oak), are the buds opposite (sycamore, ash, horse chestnut) or do they alternate in position up the twig (most other species)? But others are more difficult and subtle, like the colour of the bark and the shape of the buds. We learnt a lot and are extremely grateful to Jenny for all her help. Fortunately we were not tested at the end of the afternoon, but repaired for tea and pancakes, with excellent chocolate cake kindly brought by Marguerite. During this we made some plans for trips we hope to make in the coming summer.
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