Tuesday 21st May 2024

Day three of the trip, and a long day on the road as we headed north into Northern Ireland to see a tiny weeny orchid. The Lesser Twayblade I saw last year, but my shots were very poor, so wanted to at least get better ones.

One thing I did fail to do before we left, however, was to read all of the blurb sent to us, so I was totally unprepared for the midges we would encounter later on.

But just two sites visits meant a later start of nine thirty, and onto the main roads north.

We went down at half eight to find the whole hotel in a queue for their Irish fry, so we made do with fruit and waited for the line to die down.

.

No sunshine today, clouds and the threat of rain later.

Of which more later.

There is no obvious marker at the border. Other than after that point distances are in miles in the north rather than in kilometres as in the Republic.

I will whisper this, other than that, no other way to tell the two countries apart. Shhhhh. .

We were having sat nav trouble, and so stopped soon after crossing the border, and I saw this pier perfectly reflected into the loch.

I pointed it out, and we all got shots.

We drove on, and into the misty forested hills, onto narrower and narrower lanes and then onto tracks, until we came to a dead end, overlooked by a bluff.

We got out and sprayed ourselves with Jungle Formula, strapped cameras and made sure as little skin as possible was exposed.

From the woods, the midges saw us and planned their ambush.

A short walk away was the edge of a forest, the trees and vegetation standing in mud and acidic water, and here and there were the tiny green oval leaves and red spikes of the tiny Lesser Twayblades.

I thought about my shots and how I should take them, and these were the results.

We walked further on into the woods, and into the realm of the midges, who were very pleased to see us. It was worth going in however, to see Common and Lesser Twayblades growing side by side, sometimes literally.

A rare sight indeed.

The midges were in my hair and getting behind my glasses. I had the shots I wanted and hadn't got that wet, so I decided to amble back to the cars and wait there.

Back into the cars and a long drive to the garage and the Irish Subway to get lunch and provisions before going on to a second site, where we would see Sword Leaved Helleborines.

Yay.

We parked in the reserve car park, before walking into it, we had lunch standing up, then into the woods, where the sun even came out.

Along the path we could see spikes of the Helleborines, but not in great numbers, but that was tempered a few strides later when we came across one beside the path in bright sunshine.

We also found several Birds Nests beside the path too, which was a treat.

We all got shots.

Down the steep path to the shore of a loch, and we were treated to the rare sight of a female White Tailed Fish Eagle a good distance away in a tree, sitting on the nest where a chick had hatched in the past week.

No shots to share, nor location revealed, but to see the head of the eagle in the scope was a rare treat.

I say a sight: you needed to have a very powerful scope, or a 600mm or longer lens to hope to see the female's head sticking out over the crude nesting material.

And then the rain started.

Hard.

At first we were protected by the trees, but the rain found its way down, and did not let up.

Should we wait it out or make a dash for it? We decided to make a dash for it. And we would get wet, even those with super-professional kit were already soaked, the rest of us looked like drowned rats.

It was a mile hard climb back to the car, and there was no choice other than to grin and bear it, put one foot in front of the other and get up.

The rain came down harder, we were like eight hobbits racing against time, all looking like drowned rats. My knee took the hour off, so I was able to power up and reach the top of the climb, then stumble along the last 400 yards to the car park.

Soaked to the skin.

All of us.

Sean turned the engine on, and then the blowers. We reversed out and made for Sligo and the hotel, all of us steaming as we sat there, while the rain hammered down some more.

We got back at six, just time to change and have a brew before meeting up to walk to a Japanese-Korean fusion place a five minute walk away.

A table had been reserved, so we all sat down, ordered drinks and two courses, and then ate well. I had tempura prawns followed by some kind of chicken drizzled with sauce and vegetables with rice.

It hit the spot.

And so at half ten we walked back in the dark, as the rain began to gently fall again.