Magical time at Dogwarts

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Colour my autumn

It’s time to get out and enjoy the autumn colours of the Scottish “fall”. Yellows and browns and a kaleidoscope of hot reds and fading greens and ochres of birches, hazels and other roadside trees and shrubs change the palette of the landscape. And bracken in the woodland fringes is turning through the sallow mustard stage on its way to winter crotal brown.

Shakespeare wrote of “yellow autumn” and the poet Shelley of hearing the “autumnal leaves like light footfalls of spirits”. I stopped to look and listen. Ahead of me a beech tree was shedding a cascade of tawny leaves. Close by, desiccated sycamore leaves that had lost their hold on life spiralled down to land with a scratchy whisper – the light footfalls of spirits, surely.

Winter-bare, usually used to describe deciduous trees that lose their leaves in winter, is applied to larches too because they are the only conifer to shed their summer foliage. At this time of year, when their bright green needles have died back to a light malt whisky gold before falling off, they are a startling contrast to the austere green blocks of other Forestry Commission plantations.

The Doyenne and I visited America in their fall in 1997. It was a gloriously colourful experience driving along the Skyline Drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia – leaf peeping, they call it there. But it was almost too much – miles and miles of forest with little break in the scenery. And when we got home and saw what we had here we reckoned our Scottish fall rivalled anything we had seen on our trip.

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The group was formed with the intention of improving dog-friendly tourism across the area

Woodland walk

Last Monday, you’ll remember, the heavens opened and chastised us with a day of torrential rain. The Doyenne and I took ourselves and Inka off to walk in the comparative shelter of Capo Woods just off the Lang Stracht, the long, straight road connecting Upper Northwaterbridge (A90) with the Edzell-fettercairn road (B966). There’s a fine track past the Capo quarry down to the River North Esk and the forestry tracks in the wood make for easy walking.

We chose the walk on the other side of the wood and branched off at the fingerpost to the Capo Long Barrow. It is a neolithic burial mound and for 6,000 years the last mortal remains of our earliest farmers have lain there, undisturbed in their funerary cists.

So far as is known, the mound has never been excavated. The long barrow was identified by Dr Wilfred Dally, former GP in Edzell and knowledgeable historian. It provides a powerful illustration of the engineering skills our hairy wee ancestors had acquired.

Picture: Angus Whitson. Katherine Thomas her with collies, Zena and Moss, who each won a prize at the dog show.