Taking a Walk Patrick Barkham
People like walking on the Isle of Man. The graceful sweep of the promenade in Douglas (the Dub glass or clear lake, in Manx) is populated by pram-pushing power-walkers. In the countryside, almost every rural road has a pavement along which people stride.
‘Lovely day. No wind,’ say a couple when I reach the island’s northern quarter, a flat, fertile patchwork of small meadows, single-storey cottages and yellowing sycamores. Here are pretty, derelict dairy farms – a terrible shame when milk from the Isle of Man’s surviving creamery is so delicious – and a gaggle of cockerels on every track. There are feral hens galore and few farmers left to cull the useless boys.
I bump down a tiny lane and park in the middle of the Curraghs, a curious woodland of stunted willow that is an internationally important wetland. The Isle of Man may be a fiercely independent crown dependency but in looks it resembles north-west Britain in miniature: Glen Helen with its beech trees turning ginger in autumn could be a Lake District valley; lanes banked with hedges of fuchsia are like Western Ireland; the fine stone harbour of Peel reminds me of a Scottish port.
But the Curraghs, a maze of boggy meadows and low forest, is unique. Before it was half-abandoned, the Curraghs had been pasture. Before it had been tamed by clever Manx farmers who dug intricate drainage ditches by hand and levelled them by eye, it was a lake. Now it’s grown wild, and a vivid green path leads through the stunted silver willows, barely three metres high. It is an atmospheric place – quiet, intimate, ancient and modern. Ditches on either side are filled with horsetails that have grown here since prehistory.
The island has a wealth of unusual animals. The tailless Manx cats I spot jumping across the street have become a cultural symbol. On the hills graze Loaghtan sheep, which look primeval with their four twisty horns. On the far southern tip of the Langness Peninsula hops the rare lesser mottled grasshopper. Its nearest known colony is, mysteriously, 450 miles distant – in Holland. How did it find its way to a spot in the middle of the Irish Sea? Less exotic are what locals call ‘long-tailed gentlemen’: the superstitious will only reluctantly spell out its name: R-A-T.
I gaze over a hay meadow. In one clearing, two hares bounce. In another, there’s a much larger animal. It looks like nothing else I’ve ever seen in the British Isles. When I move, it turns to consider me, alert, raising itself on two legs, like a dinky bear: it’s a red-necked wallaby.
I freeze, and eventually this beast – bizarre beyond Australia – relaxes and continues its grazing. I follow the soft green path as it turns left-right-left through the willows. When I turn towards a wooden hide overlooking one of the best winter roosting sites in Europe for the hen harrier, another wallaby thumps through the dark, twisted understorey.
The wallabies escaped from a wildlife park many years ago. On an island lacking any large indigenous wild mammals – no deer, badgers, foxes or even squirrels – they’ve thrived, and more than 100 now live wild. They are a pleasing part of a mixed-up ecosystem. On a small island we can see much more starkly our role in determining which species thrive.
I turn for home, the island’s central fells curvaceously pretty to the south and patched in bracken the colour of wet rust. Into this empty echo chamber is poured just one sound: the teatime complaining of cows being brought back to a distant yard. Close Sartfield nature reserve, Windmill Lane, Ballaugh Curragh, Ballaugh, Isle of Man. Follow track south through trees to the bird hide. The track continues and you can either walk a circuit via the lanes or retrace your steps. Ordnance Survey Landranger 95 Grid reference: SC358955.