I got out of the van a bit further up the Glenleraig road than usual, planning a circular walk to try to find some Wych Elm trees.
Consulting my friend Mr O Survey, it looked like I could save myself a bit of road walking by heading across the moor to my first waypoint: a lovely little loch with a view back across the water to Quinag.
I had second thoughts about this; about a dozen times actually. Dead bracken was tangling around my feet, and if I got out of that, I had tussocky Molinia grass with boggy bits hiding between. Hard work.

Some context perhaps?

A few weeks ago, I got a message from “Mandy-the-author” asking me whether I’d be interested in participating in a project that she was about to launch to celebrate Wych Elms in Assynt.
Take some photos?
Oh yes please; right up my street!
Mandy explained that she was planning to write a book and also offer some activity days to the community over the coming seasons.
Before it was too late.
Too late???
Yes, the dreaded Dutch Elm Disease (DED) was still marching north; its progress possibly being assisted by warmer weather in recent times.

Striking a chord it was: I remember hedgerows (lots of hedgerows) with lots of English Elm in Northamptonshire when I was a kid.
Then, quite quickly, virtually all of the mature trees succumbed to “DED” and became dead themselves.
Tragic.

By chance, “Ian-the-botanist” mentioned that he was collaborating in the Assynt project too, and that he could supply a list of existing botanical records along with grid references. Perfect.

I have a few photos of Assynt Elms already, but this was an opportunity to create a body of work, and I do love a project.

I started at Calda burn, as I knew of a very large, very grand tree standing next to a little waterfall, and I went to capture it whilst it still had its summer plumage.

On my map there was one glowing like a beacon: Gleannan a’ Mhadaidh, south east of Suilven. “Wolf Glen”. Wanted to go there for a while, now I had a reason.
Round walk: 20 kilometres; legs aching; feet wet.
Fabulous location; loved it, and a tangled-up multi-stemmed elm tree talking to me from the crag slightly above me.

Then there was the one with a waterfall behind it at Liath Bhad.

And a line of them along a limestone outcrop at Inchnadamph: very photogenic.
And a couple on the side of the rocks in the dry part of the Traligill river valley……

By now I’m hooked.
Not sure that it’ll be a “definitive collection”, but I’m certainly enjoying meeting these isolated outliers.
Might consider repeat visits somewhere, to catch the same tree through the seasons; something that floats my boat.

Now Grace Slick is belting out of the speaker behind me, and my singular typing finger is trying to keep up. Smokin’

Back on two feet; I get around the back of Loch Torr an Lochain, and the view of Quinag is super.

A reflection across a sheet of particularly thin ice in the foreground. “Cat ice” we used to call it, but I can see any cats right now.
Similar experience at Lochan Rapach, but still no cats.

Getting warm now, homing in on my grid reference, but it is only a six-figure reference from 1992, so I have no idea what I might find, if anything.
False alarm: climbing up to get a better view, its a hazel…..
A few more yards: difficult yards; the Molinia tussocks are aggressive here, if grass can be aggressive. I’m hopping from one to another remembering Indiana Jones spelling “Jehovah” incorrectly in The Last Crusade.
There it is.
Elegant.
And I really got lucky: its up on a crag with a blue sky behind it, peppered with little white fluffy clouds. Oh baby; you’re the best!

Around the corner, I change direction; north east now, and the walking improves, thankfully.
Its November 16th, and I’m still brushing ticks off my trousers and sleeves. Three different sizes too. For goodness sake.

I head to a beach that I’ve not visited before, but its boulders and rocks, and not my mission today, so keep walking.
At the corner of Loch a’ Meallard the OS map shows a number “3”, and although I found no sign of this “3” (!!!), the view of Quinag across more cat-ice had to be my favourite of the day.

Lunch was trying to get out of my rucksack, but the weather was due to change, so I stuffed some confectionary and carried on: my second location not far away.

An oak!
Maybe scarcer than elm up here? Yes, I’ll get your photo too, thank you!

1992 record says “huge wych elm on boulder scree, other elms nearby”.
And it was indeed huge. A bit of a challenge to photograph, within woodland and amongst boulders about five feet across. A very large branch had partly fallen years ago, so there was a tangle of boughs the diameter of my arm or my leg reaching down to the floor.

Finishing off here and the light faded as clouds arrived, so I was wise not to stop for lunch earlier.

The third side of my triangle of my circular walk was back to the van, and there was a gert big erratic on the hill that I headed to for lunch. It was soooo big, that it was much larger than Quinag, the mountain behind it; just look at that: 

Mission accomplished, I reckon; so long as I didn’t mess up the camera settings.

Trudging up the hill, I came over a slight rise, and suddenly there’s this thing in the sky.
Was it a bird? Was it a plane?
Splash. Wallop.
As I watched the sea eagle cruise over my head at telegraph-pole height, I put my foot in a hole full of water and fell over.
You couldn’t make it up. It was a great view, as I sat in the bog trying to work out which way was up.
Anyhow, no old men were hurt during the course of this adventure……

My Wych Elm photos are now being collected in the gallery here:

https://www.jacksonphotography.co.uk/elm-in-assynt