Having discussed Balmerino in a previous post, you might think there wouldn’t be much more that I could chat about, but if you did think that then you’re on the wrong website. I love the drive from the main road into Balmerino. It’s a narrow, winding road edged by old dry-stane dykes which are draped with blankets of blackthorn hedges, still studded with the crisp bronzed leaves of last autumn, as well as dark green gorse with bright yellow spring flowers starting to peek through. On the verges at the side of the road, umbrella-shaped bunches of sunny daffodils are dotted here and there as the road ducks under the remains of an old railway bridge which no longer holds the railway. My favourite view is when the car goes over the brow of the hill and rounds the corner and the whole windscreen is filled with the panoramic view of huge open fields swooping down to meet the wide Tay River and it’s sandbanks. In the interests of Health and Safety, I really must strongly advise you not to stop your car here and take a photo. In fact, to prevent you doing that, I have already done it for you on my previous post. No cars were harmed in the making of this blog, however there is a small layby in which an older walking jacket may have been sacrificed to the thorny spiked hedges for the sake of the photo I took last time. You'd better appreciate it.
After it's exertions on the hill, the road wanders down to the small, pristine village. Balmerino village is very photogenic, it has been welcoming visitors since the 13th century and today seems to want to show off it’s bright green lawns, trimmed trees and carefully tended houses. It was poorly described in a poem I’d recently read called “Beautiful Balmerino” by Britain’s worst poet – William Topaz McGonagall. He was a distinctively unimaginative man, a point best illustrated by the titles of some of his poems: "Beautiful Aberfoyle", "Beautiful Balmoral", "Beautiful Comrie", "Beautiful Crieff", "Beautiful Edinburgh", "Beautiful Monikie", "Beautiful Nairn", "Beautiful North Berwick", "Beautiful Rothesay", "Beautiful Torquay" and my own particular favourite title: "Beautiful Newport on the Braes o’ the Silvery Tay". These poems were published in a series of books entitled: "Poetic Gems", "More Poetic Gems" and "Last Poetic Gems". I think you have the general idea and please trust me when I forewarn you (spoiler alert!) that these books are neither poetic nor gems. I really can’t recommend “Beautiful Balmerino” as a piece of literature, a 4 year-old could have written a better description of what is a genuinely picturesque village, but I can recommend going to Balmerino itself and if you can choose a sunny, spring day so much the better.
A sunny, spring day was exactly what it was as I parked and joined my friend to start our walk on the Path heading Eastwards towards Wormit. This friend had never seen the Abbey ruins so we started by meandering round the abbey grounds. The carpet of snowdrops that was here at my last visit had given way to stalks of proud daffodils, but otherwise the site was the same as it has been for hundreds of years; as it had been when William Topaz
McGonagall came to look at the Abbey in 1898 and slander it with his “poetry”. The site feels like an odd marriage between the beauty of nature and the man-made beauty that men strived to imbue to stone walls. The trees are old but sprouting spring buds as they bow gracefully over the ancient storage cellar with its arched mossy ceiling of intricately fitted small, thin stones, not one out of place even after 800 years. The grass lawn smooths over the ruined floor and gently nudges the base of hexagonal pillars encircled with delicate carved flowers. Ivy creeps up the tall thick protective walls, climbing over shaped windowsills that may have once held beautiful stained glass and peeking around empty arched doorways.
We left the Abbey and headed toward the Path, passing the old mill on our way to the waterfront. The river was wind-whipped and noisy, constantly splashing in small waves onto the stony beach but I stopped noticing the noise as soon as I saw the pair of pigs in a small field. They were both about the size of a Labrador dog and covered in black hair. One of them had tan patches of hair mixed in with the black and they stared at us through the fence, obviously eager to see if we had brought them any food. My friend decided not to share her chocolate with them, for which I was very grateful a little while later when the chocolate brightened my walking experience significantly. Once the pigs realised we were just there to admire them and not feed them, they quickly lost interest in us and went back to grunting their noisy appreciation of the tasty grass just within their reach on our side of the fence. I decided that if they thought grass was so tasty, chocolate would have been wasted on them anyway.
We left them behind and followed the Path through a metal gate, immediately mountaineering up a steep set of wooden steps and at the top I took a few minutes to admire the view (catching my breath was a nice by-product, not at all the real reason for stopping). The view was all reflections and light, bright sunshine breaking free of the pearly clouds and bouncing off the fractured surface of the river – blinding and...well...beautiful (as William Topaz McGonagall would say).
The Path took us through the woods on the edge of the steep bank, my friend baptising her sturdy boots in ankle-deep black mud. I’m a little less brave and skirted the edge of the mud swamps, preferring the harder ground and thinking how much easier it would be to clean my boots when I got home. We spent a little time admiring the wild yellow primroses and the tiny pink buds of flowering redcurrant bushes that look like miniature bunches of grapes.
We hadn’t really started with any destination in mind so about halfway to Wormit, we had a discussion about how far we wanted to walk. My friend is really kind and gave in gracefully to my barely concealed hints about returning to Balmerino. So it was back the way we came, listening to the spring birdsong, and I realised that the steep steps were not such a problem when going downhill while munching chocolate. We stopped and sat on a stone wall beside the waterfront to admire the views, a low white-painted cottage perched almost on the bank of the river to our left, the wide estuary and Tay bridges on our right, seabirds calling and swooping above us.
For all his faults, William Topaz McGonagall was right about one thing, it is “a very bonnie spot”.
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