News in and around Shenval organic B&B in Scotland

Welcome to Shenval News: our home news and some local events around Loch Ness and Glen Affric will be regularly highlighted here. Just keep looking in…
Shenval organic Bed and Breakfast may be away from the main thoroughfares of the Highlands of Scotland, but in no way is it a backwater as our other Activities, Highland Games, Entertainment and Outdoor events pages clearly illustrate. Traditional Scottish and Celtic music, festivals, exhibitions, also get a wee mention in this page. Enjoy…

SHENVAL DIARY

2010

MARCH

Friday 19th, A wildlife evening with Roy Dennis at Cannich Village Hall, only 5 minutes drive from your accommodation base at Shenval organic B&B. From 7.30pm till 9.30pm. Organised by Strathglass and Affric Community Company. Roy Dennis is one of Scotland's leading naturalists and conservationists and he will give an illustrated talk on some of his most recent studies and work with wildlife in the Highlands, including sattelite tracking ospreys to Africa and golden eagles in the Cairngorms, tracking woodcock and curlew to Russia and Finland, restoring red squirrel to Wester Ross and other reintroduction projects.

APRIL

Only minutes away from Shenval B&B, the Corrimony black grouse safaris will be held on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 2nd to 25th April. Join RSPB staff for an early morning trip by minibus through Corrimony nature reserve to see one of Scotland's most rare and beautiful birds. Visit a lek, where male black grouse posture and call, competing to win the sought after position of top bird as the sun rises. More details from our OUTDOOR EVENTS page.

MAY
31st TGO Challenge : from Friday 14th till Friday 28th, this well established entirely non-competitive event aims to foster good fellowship among walkers within the framework of a challenging expedition. It takes 300 long distance walkers on a self-supported trek on a variety of routes over an average 180 miles across the Highlands from the West Coast between Ardrishaig and Torridon to the North Sea shores between Arbroath and Fraserburgh. Some participants on one the favourites routes through Glen Affric will be stopping over at Shenval B&B once more. We extend a very warm welcome to them!

Close to your accommodation at Shenval organic B&B the 7th Glen Affric Walking Festival "Outta Affric" will take place on 28th-31st May. More info from THIS PAGE

Five miles down the road from Shenval B&B, The Bog Cotton Café, in Cannich, holds a selection of our craft work. Along with 15 other local craft workers, Christiane exhibits her handloom weaving and Pierre his photographs, some of which are featured in our Entertainment page and in our Photo Gallery.

Garbh Bheinn & Loch Linnhe, Inverness-shire © P. Lebrun

2009

OCTOBER

Above Loch Ness, a very little known minor road has many good surprises in store. Not only do you need to open and close gates to proceed further but you may come face to face with some strange wildlife encounters. One such occurred on 5th October when our guests were amazed to watch a red grouse showing absolutely no fear at their presence, only yards away from the roadside. Not only that but all the while, the bird never stopped calling and babbling away, resulting in some very close range portraits shot by visitors who were still under the spell hours and days later...

Global warming may have a positive impact up here in Northern Scotland. For the last 5 years we have hardly had any frost in Spring when plum trees and apple trees come into blossom. As a result, when October comes round, we now get plentiful crops of fruit swiftly turned into jams and preserves for our lucky guest to enjoy at our breakfast and dinner table. We have even turned our hands at making organic apple chutneys in an attempt to make a dent in the over abundant quantity of apples picked from one single tree! Indian cuisine will continue to appear on the menu for sure, come 2010...

SEPTEMBER
A welcome addition to the number of birds seen breeding in our garden: we have robins, blackbirds, spotted flycatchers, house martins, house sparrows, swifts, green finches and it was a real pleasure to witness the first clutch of 5 swallows leaving their nest in our garden at the end of September, just as the first skenes of greylag geese were arriving from Iceland to overwinter in the Highlands. A pair of swallows had built a nest two years ago but the clutch of two eggs had failed then.

SUMMER FORAYS IN GLEN AFFRIC

You may be an experienced couple of Alpine climbers like our visitors from Dauphiné in early August. They discovered that just plain hillwalking in the Scottish Hills and in those of Glen Affric in particular can take a whole new meaning in the rain. My, did it rain when we all went to Mam Sodhail on 4th August! Some ordinarily insignificant burns were in full spate and nearly impassable and the hillsides were streaming white with water. We got thoroughly soaked despite wearing the so-called breathable, waterproof -"guaranteed"- gear.

After a longish shivering lunch on the summit with a nil visibility we eventually decided that the weather forecast had been wrong and it was time to come down back to a dry home. Well, the forecast eventually proved to be right on the way down, a mere 3 hours later than anticipated, and suddenly skies cleared revealing panoramic views and leaving us basking in sunshine all the way back to the car.

Undaunted, we had another foray in Glen Affric on 3rd September. Granted: the forecast was bad. But you never know: it can be wrong sometimes. Along with our regular guests and good friends from Germany, Sabrina and Daniela, we thought wise to keep to lower glens. Just as well: we got soaked. Again. And the skies never cleared. At least we had planned to cross bridged rivers this time...

Third time lucky, a week later: the forecast was promising. Went up to Tom a'Choinich (1111m), just north of Glen Affric, under blue skies and the warm temperatures made the outing a short-sleeved business with the added pleasure of mouthfulls of deliciously ripe blaeberries on the way down. A tinge of red on our faces confirmed it had been a sunny day indeed.

Throughout the summer, 3 times a day every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from early July until mid September, a minibus service runs from Cannich to Glen Affric with return connections from Shenval B&B. An excellent opportunity to leave your car behind and to enjoy the views along the way, before starting on walks proper.

MAY

Week ending 15th has been memorable : for the last six days we have been treated to music most nights by one of our visitors, Yves Danion, a Breton piper from Lyons (France) wearing full Highland dress. He has delighted us and our other visitors with traditional Scottish tunes played with gusto on his Highland bagpipes. Even our next door neighbours commented on how impressed they were by the quality of music drifting from Shenval B&B...

Tuesday 5th. Regular readers of this diary may wonder why we had so few entries in April. The answer is astonishly simple: the weather has been so good that we have spent a lot of time catching up with garden work! The usual weeding of course. But also preparing the garden plot for a time when the ground will be warm enough to sow and plant. Strawberry plants have gone in a new patch over the last 10 days. Some of our lucky August Shenval B&B visitors might get a bite of this later cropping variety. Digging, not for victory, but basically to plant potatoes and a few other vegetable goodies is under way. All this has come to a full stop today as the clouds have gathered thickly over Shenval and from mid-day rain has been with us and should not stop until dark. What's the use of fine weather at night, indeed?

Monday 4th. Day of high drama. Short glance at the blackbird's nest at mid-day. A second look required: nothing showing above the edge of the nest, unlike the previous few days. A closer look reveals an empty nest. A short investigation of the surroundings reveals fresh blood stains on the neighbouring branches and tree trunk. Ominous. Looking around, we soon discover two dead chicks in the undergrowth, stiff and already cold, within 3 yards of the nest. No sign of the other two chicks while the cock is calling in distress high above. No sign of the hen either. Has a prowling cat done the deed overnight? Or could it be a pine marten? That clutch of birds only lasted 10 short days. Not too surprising with a nest sitting not even 2 feet above ground level.
Afternoon reveals an other, more pleasant, surprise. Flutter and panic as soon as we open the door of one of our seldom visited sheds. Standing back from the entrance and after a short wait, we see an adult robin shooting like a bullet out of the darkness. And precisely where we were planning to store some odds and ends sits a sizeable ball of fresh mosses and lichens. This turns out to be the nest of a family of robins with at least one few days old chick. These should fledge: the tiny hole in the shed door will not let in any cat or pine marten. Our odds and ends will have to wait for these fluffy squatters to have left our shed before we can use the place as our rightful storage den...

Friday 1st, nest now full to the brim with chicks whose faint chirps can be heard each time a parent turns up. Eyes now open, so each coming meal is not just anticipated but fully seen. Are these chirps not going to become a give away to marauding predators?

APRIL

We are not little pleased to have contributed to adding the 53rd vegetable to Sadako and Nobukatsu's organic garden in Japan following their visit to Shenval B&B in April. They discovered parsnip at our dinner table and were so enthusiastic about the new taste they bought a packet of seeds in Inverness before flying home. The latest news from Japan is that the new parsnip crop looks promising!

Wildlife is not always welcome in our garden: after an relentless progress up Glenurquhart over the last 20 years, rabbits have now sadly found their way into our garden. The struggle has started to salvage vegetable crops and flowers.

Monday 27th, Spring getting more mature with the first cuckoo heard calling near Shenval B&B today.

Thursday 30th, barely a week old, blackbird chicks are now d fully feathered and avidly welcome each arrival of parents with fully loaded beaks.

Tuesday 27th, feathers growing well on blackbird chicks wings.

Sunday 26th, truly amazing : chicks have already doubled in size. Plump worms unwittingly doing their growth promoting work...

Friday 24th, last two blackbird chicks hatched today. Cock blackbird has sudenly reappeared and is not failing in its fatherly duties, feeding hen and chicks with fat juicy worms from our garden.

Thursday 23rd, first two blackbird chicks hatched today at far end of our garden. Will have to keep watch over prowling cats now!

Wednesday 15th, noticed blackbird hen sitting on nest. So that's what these two were up to earlier last week!