Greenwood's Crossing

Until the 1930s, a tramway running from Rothesay enabled visitors to journey from their arrival point on the east side of the island to Ettrick Bay on the west side with its splendid beach.  Much of this route is now a popular walk.  There's a café at Ettrick Bay and, during the summer months, a bus service enables this two and a half mile walk to be made in one direction only, if desired.  The short, wooded section of the walk at the Port Bannatyne end was described in Walk 2;  the current walk covers the major section of the route, from Greenwood’s Crossing (by St Colmac’s Church GR NS056673) to Ettrick Bay.

The track is host to a good range of wild flowers.  As usual, I’ve listed below many of the ones that are now in flower, though of course as the season progresses, other can be added to the list. (If you’re on the walk around the end of July, there some banks of raspberries in the wild to enjoy!)  

On the way, approaching the old smiddy

A word about two flower types that can sometimes be tricky to identify. Firstly, ‘dandelion type’ yellow flowers;  I’ll mention three.  Nipplewort is the easiest to differentiate, with its relatively small flowers and leafy, much-branched stem. It can grow quite tall (see the specimen behind the wooden rails in the first photo above) and it will be seen throughout the walk.  On the other hand, the leaves of Smooth Hawk’s-beard and Cat’s-ear are at the base of the plant (Hawk’s-beard normally also has a few leaves clasping the stem). Cat’s-ear stems are usually less branched, have several small ‘bracts’ (tiny leaves) on them and their flowers are often larger than those of the other two.

Nipplewort

 Cat's-ear

The second flower types are the umbellifers, ie plants with ‘umbels’, rather like the spokes of an umbrella and usually members of the carrot family; the photo below shows the umbel of Hogweed. Ground elder, sometimes a problem weed for gardeners, is the umbellifer you will most often encounter along the path, but you can also see Hemlock Water-dropwort and Hogweed.

Hogweed

 June is a great time to look at grass species and this walk is a good opportunity to see many of the most common grasses in flower.  See if you can distinguish Cocksfoot, False Oat-grass, Yorkshire Fog, Meadow Foxtail, Soft Brome, Perennial Rye-grass and Common Couch.

Nearing the end of the track, Arran in the distance

The list: