2019 Wild & Ancient Britain with Ireland Field
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Wild & Ancient Britain with Ireland May 3 - 18, 2019 SHETLAND ISLANDS Lerwick Isle of Noss Mousa Fair Isle ORKNEY ISLANDS Kirkwall St. Kilda Aberdeen HEBRIDES SCOTLAND Staffa NORTH ATLANTIC SEA OCEAN Iona Isle of Islay Edinburgh NORTHERN Portrush IRELAND Isle of IRELAND Man ENGLAND Skellig Islands Saltee WALES London Islands Dunmore East Falmouth/Penzance Portsmouth Isles of Scilly Sunday, May 5, 2019 London, England / Portsmouth / Embark Ocean Adventurer After meeting our fellow travelers last night at the Hilton London Paddington Hotel, we set out on this bright and sunny morning by coach for Portsmouth on the south coast of England. En route we were excited to be able to take in two of southern England’s most famous historic sites, Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. At Stonehenge, we marveled at the huge stone slabs with their weighty lintels and at the complex of stone circles and earthworks all set within a wider landscape of ancient mounds and monuments. Salisbury Cathedral with its tall, slender spire—much admired by Russian assassins—stands across water-meadows, a scene captured by the artist John Constable two centuries ago. Around the Cathedral, the Close has old, attractive, mellow stone houses, one the former home of the British Prime Minister Edward Heath, while the Cathedral itself houses that most famous of historic documents at the foundation of democracy, Magna Carta. Between these visits, lunch was taken in Salisbury at the White Harte, and in the afternoon, we continued on our way to Portsmouth where our ship awaited us. Once aboard and settled into our cabins, we sailed out into the Solent, enjoying views of this busy harbor with its local and cross-channel ferries, sailing yachts, and even warships as Portsmouth has been the main base of the Royal Navy for many centuries. The naval ships ranged from current destroyer class vessels to HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Monday, May 6 Falmouth, Cornwall Overnight we sailed along the coast of southwest England, and this morning our ship was alongside at Falmouth. From here we set out to drive south along the narrow lanes of the Cornish countryside to Trebah Garden on the Helford Estuary. Established in 1838, the garden is situated in a narrow, sheltered valley and is home to a wide range of exotic plants which can be grown at these northerly latitudes due to the influence of the Gulf Stream which brings warm water from the Caribbean. With our knowledgeable guides, we followed beautiful wooded trails through the garden to the small shingle beach. Here our historian Stephen Fisher described to us how this quiet beach had played a role in the D-Day landings as 7,500 men from the 29th US Infantry Division embarked here for Normandy in 1944. Following lunch on board, we headed north to St Austell and the Eden Project. This project, from the late 1990s, transformed an old industrial site, a china clay quarry, into a world- leading environmental educational center. Two huge greenhouses create covered ‘biomes,’ housing plants from tropical rainforests and Mediterranean climates around the world. Tuesday, May 7 Tresco, Isles of Scilly Early this morning we found ourselves amongst a group of about 50 low islands off the southwest tip of England—the Isles of Scilly. Warmed by the Gulf Stream, the Isles of Scilly have the mildest climate in Britain. The beautiful Abbey Gardens on the tiny island of Tresco are a great example of the influence of the Gulf Stream here, with its wonderful array of plants from around the world. After a tour of the gardens we had the opportunity to wander on our own to explore this attractive and peaceful island further before returning to the ship. Back on board, we lifted the anchor and set sail for Ireland. With an afternoon at sea, our lecture program was kicked off by our ornithologist Jim Wilson and his presentation on the backyard birds of the Irish and British Isles, describing some of the many birds we were likely to see on this trip. Jim was followed later in the afternoon by our historian Stephen on Being British: A Unified Nation? which threw out the thorny question of what to call this northwest European archipelago through which we were sailing. Come early evening, it was time to get ready for the captain’s welcome cocktail party and dinner, hosted by the Master of the Ocean Adventurer, Captain Yury Gorodnik. Wednesday, May 8 Ballinskelligs, Ireland Our first view of Ireland this morning was, appropriately, in a light shower of rain. But that soon eased and the morning dried up as we explored the shoreline at Ballinskelligs, in the southwest corner of the Emerald Isle. Local guides took us to the remains of Ballinskelligs Priory, established by monks when they abandoned their community atop Skellig Michael in the 12th century. Little of the original building remains and what is now still standing probably dates from the 15th century. Our walk continued to the square keep of Ballinskelligs Castle, a tower house dating, perhaps, from the 16th century, and finished rather nicely at a little café where one of our guides regaled us with stories from this very Gaelic part of Ireland. Once on board, we sailed for a closer look at the spectacular craggy islets of the Skelligs, from whence the monks of Ballinskelligs Priory had come. Little Skellig is home to a large colony of gannets while Skellig Michael is famed for the survival of the round beehive buildings of an 8th-century monastery high on the summit of the island, and it is now a World Heritage Site. Our captain circumnavigated Skellig Michael to give us the best possible view of the surviving buildings and the precipitous staircases built by the monks to reach the site. Later in the afternoon as we sailed east along the south Irish coast, our Stanford lecturer Linda Paulson gave us a talk on World War I and the sinking of the Lusitania in these very waters, and our geologist Tom Sharpe described the geological building blocks of the British Isles. Thursday, May 9 Dunmore East, Waterford / Saltee Islands When we arrived at the small harbor of Dunmore East on the southeast coast of Ireland, we dispersed in several directions on a variety of tours. Some went off to Waterford where we heard about the town’s not inconsiderable significance in Viking times and visited its modern and world-famous crystal factory for a demonstration of glass-blowing and crystal engraving. We explored the company’s history and handled significant pieces from the company’s physical archives such as the US College football AFCA National Championship/Coaches’ Trophy, and observed the many stages required to create striking works from the company’s core ranges. Others headed to Mount Congreve, a large estate to the west of Waterford, and wandered the attractive garden, created in the 18th century, with its many varieties of plants and trees and thousands of rhododendrons. Both groups came together for lunch at the Granville Hotel, a typical Irish hostelry in the center of Waterford. Meanwhile, the Ocean Adventurer repositioned farther along the coast to Kilmore Quay. There, our birders and those of a natural historical bent transferred to a local boat for a visit to Great Saltee, a privately-owned island a few miles offshore. This granite island affords great views of nesting seabirds, especially the northern gannet along with razorbills and guillemots which nest on rock stacks, headlands, and granite cliffs around the coast of Great Saltee. After dinner, Stephen gave us a fascinating talk on his work locating shipwrecks from World War I in the English Channel. Friday, May 10 Isle of Man On a cold, damp morning we were piped ashore from our Zodiacs at Port Erin on the southwest corner of the Isle of Man. There, we boarded our buses to the living history museum of the village of Creagneash, preserved as it was in the late 19th century. The thatched stone cottages seemed cozy with their warm and aromatic peat fires, and a tailless Manx cat curled in the hearth, but life here was hard. In Castletown on the island’s opposite coast, the rain set in heavily as we explored the grim medieval fortress of Castle Rushden, but our spirits were far from dampened as we tucked into ice cream before boarding the quaint little narrow-gauge Isle of Man Steam Railway. The inspiration for the Reverend W. Awdray’s Thomas the Tank Engine stories, the line with its 19th-century locomotives continues to serve communities south of the island’s capital, Douglas. Locomotive No. 15, Caledonia, built in Glasgow in 1885, transported us back to Port Erin where we boarded the ship in time for lunch. What a contrast this afternoon! Gone were the gray skies, cold, and rain and in their place was warm sunshine and blue sky as we landed on the Calf of Man, a rocky island off the southwest tip of the Isle of Man. This is an important site for migrating birds, and the island has a bird observatory whose staff led us around on our walks. While the birders searched for migrants, spotting birds such as choughs, others took hikes around parts of the Calf, taking in the island’s lighthouses, several constructed by Robert Stevenson in the early 19th century. From our vantage point high on the Calf we could see the distant Mountains of Mourne in Northern Ireland on our western horizon. Saturday, May 11 Portrush & Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland / Islay, Scotland A chilly breeze gave us a choppy and splashy Zodiac ride into the small harbor at Portrush on the north coast of Northern Ireland this morning where we disembarked for a visit to the Giant’s Causeway.