Farmer and I headed off on Sunday to the very north of Scotland to look for a special flower. Luckily I knew where we needed to look!
Back in 2013 when we were invited to join the Coronation Meadows Project and I went to the launch at Highgrove, there was a small group of people from Scotland and we all huddled together waiting for Prince Charles to arrive.
There was only one other farmer as the other Scottish meadows represented there were managed by Wildlife Trusts or Councils. He came from Caithness and his meadow had the rare Scottish primrose, Primula Scotica. I hadn't ever seen one. Every year since then I have hoped that somehow we would be able to go and look for them. Unusually they flower twice, once during lambing time and then again in late June, early July.
I remembered Mr P the farmer from Caithness and looked up his phone number online. I spoke to him a few weeks ago, and he said he would keep an eye on the links and let me know when they were flowering. I had to take a chance and book some accommodation anyway which I did last week, thus avoiding S's idea of sleeping in the van. Thankfully it paid off and on Wednesday last week Mr P sent me photographs of it flowering.
We pottered back along the coast, stopping for me to photograph some tin buildings I had photographed before, sat on a rocky beach where Farmers's eagle eye found a single Cowrie, and we watched fluffy Oystercatcher chicks.
Later we picked up gf pizza takeaway from the Melvich hotel for supper, took it home to the lighthouse and afterwards went for a walk in the clouds. We found lots of very very small Scottish primrose on the steep banks near the lighthouse, which are heavily grazed by sheep. They were much smaller than the one I have blipped, some barely a cm in height.
All in all a truly lovely day, in spite of the weather.