Mark Hows rang me Sunday to suggest a trip for the Long-finned Pilot Whales in the Firth of Forth, since not all of them had gone on the beach. I judged it a reasonable bet and agreed to meet at his place. Rubbish traffic on the M25 delayed me but eventually I was making my way through the village before his when a round lump loomed in the road. I slid a wheel each side without feeling any tragic bumps and braked to a stop. By the time I had scrambled out and legged it down to the spot the lump had vanished, so Hedgehog had joined the year list: 49 mammals in 2012. A good start.
Since Mark's car habitually breaks down in Scotland we took mine. It wasn't a bad night for a drive and the traffic on the A1 was minimal, so we arrived at Pittenweem as th sun came up to find Scotland's least helpful policeman preventing us from parking in the field where clearly yesterday's public and the remaining media were welcome. We made our way into the nearest fishing village, a planner's nightmare of narrow cul-de-sacs and double yellow lines, to join the coastal path, walk along to the cliff overlooking the Pilot Whale mortuary and strike up a conversation with a very helpful policewoman who told us everything that had been going on, including the direction in which the refloated animals had left.
We searched the outer firth thoroughly over the next few hours as we had no evidence that the refloated whales had rejoined the animals that had never got into trouble.At the end of the morning we had learned that all fishing villages are built on the same pattern, so its not as random as it looks; that the locals were divided into a pleasant lilt and an unintelligible gabble (one bloke told me an entire sentence in which the only word I understood was "dae" and that meant "do", which gives you some idea!); and being in a place where the bank is entirely boarded up except for the cash machine gives you an itch between the shoulder-blades.
On the grounds that we couldn't search the whole North Sea but could check the Firth of Forth we moved gradually towards the bridges, finding stopping places with views of the water.
These included a car park where the burger van served us the worst cup of tea in the world ever, a lorry park where refrigerated vehicles were instructed to park with the refrigeration units facing away from the flats (why? would the inhabitants let fly with the old AK47 through the cooling slats? As the tenement architecture was school of communist East Germany it seemed a possibility), and an up-market housing development with a remarkable roundabout with one entrance and one exit. Any attempt to add more exits would have resulted in cars falling into the firth.
We also began to get a little tired of being told by grockles just how close the whales had been feeding yesterday.
Mark was monitoring updates from BBC News that would have given us hope - except that we had been to the site, heard the local version and could recognise all the "news" as total bullshit. The coastguard was not "monitoring the whales for 24 hours" it was standing around the deaders making sure the absent live ones did not return and fall onto that particular bit of coast out of the 30 miles each side they had to choose from. We had watched the firth for hours and there were no boats out.
A veterinary college had removed the head from one of the whales for autopsy. The BBC on site didn't know how they had selected the individual or why the vets thought the head would give them the answer. Incidentally, for those who believe whales beach because gently sloping sand confuses them, this lot had launched themselves onto a jaggedly ridged rocky shore with a boulder beach at the top of it.
The council had meanwhile come up with a great idea.The sixteen dead whales, which if left alone would decompose and be eaten by gulls and other scavengers, were at great cost to be put into crates, winched up the cliff and taken away - to landfill, where they would decompose and be eaten by gulls and other scavengers.....
BTW the beach had several tonnes of decomposing seaweed, gull corpses, old tyres and rusty bits of cars and boats, miles of nylon rope and net etc on it. There was no proposal for moving any of that to landfill.
Anyway, on we went. By 1400 we still hadn't seen any live whales and it seemed a long shot that we might. There had been no reports on the day. As we crossed the Forth Road Bridge southwards, I suggested to Mark that we really ought to pop down to South Queensferry and have a look at the firth from that side, with the sun behind us. He talked me out of it and we drove to Eyemouth for Northern Brown Argus. As we parked the sun went in, as we left after half an hour it came out again.
We knew we were beat. Down to Alnwick where we were served fine fish and chips (haggis and chips for Mark) and onward through the late afternoon and evening. I was home at 2230 which was great. I had no difficulty sleeping.
I got up in the morning to find a text from Mark: I see we missed the whales then!
They had been showing well below Deep Sea World, which is perched by the bridges, at North Queensferry. Aaargh!
John
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