Glen Lednock

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Glen Lednock, viewed from the dam road
Alistair Peebles, 2011

Tributary Glen

word-mntn (BEN CHONZIE)
poem, Alec Finlay, photograph Alistair Peebles, 2011

On the road north Ken and I made a brief foray up Glen Lednock, naming it one of our ‘Shirakawa Barriers’ – gateway glens, where passage was traditionally made into the wilder lands and older cultures of the hilly interior.

Near the end of the glen road we happened on
Invergeldie
pronounced from within 

             Innergeldie

That afternoon

it was close
under the ash
at Invergeldie
cool
on the slopes
of Ben Chonzie

This evening Autumn cool’s slipped down the glen to the level of the river.

Alec Finlay, 2011

More Water

On this years skying expedition we left the Basho at home. Our field trips from Dunira are on the lookout for windmills and dams, mapping old and new Perthshire renewables.

Dalchonzie Hydro Electric Power Station
Alistair Peebles, 2011

When we arrive we head straight for Dalchonzie, the valley hydro-station, with its planned water garden. Then, later on, when the light is fading, we take the back road from Comrie, past the Deil’s Cauldron and on into the glen, for a sunset view of the Lednock dam.

It’s only a few miles from the ‘Giverny’ of Dalchonzie’s Mirror Pond, past Twenty Shilling Wood, where the dam builders were housed in huts in the late 1950s, up river, to the wild crags and hill tops that cluster around Chonzie. 

Hereabouts is the source, or the thousand sources of burns and rills, rainfall on the hills gathered in the reservoir, where the power of all the piped water comes from, flowing south through Wester Top, down to St Fillans and, from there through Loch Earn and on to Dalchonzie.

word-mntn (WESTER TOP)
poem, Alec Finlay, photograph Alistair Peebles, 2011

Alistair’s Vista

Alistair pulled in on the brow by Kingarth, so we could take in the whole view, which he poemed after IHF’s poem signing a landscape, after Claude & Poussin

words to accompany a photograph
of the glen, the dam, agus An Dun

Alistair Peebles, 2011

When we ‘done' the Lednock Ken and I missed the perfect mound of An Dun, to the left of the dam wall; a summit of power and outlook, over water and glen, as at Dundurn and St Fillans.

word-mntn (AN DUN)
poem, Alec Finlay, photograph Alistair Peebles, 2011

Underground Underwater

At Invergeldie we met Nigel, a local, taking an evening stroll back from the dam. He confirmed what the map shows: the slopes of Glen Lednock are dotted with intake pipes which feed the network of tunnels, honeycombing the hills and forming that constructed tributaries of Breadalbane’s hydro system.

Alistair Peebles, 2011

IN-TAKE, OUT-BREATH 

        glen lednock

Halfway

On our second Lednock field-trip, Alistair & Amy walk on to the dam, leaving me – by choice and need – somewhere between dam wall and river. Half-way-there seems, as ever, to be my philosophical resting point.


The 2A's (Alistair Peebles & Amy Todman)
Alec Finlay, 2011

A wee spell sat on a roadside culvert allows me the time to begin an imagining of what’s beyond the cut of the wall – from names on the map, the view of the dam and the oncoming front of rain that we’ve been keeping just ahead of all afternoon.

Alec Finlay, 2011

while I wait
for rain

by the foot
of the dam

Creag Lochdair
hints what water

flowed here
before the reservoir

Alec Finlay, 2011

The Waterfall           

An old Parish account of the glen describes how the watercourse has been altered by human intervention, diminishing the canopy of white branches from Amy’s fond waterfall.


Sput Rolla
 
between Creag nan Eun
and the dam
Sput Rolla

still breaks 
the flow
of the river

but the wall
stole the force
from its white water

2A’s Report on the Dam

dam wall
walkway

one side
is clear

one side
is moss covered

Amy Todman





Alistair Peebles, 2011

a dam is
a wall
which hangs

a mirror
for mountains
and clouds
           
Alec Finlay, 2011

Aslant

Alistair Peebles, 2011

Waiting for The 2A’s to come down off the dam wall I took a wee turn on the slopes of An Dun where I found the remains of the old dwelling – not on the peak which it named, but down in the lower field, facing Meall na Seide.

Walking away from the dam, some things in the glen are seen differently, like always when you turn the path anti-clockwise. A south-easterly view through the maw of the glen, over the confluences of the Earn, Ruchill and Lednock, at Comrie, to the wooded mound of Torlum gold in evening sun.
pinewood

it takes time
to grow and know

the slant of
one’s own view


word-mntn (MEALL NA SEIDE)
Alec Finlay, 2011

flecked light
flawed water
flowing out
the glen

coda

My good friend Colin Will sent me his memories of the remains of the hydro boys accommodation: 'The huts were in Twenty Shilling Wood, and the foundations formed the hard standing for the caravans later on. It was a beautiful site, screened by the trees, and full of wildlife.'

Proposal for a dam wall 

Alec Finlay, 2011; photograph by Alistair Peebles, 2011 
 
intimations 

Glen Lednock 

the road north 

Amy Todman

Alistair Peebles:   Brae projects    |    blog 

Photograph of Sput Rolla: (C) Keith Ratcliffe
.

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