Views from the MacLennan Road

On the first day of the festival, I awoke to a lovely morning, though with some white clouds above and haze across the water. After a back country excursion, I drove up the Glenora Falls Road to the Cape Mabou Trail Club trail head on the Cape Mabou Road, known as the Cape Mabou Trail Head. I had thought about hiking to Beinn Bhiorach (Steep Mountain), but, when I got there, the skies were clouded over with some really grey clouds that made the hike not worth the candle. After retracing my path, I drove on to Riverville and explored the MacLennan Road, the first time I had been down that road, which has long been on my to-do list. It’s not a long road, under 1.2 km (0.7 mi), but a pretty one that traverses the forest through a level glen into a fold of Cape Mabou with a nice view of a couple of “knobs” at its end. The views on this page were taken late that morning.

Photo #1 is of a field near the end of the MacLennan Road, surrounded by trees in various states of change, but with green predominating. On the larger of the two “knobs”, some bare branches can be seen under magnification, but the vast majority of the trees have their leaves. Sadly, the poor lighting of the late morning doesn’t bring out the colours of these trees, but it should have been a beautiful spot when the leaves were at their peak (I didn’t get to drive this road a second time this fall).

Photo #2, a close-up of the larger of the two “knobs”, brings the state of the trees and the colours into sharper view. Although I paid no attention at the time, the number of bare branches this early should have been a warning to me that this was not going to be a top-notch season for fall colours in this area.

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Photo #3 is a close-up of the smaller of the two “knobs”; it too shows a number of bare trees, particularly in the upper left. Yet plenty of greens remain on the hillsides, with only partially changed colours at the tops of most of the trees. The colours lower down seem more vibrant than those at the top. The building seen in the centre of the photo is one of those belonging to the residence that is found at the end of the road, where I turned around. This is indeed a lovely glen, nestled at the base of Cape Mabou!

Photo #4 looks at a tree at the side of the MacLennan Road caught in the process of changing colours. The tree at the right foreground is hardly changed at all, while others are showing transitional stages between green and orange; the red on the tree at the centre would have been considerably brighter in the sun, but is already way out of step with its adjacent neighbours.