The Migdale Wyrm

The Migdale Worm

It heaved itself up from the floor of the sea, its huge claws digging out the Dornoch Firth as it scrabbled up onto the land. Dripping seaweed and dribbling water, the Wyrm saw something small and shiny fleeing across the moor and struck. Clouds shivered, trees shook and the monster bit down, crunching. But it had lived the long centuries of its life in the deeps of the sea, chewing on rubbery squid and sucking up squishy jellyfish. Its teeth had never met the metal of a school bus or heard the screams of 30 startled children and, in wild disgust, the wyrm dropped the bus which wobbled and rattled and escaped over the hill, leaving a broken dragon-tooth lying there, just lying there like a fallen rock, beside the old road

But the wyrm had swallowed two tyres and they made it feel ill. So ill, in fact, that the monster threw up and its vomit spilled out to make Loch Migdale, there, just there, over the hill. Still feeling ill, the great sea-dragon curled up and went to sleep until she felt better. And there she is, still sleeping while trees grow on her back and heather on her head.

And if you do not believe our story, here is the wyrm's tooth, here, right here, beside us on this path….

That’s it really. We had a day of adventures and stories with the Woodland Trust in Migdale and Ledmore, telling stories and making up tales, spinning delights out of Gandalf’s staff (he retired to the woods here after all the trauma of Lord of the Rings), small chips of painted wood (fragments from the ghost train of Spinningdale), the fairy princess and her pet caterpillars, horses and horrors and general delights….

and we told stories to toads and passing beetles