West Coast Islands Blogs
Blogs (web logs) provide an ideal opportunity to explore the traditions, culture and wildlife of Wild Lochaber. We have put together a collection of local blogs and provide the titles and text snippets to give a taste of each entry with direct links to the main blog entry on the host website. We hope you will find time to explore the full articles and further information on the host blog sites.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions for blogs you would like to see here.
Treshnish Farm
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What I am noticing more and more is how right it is that we read the landscape through the eyes of the people who lived here before us. When I started the Fangan project, I was looking at it from my viewpoint today. But while they mean something to me - now - they represent something far...
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Suddenly we are at the end of February. Ben More with a dusting of late February snow. The Lagganulva cows were on the move on Sunday. They like to lick the road salt (the road had just been gritted). It's not just the Herdwicks who get a bit of feeding in the mornings,...
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Ensay. Across the Ensay burn from us. We rent the fields between the road and the Ensay Burn on a 364 day grazing agreement. This gives us the use of the beautiful fank there.
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Chûn QuiotNewlynCarn EunyNear the Gurnard's Head pubPenzancePorthleven, after a stormFlushing Farmer's Market, on a Saturday morningNewlynSt Michael's MountSheds above Betsy's CoveCudden Point
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Every morning. Rain or shine. The Herdwicks need their breakfast. They stand and wait for the sound of the quad bike at the gate.
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The weather after New Year enabled me to get the drone in the air. Firstly over Calgary Beach, looking at the sands again and how they have shifted in the storms. Then over Haunn, the bird's eye view reaches to Calgary and over to Ardnamurchan.
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This is a lovely walk just over the hill from Treshnish. Look for Dun Aisgain on the OS Map, near Burg.
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The young stock over on the rented fields at Ensay have to come back to Treshnish for a few days at the end of the grazing agreement each year, so Farmer has to entice them up to the Ensay farm yard where he has erected a corral of flakes and gates to lead them in to, so he can load them into the...
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These extraordinary clouds are Nacreous clouds. They are formed in the lower stratosphere over polar regions - so very unusual here, so far south. A bit like Noctiulcent clouds the clouds are illuminated by the sun which is just below the horizon. The colour is formed by the sun...
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This panorama was taken on December 1st, with an almost full moon. The activity was strong enough to beat the brightness of the moon. All the above taken the same night. The moon light alters the cloud colours, I wasn't sure how to edit out the purple! There has been quite a...
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Painting the tups means...
Marc Calhoun
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The Islands Book Trust will be hosting two events for the launch my new book Thirty Years of Adventures in Search of the Past: The Outer Hebrides. The first will be at the Harris Hotel on May 14th (5 pm). The second event will be at the Uig Community Centre on May 21 (5:30 pm). Please stop by if...
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Design work has been completed for my upcoming book Thirty Years of Adventures in Search of the Past: The Outer Hebrides. The book tells the stories of adventures on forty islands of the Outer Hebrides and includes over 150 colour photos. The Islands book Trust is aiming for publication in May, and...
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This coming September I will have the privilege of guiding another cruise on Hjalmar Bjorge. Built in 1963, Hjalmar Bjørge served for thirty-three years as a rescue ship for the Norwegian fishing fleet. Seventy-five feet long, and twenty wide, this ninety-ton powerhouse, with her name proudly...
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The route into the Arran hills started at Glenrosa Campsite. It was a deceptively easy start, the boot-beaten path gradually ascending along the winding Glenrosa Water. I’d visited Holy Island the day before, and was setting out to hike the Glen Rosa circuit, hoping to find a view of Holy Island...
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You may have noticed I have been neglecting the blog for a few months. The reason is that I've been preoccupied with completing my next book: Thirty Years of Adventures in Search of the Past: The Outer Hebrides. Book design is underway, with publication by the Islands Book Trust tentatively set for...
wondering wanderers
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AdyBad:* We have still not returned to Rum. This nags at me as there are things I would probably like to collect and I know things will be decaying and need to be dealt with. I can list the reasons why ; busyness, expense etc. but ultimately we just need to organise ourselves to do it.* The car....
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles
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John sent me pictures of something growing in his garden on Skye that I am pretty sure is Guizotia scabra (Sunflecks), a close relative of Niger. The latter (G. abyssinica) is well-known as a birdseed alien but Stace (2019) notes that G. scabra “has been found recently along with G....