The Ardnamurchan peninsular juts out into the Sea of the Hebrides, south of Skye on Scotland’s west coast. Perhaps most familiar to the general populace as Ardnamurchan Point (a point of reference in the “inshore waters” component of Radio 4′s shipping forecast), the tip of the peninsular, near Corrachadh Mòr, forms the westernmost part of [...]
In an attempt to impose some sort of structure on the post schedule for “A Wild Vista”, I’m going to be posting a photograph, every Friday. Always my own work, and with some descriptive text, expect each Friday’s image to be closely related to one of this blog’s main themes — exploring the wilder parts of the world.
Modern digital cameras would appear to do it all: red-eye reduction, face recognition, vibration reduction, powerful multi-segment automatic exposure — the list goes on. When all’s said and done though, photography comes down to two fundamental decisions: where to point the camera, and when to release the shutter. I’m not aware of any consumer camera that can assess composition in real-time, and provide feedback to the photographer. That’s where the art of photography comes in, and it’s hard to see this could be effectively managed by a machine.
Those Google folk really are getting about a bit these days. Not content with going off-piste in selected areas and giving places like Corfe Castle the Street View treatment, it seems that recent excursions from Inverness have taken the Google cameras all the way out along the single-track road to the north of Loch Quoich.
I’ve not had much time to write lately. Apart from anything else, I’ve been focussing on improving my CSS and PHP skills, so that I can start hammering this blog into shape. With a WAMP stack now running on my netbook, and a repeatable process for copying my live blog contents across from the host, I can play around to my heart’s content with PHP scripts and CSS files, without worrying about wrecking the live site.
This is big news today. I’ve only recently been following various blogs and news sources re. this proposal, and in the posts I’ve been reading, I kept asking myself the same thing. Where can I find detailed maps of the proposed route? The answer lies here, along with a huge amount of information direct from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Chances of me ever finding the time to run through much of this? Slim. Nonetheless, it’s good to be able to refer back to some specifics when trying to corroborate or counter various views on such a divisive project.
With large parts of the UK seeing lying snow at some point over the last two weeks, it’s been a refreshingly wintry finale to 2009, and it looks set to continue into 2010. The snow in Cambridge has been gone over a week now, but sharp frosts and clear skies are back again.
The shadow cast by the Earth is vast — a cone over 1 million kilometres in length, which, on occasion, intercepts the moon’s orbit, and reveals itself in the form of a lunar eclipse. It is, however, possible to see part of this shadow cone much more frequently than the rare occasions when Sun, Earth, and Moon happen to line up in just the right way. You just need to know what to look for.
A month ago, I enjoyed my third day out on the hills to the east of Bridge of Orchy. This group of five Munros, and Beinn Dorain in particular, must be among the most eyeballed in the Highlands, with the busy A82 and West Highland railway line both skirting the western edge of the range, giving the passing traveller impressive closeups of stream-riven slopes climbing to 1000 metre-high summits, and furtive glimpses through lonely glens into the interior.
Munro bagging can be hard on the knees. A combination of sodden ground, steep tussocky slopes, and strong winds took its toll on Saturday. The round of Beinn Achaladair and Beinn a’ Chreachain was a great, if tiring, day out. Twelve miles, and 1300 metres of ascent & descent in rather mixed weather (for which read rain, wind, and cloud), had left me with a twinge in my left knee — one I’ve come to recognise as the beginnings of ITBFS. If ignored (something I’ve done too often in the past), this rapidly becomes debilitating, and puts the hills out of bounds for a good six weeks. Not what I want with a trip to the Alps lined up in the week ahead!
In a little under three weeks’ time, I’ll be catching a train from Cambridge, and starting the long journey north to Tyndrum. I’m giving the sleeper a miss this time. Not only is it pretty much fully booked (six weeks ago there were only 1st-class berths available), but I’m also not yet fully recovered from the soul-destroying process of trying to obtain relevant online fare and timetable information about the service. I think I’ll save that particular story for another time…
Now, this was what I’d call a pretty typical spring day in the Highlands. Scudding clouds were unleashing regular bouts of cold, spiteful rain. The wind was getting up. Looking up the length of the loch, towards the mountains I’d set out to climb, I could see the ragged cloud base was fixed at about 600 metres. No place to be without the right gear, alone.
On more than one occasion, I’ve embarrassed myself my mislaying, forgetting, or otherwise losing track of some important item or other, resulting in unwanted stress, and potentially costly reparations. Driving off having left my walking boots behind in the car park at “The Green Welly Shop” (and yes, it’s been rebranded as “The Green Welly Stop” now) at Tyndrum is a particularly fine example.
2009 has been a good year for Scotland so far. By which I mean I’ve taken more opportunities than of late to make the long trek up to the Highlands from Cambridge, and get out into them there hills.
First off was a very mixed week based at Corran — a minuscule settlement of perhaps five buildings, clustered around the slipway of the Corran ferry. Visiting Scotland for an extended holiday is a meteorological lottery at the best of times, but if your chosen week falls within what’s technically the northern hemisphere winter (20th/21st December to 20th/21st March), the odds of a “win” are somewhat stacked against you.