Dawn - yet again

Tuesday 27th May, 2008



Not another picture of the dawn, I hear you say. Sorry, but for as long as I keep waking up in time and the sun keeps shining I cannot resist it. You are just lucky that the sunsets haven’t been so spectacular (or else I’ve been in bed and missed them!)



Ben More, Canisp and Suilven just before the dawn.

Lews Castle and the Matheson Memorial

Monday 26th May, 2008

While GB met Sue in town and did some shopping I had a wander around the Castle grounds. I find that as I visit places I am repeating the photographs I took last year but some things - like the Castle gargoyles - are irresistible.








Although I have photographed it from a distance on previous occasions, I have never before been right up to the Matheson memorial in the castle grounds.



Sir James Nicolas Sutherland Matheson, 1st Baronet (17 October 1796 – 31 December 1878) born in Shiness, Lairg, Sutherland, Scotland, was the son of a Scottish trader in India. He attended Edinburgh's Royal High School and the University of Edinburgh. He moved to China and joined William Jardine in partnership to form Jardine Matheson. He married Mary Jane Percival on 9 November 1843. Matheson bought the Isle of Lewis in 1844 for a £190,000 and built Lews Castle.



In 1845 he began an improvements programme, including drainage schemes and road construction. He increased the programme during the blight and by 1850 had spent some £329,000 on the island. Between 1851 and 1855 he assisted 1,771 people to emigrate. Matheson became a baronet in 1851. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Ashburton from 1843 to 1852 and for Ross and Cromarty from 1852 to 1868. He died at the age of 82 in Menton, France. The baronetcy became extinct on his death.



What you don't learn from the Memorial or the standard information about Matheson is that he built up his fortune by trading in Opium. The British were well aware of the destructive nature of opium, but argued that opium sales were necessary because it was the only item which they could sell to the Chinese in payment for tea.

I kept coming across Robins in the grounds - either that or one was following me around!



A sailing boat from the castle grounds.




020 harbour
019 1 sailing boat

Dun Bayble

Monday 26th May, 2008


After coffee this morning I had a walk up to Dun Bayble. This island dun with its stone causeway is on Loch an Duin, just outside Eagleton in Lower Bayble and not - as is suggested by at least one website - near Tiumpan Head on the other (confusingly named) Loch an Duin. The dun or fort is at 516304 on Landranger Map 8. Loch an Duin means the lake of the fort.


I have visited the loch on a number of occasions in the past but despite wellies have never managed to get to a decent spot to photograph it. So dry has the weather been that even in my fell boots I could walk all the way round it today and by going up to the sheep wash was able to get the best of angles.




The dun is crannog like in appearance. The choice of an island as a home is thought to have been for defence and for the availability of food in the form of fish nearby. The crannog could be reached from the nearest shore by means of a causeway built up with stones, or a wooden gangway built atop raised piles. An example of a reconstructed crannóg is located at the Scottish Crannóg Centre at Loch Tay, Tayside.



A variant of the crannóg was the island roundhouse. Built on a small, rocky island in a lochan and usually reached by means of a causeway, these are extremely common in the Western Isles. The visible remains are most often those of a dún, although there are examples of full broch towers occupying some sites. Not many have been excavated, but the majority of those that have been show earlier occupation underneath the visible remains. Dún is the gaelic word for fort, and a number of Scottish castles use 'Dun-' as a prefix.

I cannot trace any historical information about Dun Bayble. Ironically Googling it merely led to my own blog from last year.



Also at Loch an Duin is a cairn but again I have no information on its history.

An Oystercatcher kept going from shore to shore in an attempt to get away from me while a Great Skua going overhead ignored me completely but flew so swiftly I couldn’t get a decent photo.




These are the sheep washes by the loch.

The Dawn chorus

Monday 26th May 2008



I woke at 4.24 and being unable to go back to sleep I got up - just in time for the dawn at 4.45. Outdoors it was bright and fresh but the wind had dropped overnight so it wasn’t as cold as yesterday and I stayed outaside for a quarter of an hour watching the sun come over the horizon and listening to the bird song.
In addition to all the background sounds like Skylarks, Greenfinch and the neighbourhood cockerel there was a long, trilled song floating across from Ian’s house down the road. Eventually I found its maker but at such a distance I thought there was no chance of identifying it from the photo. I was proved wrong. Even at this distance the cocked-tail outline of the Wren is unmistakeable. Rather like the school bully, the Wren has a very loud challenging song for such a tiny bird.



The moon, hanging in the South, was almost opposite the early sunrise,



By five o’clock another beautiful day had dawned but all the world bar GB and I was still asleep, lying in for hours yet on this Bank Holiday Monday. JUST LOOK WHAT THEY MISSED….

Clouds and no clouds

Sunday 25th May 2008



Despite heavy clouds first thing this morning the sky cleared by mid-day and there was not a cloud to be seen in the whole sky for the rest of the day. The term ‘whole sky’ may seem a starnge one but here one can go out of the house and by walking around it the horizon is visible in every direction; unlike at home where trees and buildings block all but a central disc of sky.

A pair of trousers

Sunday 25th May 2008

An hour after dawn the sky had clouded over and there was “just enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers”. This was a common expression in our house when I was young. It was usually used in the opposite context being a positive sign during a day that had been, until then, completely overcast.
It seems we were not alone in using the expression and even in America the weather lore suggests “If the day starts cloudy, once there is a patch of clear blue sky big enough to make a sailor a pair of trousers, the weather will improve.”

Clouds

Sunday 25th May 2008

 
Not such a sunny start to the day. Not every cloud has a silver lining - a bit like life really….

Watering the grass

Saturday 24th May 2008


Watering the grass - not a normal pastime in the Outer Hebrides but after three weeks of sunshine it needs it. Is that tempting fate - does that mean it will rain tomorrow?

Stornoway Half-marathon

Saturday 24th May 2008
Once again sleep evaded me and I was up before the dawn. But up here the dawn is worth being up for when it is another sunny day like today.


On our way into Stornoway we came across the Hebridean Marathon Week-end with the Stornoway Half-marathon in full swing. The speed with which the runners were travelling and the apparent lack of strain suggested these were the early runners in a fairly early stage of the race.



Passing the Castle gates we saw the finish line with its expectant crowd - still with a while to wait.


After shopping at the Co-op we drove into the Woodlands Centre for coffee and on the way into the Castle Grounds we came up behind one of the leading woman runners entering the grounds for the last kilometre or so of the journey.


And after coffee we came out to see the first of the female runners, interspersed with a few blokes, arriving just yards from the finish.







On the way out of the grounds we passed three of those who had finished, running back up towards the Woodlands Centre. The one in the middle is the women’s bronze medallist.


Back at Eagleton the sea was that startling combination of green and blue that makes the view here just incomparable on a sunny day.



To quote Wordsworth - if entirely out of context (he was referring to the view from Westminster Bridge):-
Earth has not anything to show more fair;
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so fitting in its majesty….

Down on the shore again

Friday 23rd May 2008

The sun broke out through the cloudy horizon at 5.15 this morning. And another sunny day dawned. The weather here has been exceptional. Three weeks of sunshine with the exception of a cloudy (but still dry) day yesterday. And I have had two of the three weeks - how lucky is that? For any part of the UK’s that’s unusual. Today it clouded over again at lunchtime but not before I had been down to the shore for a brisk walk to watch the waves crashing in.