Three shows in

Lindsey and I have been to three presentations at the Edinburgh International Book Festival so far, with several more scheduled for the following weeks.  Within five minutes of the start of the first one, which I won’t name, I was wondering why on earth did I book tickets for it.  It wasn’t that it was bad, but it wasn’t my scene.  It started with a short poetry reading.  Now, unless it’s Allen Ginsberg or Gary Snyder, poetry is beyond me, and my mind was quickly elsewhere.  The poem was followed by a reading from a play, and then a sort of clip from the play, with two actors playing parts.  I couldn’t follow it, because I was distracted by how wonderful the actors were at playing parts, instead of trying to understanding what they were saying in context.

My friend Fat Mac is currently working on a new play of some sorts, though how he manages to find anything to write about when he spends most of the day sitting in his bath is beyond me.  But if he manages to get his play produced somewhere I hope he gets either, or both, of the actors we watched on Sunday to act in his show.  They simply clicked into their roles, and were very believable.  I doubt, however, if even they would be able to bring any life to a two hour show entitled: Watching my toes slowly wrinkle like raisins while I reminisce about the sivinties.

The second and third presentations we attended were really good.  One was by Sunil Khilnani who spoke about his book in which he picks 50 lives to tell the story of India’s history.  India is such a vast place, with a very rich history.  Telling its story through the lives of 50 very different people makes its past accessible.

Last night we went to see Sir Tom Devine and Angela McCarthy talk about their book Tea and Empire: James Taylor in Victorian Ceylon.  James Taylor was one of numerous Scots involved in tea production in what was then Ceylon.  Devine reminded us about how the Scots contributed to, and benefitted from, the British Empire.  One can only imagine what Scotland would be like today had it not gained so disproportionately from the Empire.  Tea was one of many areas in which Scottish people made a great contribution (sugar, tobacco, religion, the army and overseas civil service are some others).

One question asked at the end that I felt the authors did not completely answer was, where did all the money from tea go?  It was a profitable industry, but did not leave its mark on the Scottish economy as much as, say, the sugar or tobacco industries did.

Lindsey and I have already bought four books from the festival bookshop.  The problem will be finding the time to read them, but they all look very worthwhile.

Archaeology on the Borralie Headland

We picked up two interesting leaflets in the excellent tourist information centre in Durness, and used them as guides to visit some archaeological sites on the nearby Borralie Headland.  The first leaflet was about the Loch Croispol Schoolhouse ruin, shown above and below, which was excavated a few years ago as part of a local school history project.  The school was built in the mid 1760s as a parish school for Durness.

From the leaflet, I read that William Ross was appointed schoolmaster in 1811 when aged only 16, but ended up in conflict with the local minister.  The case eventually reached the House of Lords.  By 1850 Ross was still at the school, but there were no pupils!  This is the sort of job, a schoolmaster with no pupils, that would have well-suited Fat Mac, but even then he’d probably complain about being overworked.  Ross was eventually removed from his post in 1861, but stayed in the schoolhouse for a further ten years, spending his time fishing in the nearby loch.

We referred to the second leaflet, entitled Borralie Headland, when walking around the nearby hills.  There is also a very detailed “Archaeological survey
carried out on behalf of Historic Scotland”, Glasgow University 2003, which I found since our walk, and another document, Excavation of an Iron Age burial mound, Loch Borralie, Durness, Sutherland, by Gavin MacGregor.

Above is a sheepfold that was built in the 19th century when people living nearby were moved out to make way for sheep farming.

Ruined farmstead, probably from the 18th century.

Above is a natural amphitheatre called Hakon’s Bowl.  Hakon was a Norwegian king.  There is other evidence of viking presence in the area.

The leaflet calls this ‘Hakon’s Bowl mystery building’ and says that it could be a prehistoric house.

This is the site of Loch Borralie dun and township.  The leaflet says the defended homestead was probably occupied during the mid first millenium AD when Norse speakers arrived in the area, and that the buildings (remains of shown above) around the circular mound (the dun) were built later, probably using stones from the dun.

The leaflet says that the ruin above is a settlement dating from the 1400s.

Above is, I think, one of the Iron Age burial mounds described in the MacGregor paper.  This is situated in a very exposed position.

I found the leaflets shown above very useful.  Well done to the people who produced them.  Using them, Lindsey and I enjoyed a day walking on the moor, looking at the settlements and ruins of past and ancient lives, and our day’s entertainment was entirely free and also good for keeping fit.

After the walk, we enjoyed a hot chocolate in the Cocoa Mountain cafe, Balnakeil.  Lindsey reckoned it was the best hot chocolate she’s ever tasted.

By boat and minibus to the Cape Wrath Lighthouse

A video of a short trip by boat and minibus from Keoldale to the Cape Wrath Lighthouse, July 2017

Istria, the short movie

Kamenjak National Park

We walked around the Kamenjak peninsula, a few miles south west of Pula.  In the heat, the 10 mile walk seemed quite long.  The peninsula is very popular with locals and tourists, though we seemed to be the only ones walking the whole route.  Most people swim near the Safari Bar at Mala Kolombarica, or jump off the nearby cliffs.

In trouble at the top of Beinn a’Chlachair

It was a classic case of what can go wrong when you’re attempting to climb a Munro, in this instance, Beinn a’Chachair.

We’d spent much of the previous day of glorious weather in the car, driving to the camp site at Roy Bridge, and then getting settled in.  Even at 9 pm it was sunny, warm and calm, when we checked the weather forecast for the next day.  It said fair at first, becoming cloudy with possible rain patches later, and strong winds, especially high up.  Hard to believe, as we sat in a cloudless evening, watching the sun go down.

The next day, the weather appeared quite good, so we set off on the track south from the car park on the A86 near Luiblea.  As can be seen from the photo above, taken from the stalker path near the base of Beinn a’Chlachair, our target for the day, conditions were fine.  Maybe the forecast wasn’t entirely correct.

We watched some youngsters on quad bikes enjoying their outing, further down, and looked up at Beinn a’Chlachair.

It looked OK, with a wee bit of cloud at the top, and it was still dry.  There was no-one else on the way up to the hill, and we decided to continue.

Further up, the mist started to come in, but on a couple of occasions the top cleared, so we walked on, had a snack, and left the track as per route directions: “The ground ahead is boggy in places; make a bee-line across it to the south. Beyond climb the initially very steep slopes ahead, bearing a little to the right to reach the eastern rim of Coire Mor Chlachair higher up.”

We could see there was a strong wind blowing the mist over the col which was now to our left, and so we put on our waterproof tops, gloves and hats and continued until we reached the ridge leading to the summit, which was somewhere to our right.  What a wind!  Unless you’ve been in the mountains in such conditions, or have experienced a hurricane, you can’t imagine what it was like.  It was difficult to stand up.

We couldn’t find any path, but staggered on a little.  Every now and then it cleared a wee bit, but we couldn’t see any cairn.  The ground was very difficult, consisting of irregular stones, and we kept tripping up.

We had a printed OS map, the top of which, sticking out of my pocket, began to shred in the wind.  We had a compass in the rucksack.  We were also using an online OS map app for the first time, which Lindsey had downloaded onto her phone at the campsite Wi-Fi.  I was, very fortunately as it turned out, also tracking our route using ViewRanger on my phone.  It was the first time I’d used ViewRanger.

Having got thus far, it’s difficult to turn back without reaching the top, so we tripped and staggered on a bit, in the wind.  The cairn had to be somewhere close, but visibility was down to about 10 yards.  The summit plateau of Beinn a’Chlachair, we knew, is quite flat and extensive.  I thought I saw a bit of a path leading to something for a couple of seconds, so we changed direction a bit and headed on.  The cairn wasn’t there.  The same thing happened again.  As we stopped to check the OS map on Lindsey’s phone, the wind blew a flap of her jacket onto the screen and closed the app.  When she restarted it, the map wasn’t there anymore, only a cursor on a blank screen.

I looked up, and said to Lindsey “I’m disorientated.  We’ve changed direction too many times, this is serious.  Forget about the top.  Which way do you think is down?”  Lindsey had no more idea than I did.  We both knew that there were cliffs somewhere near, around the Coire Mor Chlachair, and also some crags on the south side near the top, so we had to try to retrace our steps.  We were now getting wet, cold and tired.  My spectacles were steamed up on both the inside and outside, and I could hardly see anything.  I had to pull my hat down to stop them blowing away.  Not that there was anything to see, in the mist.  The wind seemed to be getting even stronger.  When I took my glove off to tap my phone, it was so damp that I couldn’t get it back on again – (mental note: wrong type of summer glove for these conditions).

Anyway, it would have been impossible in those conditions to get the printed OS map out, so we looked at my phone, and thank goodness for the route tracker on ViewRanger – we could see our route up, marked in red.  We grabbed each other, staggered a few metres in no particular direction and looked at the phone once more – we could see that we were more or less retracing our steps.  So we continued doing this again and again, looking at the phone every few minutes.  You can see our track on the screen-dump below.

It staggers around a bit, doesn’t it?  The route up is, from the top, to the left.  You can also see that we missed the summit!  The grey line with triangular points on it marks some of the crags.  ViewRanger tells me that we reached max elevation 1,065 and if that is accurate, we had still 22m ascent still to go.

I can’t tell from the route tracker exactly where, but a few minutes later we had left the summit plateau and began to descend when Lindsey tripped slightly and was blown completely off her feet by the wind, landing a bit below on some heather.  She’d twisted her ankle, quite badly as it turned out later, but using both her stick and mine we were able to eventually get off the mountain and onto the stalker path below the col.  Fortunately this is a reasonable path, and the track further down is in very good condition due to being maintained by the quad bike rental company in Roy Bridge.  It was slow progress until we got back to the road.

The moral of this post is clear.  We are too old to do this sort of thing in those conditions anymore, and should have quit at least twenty minutes before we did.

Brijuni Islands

A few miles north of Pula is the port of Fažana, from where we took a ferry trip to the Brijuni Islands.  Although the Romans settled these islands, their main claim to fame is that they were the summer home of Josip Broz Tito, the former President of Yugoslavia.

You get a wee ‘train’ round the island, and see the remnants of Tito’s zoo, but the highlight for me was Tito’s Museum.

Tito was a major player on the international stage during the Cold War era.  Yugoslavia, although communist, adopted a non-aligned position during the Cold War.  He organised various meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement, and the museum featured photos of some of the many leaders who visited Brijuni.  Above is Haile Selassie.

In the museum I managed to identify some of the leaders in the photo above.  My photo of the photo is not of great quality, but I think that it features Haile Selassie, Jawaharlal Nehru, Archbishop Makarios, Sukarno, Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Tito.  I’d be interested to know of the names of others in the photo.

KK and Tito.

Castro and Tito.

Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Sophia Loren also visited Brijuni.

While trying to identify more of the leaders in the group photo above, I came across this wonderful post from The Calvert Journal, featuring photos from some of Tito’s trips abroad.