Lord Dunderheid

Islay is Scotland’s fifth largest island. It is also the southern most of the Inner Hebrides - with only Arran and Holy Island in the Firth of Clyde being further south. From the southern tip, at the Mull of Oa (the ‘a’ is not pronounced), the coast of Northern Ireland can clearly be seen (on a good day with no clouds obscuring the view). Having been to Islay several times (three that I can recall - but see below) it was not on my bucket list but it is, of course, an inhabited, west coast Scottish Island, so (like many others I had already visited prior to creating my bucket list) I have to include it in my list of islands which meet the above criteria. Islay, in many respects, is a very varied island. There are low lying areas which are farmed and other hilly areas which are home to sheep and deer herds. The hills are not particularly high, with the highest, Beinn Bheigeir, reaching to only just over 1600 feet (which, I suppose, is high enough). The island’s population is about 3200 w...

There has been a huge outcry in recent weeks about Boris Johnson, and other cabinet ministers, holding Christmas parties for staff last year while, at the same time, locking down the country and banning such parties for the ordinary citizens of the country. Worse was the fact that relatives of those dying were unable to visit their loved ones and be with them one last time. Even worse was the fact that the Tories seemed to have found this amusing and laughed about their own ignoring of the restrictions - while everyone else suffered. This was nothing but Tory privilege and disrespect showing it’s ugly face, once again. There is not much more that can be said about this, and better writers than myself have said all that needs to be said. What I want to consider are the possible outcomes of this behaviour. There are ramifications for the Tory party and there are also (I hope) ramifications for Scottish independence (which I’ll explore later). As David Cameron recently said, Johnson can g...

Lismore is a long, narrow island - but in describing it so I am more describing it’s shape rather than it’s size as it’s only about 10 miles long and 1 mile wide at it’s widest. It is fairly low lying with the highest point, Barr Mor, being only about 420 feet. It lies at the mouth of Loch Linnie, with the southern tip reaching into where Loch Linnie joins with the Firth of Lorn - with the Sound of Mull to the west and the mouth of Loch Etive to the east. The Gaelic name is Liosmor, which means the big, or great, garden - so one has to assume that the Gaelic for garden is ‘lios’ (pronounced lis in English). It is, indeed, a very green, pleasant and peaceful place despite a car ferry service from Oban. It is a fertile island due, I understand, to the limestone in the soil (although the term ‘fertile’ might just be in respect to the surrounding lands of Morven, Appin and Mull - not to mention the majority of Scotland’s west coast). This fertility, I presume, is where it’s name derives fr...

The island of Kerrera lies just off the coast, very close to Oban. The northern end of the island, in fact, nearly blocks the entrance to Oban Bay (or the ‘little bay’ as I understand the Gaelic name to mean) and the CalMac ferries, after leaving Oban, have to head north west round the northern tip to gain access to the Firth of Lorn and the islands beyond. The island is about four miles long and about one and a quarter miles wide at the widest point. It is separated from the mainland by the Sound of Kerrera which is only about a quarter of a mile wide. The highest point, at about 620 feet, is Carn Breugach. Most maps show the Colonsay ferry heading down the Sound of Kerrera but I have only seen one of the big ferries taking this route once. Maybe, on this occasion, it was a very high tide and this route would be shorter than sailing round the north tip of the island - but only possible at a very high tide? There are two ferry crossings to Kerrera; one just north of Gallanachbeg (known...

 Prior to the Holyrood elections this year, Nicola Sturgeon held daily COVID briefings but stopped doing so after this. She claims this was because of the complaints about these from the opposition parties - but the opposition had complained about these before the election because they felt it provided her with an unfair advantage leading up to those elections. I suspect that Ms Sturgeon, now that the election is over, was quite happy to end those daily briefings as she’d got the pre-election coverage she wanted. When it became clear that the daily briefings were no more I decided to use a spreadsheet to log the basic, daily statistics issued by the Scottish government (just so I could keep an eye on how the virus was spreading) - but I did not start doing this until the 8th of June. The statistics I logged were; the number of tests, the number of positive cases, the percentage of positive cases, the number in hospital, the number in ICU and the number of deaths. On the 23rd of Jul...

Easdale is the smallest of the still inhabited Slate Isles with the now uninhabited Balnahua being even smaller. Unless you have your own boat or helicopter then the only way to get to Easdale is via the passenger ferry from Ellenabeich on Seil (see the post about Seil to find out how to get to that island). If both Luing and Seil are small then Easdale Island is miniscule - no more than the dot over the letter ‘i’ . It is only about 60 acres in size - but squeezed onto that is a population of around sixty. It is located just off the south west tip of Seil’s clenched fist (using my earlier description of Seil’s shape in my post about that island). It is reached by a passenger ferry from the village of Ellenabeich on Seil. It is roughly a round shape, mainly flat with a rocky outcrop, around 125 feet high, on the western side. It is possible (from what I read) to climb this hillock. I am sure there are fine views from the top but I did not undertake this on my (so far) only visit as I a...