Ecosse and Beyond: August 2011

31 August–some old photos (part 4 of 4)

SHETLAND

When I was in Shetland I banged on about the fact that the roads had improved (since 1979) so I dug out the photos taken in 1979 of the A road running north-south of Yell

and it was gated

(note the trousers!)

Simon & the Muckle Flugga light

Pete & his beer/wine inside his croft

RANNOCH MOOR

Crossing it in the ‘80s

SKYE

Above Elgol in early ‘80s

WEST HIGHLAND WAY

in the wet

Didn’t take many photos in those days….

Am hoping to resume travels for a few weeks so I may blog again sometime later next week.

13 & 14 August (Part 3 of 4 oflast blog in August)

The weekend in Bellingham (pronounced with a soft g). A village with at least 4 pubs, a butcher, a Spar, a newsagents and a chinese take-away – and a few camp sites, one of which is in the middle of the village i.e only minutes away from…. And around the village are flowers in different sorts of containers, bike baskets (on the bikes), rucksacks and boots.

Dave and Paul came up on their motorbikes from London and I had a scarey trip on the back of Paul’s (nothing to do with his driving) to Keilder where we had a bit of a walk after watching the surviving osprey chick on the nest.

I had booked into the campsite on the farm in the middle of the village. It had rained quite a lot before I arrived and they had no hardstandings so the farmer let me park the Van in the farm yard.

D & P slept in the Van and I in the tent at the other end of the farm (and I found out that the built-in groundsheet is porous).

On the Saturday evening we had a barbecue

Sunday on Hadrian’s Wall

Hexham’s J D Wetherspoon’s is also a Cinema:

12 August (Part 2 of 4 of the last blog in August)

Staying with the National Trust theme I visited Seaton Deleval.

The central block hasn’t been occupiable for a long long time – due to fire

– the west wing is the part lived in

The stables:

The best bit was the stables – all built of stone

11 August: (Part 1 of 4 of the last blog in August)

Wooler on a wet morning. The ducks are sheltering under the Van:

I went off to the National Trust property at Wallington

The Wallington griffin heads overlook the road

At least I got out of the rain.

Bell Scott (a pre-raph artist) had painted a series of pictures for the central hall which are great – the most famous one is “showing the world what the Northumbrians could do with iron and coal”

There is also King Egfrid landing on the Farnes and making Cuthbert a Bishop, the Romans building a wall, the Danes sacking the Northumbrian coast, Grace Darling rescuing the crew of the Forfarshire, the death of Bede and others..and the flowers around the canvases are painted by other artists including Ruskin