Autumn bareness

Just as well I went into the Castle Grounds for a walk on Friday. The tree behind the house here still had leaves on it on Sunday morning. Twenty-four hours later, all the remaining leaves had gone. In six months' time, they'll be back again.


2 November

Monday 8 November

Last night's storm was bad, by all accounts. Sustained winds peaked at 60 mph, gusting up to 80 mph at the Butt of Lewis. Other than major disruption on the regional ferry network, the storm did not have any significant impact. Watching from an upstairs window, I could just about see the curtains of seaspray blowing in on the winds, which rattled doors and shook windows. By daybreak, the winds had subsided to force 6 or 7, still very breezy, and have dropped to force 5 only in the last hour. Another storm looks on the cards for Thursday.

I went to the library this afternoon to look for more WW1 tributes from the Stornoway Gazette from 1917, which yielded about a dozen articles.

Regionally, the collapse of major building firm Rok, based at Inverness, has had extensive repercussions in Lewis. A four-year contract to revamp the Arnish Fabrication Yard in Stornoway and contracts to build new homes in the town are all up in the air now that the company has gone into administration. Highlands and Islands Enterprise had sunk £32m into the company, in spite of its cashflow problems.