View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Wednesday 10 August

Thoroughly wet, miserable and cold today. We managed all of 12 degrees C today, which is 54 in Fahrenheit. It has only recently dried up (typing this just before 10pm). Let's hope tomorrow is a bit brighter. Spent the day in transcripts. More WW2 tributes from the Stornoway Gazette of 1940, as well as the Napier Commission's findings at Dingwall in October 1883. One witness describes the grinding poverty near Strathpeffer: A man had a hole in his roof. The snow of winter fell through it and settled on his bed. 


Next month, the Lewis Chessmen, currently being exhibited in the Museum of the Isles here in Stornoway, will return to the place of their find: the district of Uig. The 91 chess pieces were found in 1831 by a man in the sands of Uig Beach near Ardroil, or as the local bard put it more accurately: Capadal - a tiny hamlet near the mouth of the Red River. On 13 September only, the Chessmen will be on view at Uig Museum in Timsgarry.