Saturday 8 October

Good morning all from a wet, grey and dismal Stornoway.

It is 7 years ago today that I started to write a blog, called Northern Trip. This link will take you to that first entry.  Northern Trip was hosted on AOL, which pulled its blogging service three years ago this month. A lot of bloggers stopped blogging at that time, and others moved to Blogger or other providers. Facebook has allowed us to re-establish contact, fortunately.

I may put up another entry later today, but will close this post with some of the pictures I took on 8 October 2004.


The Cuillin mountains in Skye


Camus Fhionnairigh [Camusunary]

Friday 7 October

Over the last two days, the weather has turned noticeably colder. Yesterday saw some hail showers, with the mercury barely into double figures, and today was no better.
At the moment, there is a large naval exercise on-going around Cape Wrath, 60 miles northeast of Stornoway. A German frigate is cruising up and down the Minch, and Polish and Estonian naval vessels are holed up in Loch Ewe (on the west coast of the Scottish mainland).

Today, there was an angry demonstration outside the offices of Western Isles Council, as a senior executive of a fuel supplier paid a visit. The fuel prices in these islands are incredible, some 20 to 30 pence per liter higher than in Inverness. Everybody is affected by this, not just people with cars. Bus fares have increased by a third in recent years, as have taxi fares. Accusations of profiteering have been leveled against the company involved. For reference, a litre of fuel in Inverness costs £1.30 per litre, but in South Uist, they charge £1.60 per litre. American readers: that equates to between $7.60 and $9.50 a gallon.