Thursday 13 August

Today I was taken round Harris by car, which took 147 miles, 9 hours and 344 photographs. Popped into Tarbert to check out a Harris Tweed shop and have lunch. We then drove to Scalpay, about 9 miles to the east, then retraced our steps (including round the Tarbert one-way system) to go down the Golden Road from Kendibig to Plocrapol, Grosebay, Stockinish, Geocrab, Quidinish to Rodel. Having had a look at St Clements church in Rodel, we went up the west side of Harris to Luskentyre, and finally returned to Stornoway at 7.30pm. A long day, but quite a good one. The weather was sunny, and it felt quite warm at Rodel, which has a secluded location.

Marybank
Balallan
Arivruaich
Woolly road users
Ardhasaig
Tarbert
Near Urgha
Scalpay
The Golden Road
Plocrapol
Grosebay
Stockinish
Flodabay
Quidinish
Lingerabay
St Clements
Leverburgh
Northton
Scarista
Borve
Horgabost
Luskentyre
Ardhasaig
Clisham
Scaladale
Arivruaich

Wednesday 12 August

Cruiseliner Voyager

Tuesday 11 August

 

Monday 10 August

WG Vespucci
Loch Seaforth being fixed

Sunday 9 August

WG Vespucci

Saturday 8 August

Overcast and at times wet today.
Went to a wedding reception in the Golf Club this evening, with food and drink laid on. Had to leave just before 10pm, but nonetheless had an agreeable time. Upon coming outside, it was still a little light, and the golfers were taking advantage of that.

Friday 7 August

Shoreham air crash

Last Saturday afternoon, a Hawker-Hunter jet aircraft crashed onto the A27 near Shoreham, West Sussex, killing at least 11 people. The jet had been performing an aerobatics display when it was unable to regain height after a loop-the-loop and came down on the busy road. The wreckage of the aircraft has been removed and a search for further fatalities will continue.

Questions are already being asked about the safety of airshows, but answers will not be able to be given until the cause of this accident has been fully cleared up. One suggestion has been to only allow aerobatics displays over the sea. This reminds me of the Red Arrows display in Stornoway two months ago, when the jets flew partly over land and partly over the sea. Since another serious accident at an airshow at Ramstein (Germany) in 1988, I have always been faintly uneasy about these events - they are inherently risky. Nonetheless, I don't think they should be banned as a knee-jerk reaction to this tragedy. I feel we should find out more, before drawing conclusions.

My thoughts are with the family and friends of those who lost their lives on Saturday.

J-land 12 years later

Twelve years ago today, AOL opened its Journals service. Around it grew up a community of bloggers, which came to call themselves J-land. They were mainly from the UK and the US, sharing life's joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats. Pictures, graphics and creations passed back and forth. Quite a few of our number have passed away over the year, and are remembered in a dedicated blog, Silent Keyboards

5 years and 40 days after opening Journals, AOL closed them all down. We barely had four weeks to migrate elsewhere, and some bloggers lost their blogs altogether as the message of the shutdown did not reach them. Nonetheless, many resumed on Blogger, LiveJournal and Wordpress. Blogging appears to have fallen out of fashion, and we are now mostly on Facebook and Twitter.