View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Sunday 19 October 2008

Sadness - read out

Previous entry, read by me, can be played back from this link.

Sadness

Although I've grown used to Atlantic Lines, and am reasonably happy blogging here, there were quite some memories associated with Northern Trip. It started on 8 October 2004, as I was travelling around Scotland. Having set it up in Kirkwall some 10 days previous, I sat down at a public computer in Kyleakin and started to type in the exploits of the day. From the journeys around Skye, Eigg, Rum, Lochaber into the Western Isles, where I've stayed since mid-November 2004.

After walking practically every square mile of Lewis (bit of poetic license, but you get my drift), I moved into blogging proper by the end of 2005, helped on by the much-maligned VIVI-awards.

Northern Trip has been with me for 4 years, through a period that wasn't easy to start with. For others, the memories associated with the period they kept their AOL blog will be even deeper and more profound.

I'll be very sad to see a 404-error appear on November 1st when I put the familiar journals.aol.co.uk/pharmolo/NorthernTrip URL into my browser's address bar.

Voicing entries

The voice of the entries is an artificial voice, supplied by Odiogo. I'm sorry that it ain't me doing the entries :-)

Sunday 19 October

Very poor weather out here today, with a full gale blowing, gusting to 60 or 70 mph. The rain is lashing down, and many angry white riders out on the basin. The gusts cause a fair bit of spindrift, but not so much as in a full force 9.

The northern hemisphere hurricane season is winding down, whilst the season in the antipodes has produced its first system. This minor tropical storm (prosaically called One) is heading for Madagascar, as the first of many tropical cyclones this season. Last year, Madagascar was very harshly hit, particularly by cyclone Ivan.

Magic Smoke

The link for Magic Smoke on Blogger is http://jlandhub.blogspot.com.