Picture post - 21 January

Sunset colours, Balallan, 4.20pm


Pairc War Memorial, Kershader


Letterbox


Ram and ewe


Loch Erisort, looking east


In the Pairc Museum, Ravenspoint

Friday 21 January

Quite a nice day, with good spells of sunshine. And I cannot grumble about daytime temps of +8C, 46F, in spite of the breeze that was blowing. In the afternoon, I jumped on the bus to Lochs to visit the Ravenspoint Centre at Kershader, 22 miles (by road) from Stornoway. The journey takes about 40 minutes. Once at the Ravenspoint Centre, it took me the grand total of five minutes to realise that I would not find any of the information required about 18th and 19th century residents of Cromore, 8 miles east of Kershader. So, I had a little while to go on a short walk. The bus journey back was punctuated by primary school kids who all had to pile out of the people carrier in order to let me on. I was back in Stornoway at 5pm, and it was not yet fully dark. We are now one month from the shortest day, and the days are lengthening nicely.

I've taken about 40 pics, and will post those in a separate entry shortly.

Lost at sea

The fishing boat, belonging to a Shetland fisherman, reported missing last night, was found wrecked on rocks on the Isle of Bressay, just east of Lerwick. I'm awaiting further details.

A passenger has been reported missing from a ferry, which had sailed from Larne in Northern Ireland to Cairnryan in southwestern Scotland. The vessel, the European Highlander has been thoroughly searched, and air and sea searches are underway.

Jo Yeates

This lady was murdered on December 17th, after she had gone out to buy some food in the city of Bristol. On Christmas Day, her remains were recovered along a frozen country road near the city. She had been strangled. Initially, her landlord was arrested on suspicion of her murder,  but he was later released on bail. Yesterday, a Dutch architect, Vincent Tabak, was apprehended in Bristol. He was Jo's next-door neighbour. Vincent came to Bristol in 2007 and according to Dutch broadcaster NOS lived there with his girlfriend.

I was taken aback by ITV [a commercial broadcaster in the UK] which had cameras in Mr Tabak's hometown of Veghel, north of Eindhoven in Holland. I'm not surprised people there were reluctant to discuss the case. Under Dutch law, a suspect is not identified by his full name, only by first name and the first letter of the surname.

This morning, police were granted more time to interrogate Mr Tabak, and further investigations at addresses in Bristol continue.

Thursday 20 January

A cold January day, but at least it was dry. Went to the library, where even the librarian had to search high and low for the booklet I was wanting - only for me to discover it did not hold the information I required. So, a visit to the community centre in South Lochs is imminent. I also continued my searches on the Internet for another aspect of local history, the results of which are posted on my Pentland Road blog.

Still on aspects of local history, I discovered that WW1 and WW2 casualties from Lewis are buried and / or remembered in 400 different locations across the globe. I intend to compile a Google Map with them all, a nice little project. Oh, I made a very nice discovery in the library (no details), which (to my mind) has endorsed and vindicated my activities in the field of local history in Lewis.