Trip to Orkney - 4 October

On awakening, the rain was pouring and the wind was howling. Dreadful morning, which I spent around St Magnus Cathedral in the heart of Kirkwall. Although I know the town quite well, they had changed it around. So, I had to pop into a tourist attraction to ask for the Tourist Office and the Bus Station, both of which had been relocated. Anyway, I found 3 wargraves outside the Cathedral (photographing wargraves is the objective of this trip).

After a cuppa in my favourite coffeeshop on Albert Street, I walked up the Old Scapa Road, by which time it was drying up. Glanced in at the Youth Hostel, which was my base during my stay in Orkney during September 2004 - see Northern Trip - The Start. Happy memories, although the place does not look terribly attractive.

A little way down the road lies the St Olaf Cemetery, where I located 125 wargraves, of whom 16 were for Norse sailors, 1 Greek and 1 German. In death, all are equal, and political and military differences no longer apply. Next, I went down to Scapa Flow to visit the memorial to HMS Royal Oak. This battleship was sunk by U-boat 47 on 14 October 1939, with the loss of 833 men.

At 1.45pm, the bus turned up to take me to the ferry terminal at Houton, some 10 miles away, from where the ferry would sail to Hoy. The weather had turned severely showery and perishingly cold. During the crossing to Flotta and Hoy, a heavy hailshower strafed the islands, leaving a thick layer of hail in the verges of the road on Hoy. I found the Lyness Naval Cemetery on Hoy, but could not find my B&B. A quick call on the mobile confirmed my suspicion that I had overshot, and a few minutes later, Helen and Derek gave me a warm welcome into their B&B. I was their very first paying guest.

Dinner was at 7pm, and I was served a very creditable pie as a main course. The light died over the sea. Spent the evening in cordial conversation with my hosts. Retired for the night at 11pm.


Inside St Magnus


A street in Kirkwall


Kirkwall Youth Hostel\


Cross of Remembrance, St Olaf's Cemetery; Scapa Flow in the distance


Exhibition on the sinking of HMS Royal Oak


On board MV Hoy Head


Derelict naval installations at Lyness, Hoy


View from Wild Heather B&B

Adsense

I've decided to put a few ads on my blog. I've used this on several of the sites I keep, and it's not terribly intrusive here on Atlantic Lines. You really have to look for it lol. If you like, click on the ads. No obligation to do anything on the sites you end up on - far from it.

Community

A couple of notes on recent events. Not asking anyone to agree, but just my perspective.

AOL seems to be on auto self-destruct at the moment. Pulling journals and the FTP-space on Hometown will have alerted anyone who's a wee bit Internet savvy to avoid them like the plague. What do they have left? Chatrooms?? FGS, been there for a while, never again.

Well, AOL's loss is Google's gain. They are now hosting our journals, and although technically we'll have to get used to them, it's no really major issue. To be honest with you, I like it that I can see people's real (first) names and a portrait photograph in some cases. Yep, I don't show my face, but that's my decision. The people have not left, the provider has. The community remains and by virtue of the Internet it is supremely easy to stay in touch. Hence the cross-reference journal which I shall build in the near future. Famous last words.

I'll probably follow Indigo's advice and start reading new entries, rather than try to catch up with a backlog of a couple of weeks.

Thursday 16 October

Nice sunny day - in amongst some pretty beefy showers. As nothing when compared to the Leeward Islands in the eastern Caribbean, where hurricane Omar has been blasting through with maximum sustained winds of 132 knots - that's 150 mph. The Hurricane Hunter aircraft had to abort its investigation of the hurricane due to the extreme turbulence. Five HH's have been lost on missions in the past. The Southern Hemisphere hurricane season is now only 6 weeks away, and the first system is trying to form near the island of Diego Garcia in the southern Indian Ocean.

Anyone with problems transferring their journals may want to try again. Don't ask.

Jland as was

I'm seeing graphics around marked "J-land, we'll never forget". Anyone care to share a picture link? I'll transfer said graphic to my own photobucket account and link it from there.

Edit midnight 15/16 October: Got two graphics now (see sidebar), but any others still welcome.

Trip to Orkney - 3 October

From October 3rd to 8th, I went to the Orkney isles. It is quite a scenic journey, and my camera was very busy. Apart from 500 pictures of the journey, I also took 700 photos of wargraves. I'll post a few appetisers on here, and then you can go to Flickr yourself and have a more extensive look.

October 3rd dawned a bit windy, but not as windy as the day before, when the afternoon ferry had been cancelled. The swell had not subsided in the Minch, and there were some high waves about on the 3 hour trip to Ullapool. It had also turned markedly colder, and hail showers strafed the Minch, leaving the mountains quite white. Inverness was reached at midday, and I had 2 hours to wait for the bus to Scrabster, near Thurso, from where the Orkney ferry departs.

I am not very familiar with the east coast of Scotland, although I have travelled by train to Thurso a couple of times. It was nice to see places like Tain

Four hours and 125 miles later, I stepped off the coach at Scrabster, but had to wait a while for the ferry to turn up. It left at 7pm, at sunset, so I did not see much of the Old Man of Hoy, a 120 metres high seastack, which the ferry passes fairly closely. Arrived into Stromness at 8.45 and jumped on the bus to Kirkwall, 16 miles away, where I had arranged my accommodation.

Leaving Stornoway






In the Minch




Rainbow over Loch Broom


Mountain landscape along Loch Broom


Hail shower strafing Loch Broom


Arriving at Ullapool


On the moor south of Ullapool


View north from Inverness


Helmsdale harbour


Departing Scrabster

Recycling

Mention the word recycling round here, and fond (ahem) memories surface of attempts on my part to take bottles to the bottlebank not all that long ago. I had borrowed a trolley from the supermarket down the road and had put a large carrier bag full of empties in it. This was sitting upright, but all seemed to be well as I negotiated the far from level pavements in Stornoway. Things became badly unstuck when I had to cross a side-street. I thought I'd regain the far pavement by tackling it at speed. The trolley did not jump on the kerb, but the bottles did jump. Right out of the bag, out of the trolley to smash onto the street. About half a dozen of the things. Managed to retrieve the largest pieces of broken glass, some held together by lables. Must have presented quite a sight to the passers-by, one of whom did help retrieve the shards from the street. Oh dear. This afternoon, I took a bag of papers to the recycling bank, again in a trolley. Fortunately, papers don't jump, and this time I found a lower piece of kerb to cross the road at.

Wednesday 15 October

I thought it was going to be a nice morning, but hey ho, here is the first shower of the day.

If you're in the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico, keep a very close eye on Hurricane Omar, which is making its way to a beach near you. By the time he has passed through, you won't have much beach left. Winds may peak over 90 mph, but that will be Thursday's news.

I have now saved blogs for Linda [lsfp1960] as she is still feeling under the weather and unsure when she'll be heading north again from southern CA. Blondepennierae's blog is also safe on my PC. I am awaiting instruction how to upload blogs saved using Backstreet browser.

I should admit to not being a Blogger expert, so if anyone has any technical tips regarding the small matter of templates, I would be very grateful. Leave a comment or email me on the usual.

Magic Smoke

Don't forget that there is also a Magic Smoke journal on Blogger, which is sometimes referred to as the J-land Hub. I'm one of the authors, and have posted on there.

Here is the link: http://jlandhub.blogspot.com/

No more of this!

And there's much, much, more...

Hurricane update - 14 October

A tropical depression is lurking in the Caribbean, and although winds are not a problem (below galeforce at present), rains are. The Netherlands Antilles (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao) are under warning for heavy rainfall, with totals of between 4 and 8 inches, locally up to 12 inches (that's 100 to 200 mm, locally up to 300 mm). A danger of life-threatening flashfloods exists in those islands.

Tuesday 14 October

Again, more excitement for the wrong reasons, albeit not as serious as some days ago. Powercut at 9 am, spoiling my trash tv watching lol. Anyway, power was back at 10, although I'm still on my battery-powered laptop. Managed to make a cup of coffee by boiling some water on the hob. That's the way I used to do it in days gone by. I mean, you turn on the hob, light a match, hold it by the hob (yikes! the flame!) and place a pan with water on it. Some 5 or 10 minutes later, you have the boiling water, ready to make your coffee. Oh, the simple pleasures of life.

The debate about timezones in the UK will be taken a step further on Wednesday, when Jersey votes in a referendum to adopt Central European Time, i.e. go forward 1 hour permanently. There is a similar debate ongoing in mainland Britain, where the move is opposed by those in Northern Scotland. In winter, this would mean sunrise at 10.15 am, leaving kids to find their way to school in total darkness, leading to accidents and worse.

Today is the 69th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow. This capital navy vessel was torpedoed by Nazi-Germany's U-boat 47, which had sneaked into the bay (at Orkney) past blockships and other impediments. More than 800 men drowned when the ship turned turtle and sank within 15 minutes. A small green buoy marks the position of the wreck, which, to date, continues to release oil. Diving is prohibited as the site has been declared a wargrave. I visited Scapa Flow last week, and will put pictures up as soon as I have gotten round to uploading them.

900 posts

That's the number of entries I've got to read. Sorry folks: I'm just a wee bit behind, and it's not going to get any better, any time soon. For the moment, I'm doing the rounds, leaving behind my new URL, and it might be an idea if we all did that during this month. It is no use looking at all the blogs behind my Blogger ID, as you'll find yourself looking at no fewer than 28.

At the moment, I'm also keeping an eye on my friend with the broken wrist, who may find herself looking at a healing process spanning many months or even years. Tomorrow, the orthopods will do the job properly, rather than the emergency measures taken on Friday night. The computer is back in action, but I'm now working from my own laptop. I'm an Internet addict, that's what lol.

Oh, don't forget to pull your stuff from AOL Hometown. You'll lose that too on November 1st.

Monday 13 October

Quite a nice morning, compared to the blow and rain of recent days, but still the odd shower about. Our freight ferry Muirneag was late coming in, 9.20 am instead of the 'scheduled' 8 o'clock. The friend who fell on Friday had a very lucky½ escape, as it appears her fall was broken by a plastic bucket full of water - as well as her wrist of course. She is up at the hospital this morning to show the damage to the orthopaedic surgeon.

I'll start reading journals again later this week, but am currently working on the dormant blogs (should not be a problem at all). If you know of a journal, whose owner is away, unaware of the transfer or whatever, PLEASE let me know. We still have just over 2 weeks to sort something out.

I am planning to build a journal to provide a cross-reference between erstwhile AOL journal and new Blogger journal, complete with AOL username. I am sort-of lost without the screenies, as there are so many people out there with similar first names.

To demonstrate the problem, I'll tell the story of a temp doctor here in Stornoway, who got a call to come and see Mrs MacLeod in the High Street [fictional streetname] at 3 in the morning. Now, there are several hundred Mrs Macleod's in the town, and even within the one street there will be a couple of them. So, the doctor had to go round all the houses in which a Mrs MacLeod was resident - which took him a long time.

Sunday evening

The wind howls and the rain clatters. Your average Hebridean evening. Who said London was at 23C today? We did not exceed 12C all day.

I have not gotten round to visiting everybody's new journal yet. I am still chasing up everybody's new links. It would appear that I have almost everybody's that I used to read on AOL. As I speak, I am downloading the blogs of the deceased that have not yet been catered for by friends or relatives. These include:

Lahoma's Lament
No Sundays
My Reason for Reasoning
Pennie's Pieces of Ohio
The Diatom Project
Dribble by Chuck Ferris

I am asking around for ways of uploading these journals back to the Net. For the moment, they're safe with me.

Abandoned

The majority of formerly J-land has now migrated to Blogger, and judging by the 800+ entries on Google Reader, is busy clattering away at their keyboards. Please spare a thought for the unhappy few who are unable to go through this humungous change.

Cathy, chatzeekay, left an entry on October 6th on her AOL journal Life and Lessons, saying she would not be able to make a new journal at Blogger, or wherever. She has suffered two severe brain traumas, the results of which have left her quite incapacitated. The entries, not spell-checked, speak for themselves.

Please call round, and ask if you can be put on an emailing list for her to continue beyond November 1st. Let it not be said that J-land (on Blogger or AOL) does not care for its less fortunate members.

Copied to Call for Support

Dormant blogs

I have been given a way to download dormant blogs and preserve them in one way or another for posterity. If you know blogs that may disappear that way, which you'd like to see kept, please drop me a line. I'll give it a try in the course of the next few days.

On Blogger

I have gone through all the emails I received this month, copying people's new URLs to Google Reader. Next stage is going through the posts on the old AOL journals, to eek out any new
URLs from there.

Transfer of Northern Trip has not gone smoothly (keep having problems), as the server conked out halfway down the final stage of publishing all the posts. 4768 of them. Will try again tomorrow.

I have worked with Blogger for some time, and find it bare bones and minimalistic. Probably too negative an impression, but will review in time.

Returned

Well, here I am again, at full throttle. Got myself a new laptop and after spending the last 90 minutes setting it all up: he has RETURNED! More later.

Saturday 11 October

Things continue in the not-so-good category. Found myself taking an elderly friend to A&E late last night, after she tripped. The result was a broken wrist, which required a plaster-cast. Hope this will heal in short order, as anyone would be inconvenienced by this, not to mention the pain.

As I write, my old blog Northern Trip is being transferred to Blogger, where it will reside as an archive. The AOL version will remain until Journals shut down on 31 October. Atlantic Lines is my primary blog now. When my Internet access is restored to normal, I will publicise the URLs of all the transferred blogs here. In the future, I may shift to another blogging platform again, as I'm not overly impressed with Blogger.

Unless the PC gets fixed in the meantime, I cannot access internet again until Tuesday.