Tag: Island
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Eynhallow Sound from Rousay
A view of Eynhallow Sound from Knowe of Yarso on the island of Rousay. Midway is the southern tip of Eynhallow and in the distance is Costa Hill with the grand height of 151 metres. Sited on a glacial shelf, the Knowe of Yarso is a chambered cairn about 5,000 years old which was found…
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Swona
This must be my laziest post by far. I had read about the witch of Swona in Jennifer Westwood and Sophia Kingshill’s book “The Lore of Scotland: A guide to Scottish legends” but I never expected to get so close. Swona is a smallish island west of the southernmost tip of South Ronaldsay and the…
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Loch an Eilein
The “Lake of the Island”. And on the island a castle. A castle that was unsuccessfully stormed by Jacobite troops in 1690. Long after that battle, ospreys nested there. King George V came, soon after his coronation in 1911, especially to view them. Apparently the loch was dammed to create artificial floods to float logs…
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Bass Rock
I must confess, I have never set foot on the island. But it looked so white in the October sunshine and clear air I couldn’t resist a photo. The whiteness comes from the thousands of gannets and other sea birds that live on this gigantic lump of basalt. Look closely and you can make out…
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Easdale
The small island of Easdale lies a short ferry ride off the bigger island of Seil. It could fit inside a kilometre grid square and rises to a grand height of 38m., yet it has been transformed by quarrying for slate predominately for roof tiles that were shipped to cities all over Britain. The industry…
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Gruinard Bay
Fuelled by President Trump in a blatant attempt to shift blame for the handling of the coronavirus epidemic from himself, the suggestion that the virus was manufactured in a Chinese laboratory has now hit the mainstream media rather than being confined to conspiracy theorists in the darker reaches of social media. But it would do…
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Coquet Island
An RSPB reserve about 1½ km offshore at Amble. Apparently it’s home to a colony of Roseate Terns. In the 7th-century the monk Cuthbert, living as a hermit, met Ælfflæd, Abbess of Whitby here. The island’s isolation appealed to many later medieval hermits and became a Benedictine monastic cell linked to Tynemouth Priory. The tower…
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Farne Islands
The evening sun falls on the lighthouse on Inner Farne seen through a narrow sound mapped as Piper Cut. Three and a half kilometres away. We were anchored off Big Harcar and about to jump into the shallow water to “swim with the seals”. A brilliant experience. The Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland,…
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Derwent Water
A day of dramatic skies and swirling clouds. Who needs fireworks? Derwent Water is the third-largest lake in the Lake District. Derwent Island is its largest island and was once owned by Fountains Abbey. Today it is a National Trust property and is the lake’s only inhabited island. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Inchmurrin
A still misty morning on Loch Lomond. Inchmurrin is the largest island on the loch. The name is derived from St. Mirin, an Irish monk who came to Scotland in the first century. The island was the site of a chapel dedicated to the saint.