Author: Fhithich
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Whaligoe
Whaligoe is famous for its 330 steps down to its tiny harbour. I say 330, but elsewhere 365 is claimed. I didn’t get the chance to count as the steps were closed for maintenance. The harbour, squashed into the narrow Whale Geo, was inspected by Thomas Telford in 1786 who described it as a “terrible…
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Achastle-shore, Herring fishing station
During the 19th-Century, the Scottish herring industry was the largest in Europe. The fish was a Continental delicacy and easily caught off the east coast of Scotland. At the peak of the herring boom, there were as many as 30,000 boats involved. In the early 19th Century, the British Government gave a bounty of £3.00…
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Dùn Glas
Exploring the coast north of Helmsdale, part of the John o’Groats Trail from Inverness to John o’Groats. It’s not yet a National Trail and is partially but not consistently waymarked. One thing that is particularly noticeable at this time of the year is the yellow gorse, or whin. Large swathes of it colour the hillside.…
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Càrn Liath
An Iron Age broch, a hollow dry-stone walled roundhouse between Golspie and Brora. Once thought to be purely defensive, the modern thinking now is that brochs were a status symbol, the stately home of their day. They are found throughout northern Scotland and were of considerable height. The tallest one standing today is 13 metres…
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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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St Helen’s Church, Aldcambus
On the road again. Heading north of the border, and stopped for a break. Spotted “St Helen’s Church (rems of)” in Gothic font on the map so an excuse for a run along the north Berwickshire coast. The church is considered to be early 12th-century. Dedicated to St. Helen, who was the mother of the…
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Bluebells in Cliff Rigg Wood
Another wet morning. The bluebells seem to be slow this year, although perhaps still a bit early. Cliff Rigg Wood is south facing so the flowers emerge earlier than in the north-west facing Newton Wood. These bluebells are in a gulley which is in a bowl at the south-east end of Cliff Rigg Wood known…
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Carlton Bank
I wrote just a few weeks ago about a farmer by the name of Joseph Hugill from Raisdale, who was attacked and robbed on his way home from Kirby. That was in 1892. 25 years earlier, another Hugill unfortunately died on his way home. A report in the Shields Daily Gazette, on the 12 Jan.…
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The Old Schoolroom, Bransdale
The former schoolhouse, now used as a community centre for the families of this isolated dale. In 1874, an old schoolmaster of Bransdale met an unfortunate end which caused an outrage in the dale, indeed it was headlined in the regional press as: THE OUTRAGE UPON AN OLD SCHOOL-MASTER AT BRANSDALE. The old schoolmaster was…
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Mount Vittoria, Garfitt Gap and Hasty Bank
Today is the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoléon Bonaparte, aged 51, whilst in exile on the island of St Helena in the middle of the Atlantic. The autopsy concluded he died of stomach cancer, but some believe he was killed by arsenic poisoning. This may not have been as sinister as it sounds,…