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Valtos: A Quay Built After the Storm
A village built on stone, debt, and salt water. Boats lost, promises broken, and a quay that came when the fishing was in decline. This is Valtos.
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The Bernera Riot of 1874
An idyllic beach yet hiding a dark history. In 1874, crofters defied a tyrannical factor, faced eviction, marched in protest, and won. It was the beginning of the fight for land reform in the Hebrides.
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Taigh a’ Bheannaich
A ruined chapel, vanishing huts, and a handful of monks who chose isolation on the edge of the Atlantic. Taigh a’ Bheannaich is where faith met the wind and held fast for 1,400 years.
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A Day Among Norse Horizontal Mills
A day of water-mills—horizontal ones, no less. We visited eight, or so I believe; one quickly loses count. It took me some time to grasp how they worked. The water wheel sits flat in a channel, its blades catching the water and spinning the millstone directly above. No gears, just force and gravity. The mills…
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Tràigh na Berie
This will be home for the next few days. A pause in the travelling. Tràigh na Berie lies on the west coast of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. According to those geomorphologically minded the beach, dunes and machair are expanding, apparently a rare occurrence in Scotland. This is going to be such a hardship.
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Ben Wyvis: A Hill Long Avoided, Finally Bagged
After years of driving past Ben Wyvis, I finally climbed it—through cloud, inversion, and a descent the guidebook called “grassy” but which turned out to be anything but. A solitary giant, well worth the wait.
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Badenoch: The Drowned Land with a Golden Shore
Off to Badenoch—where the land is “drowned,” the beach is golden, and the names are mangled by history and tourists alike. A break from the Moors, into the Highlands.
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Hulne Abbey: Where Friars Once Prayed, now a Nice Little Earner
It begins, as it so often does, with a memory. A passing mention of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves—was it truly only yesterday?—and already the location scouts of fate have dragged us to another of its sites, like an ear-worm in your head. Hulne Abbey. Founded in the 13th century by Carmelite friars in search…
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Witch Tree, Maiden Tree
This week, public outrage greeted the news that two men have been found guilty of cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree beside Hadrian’s Wall. Though obviously a cultural icon, sycamores are not native to Britain. The tree came from Europe and only arrived in Britain around the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The idea that Robin…
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The Forgotten Incline of Ingleby Moor
I had heard the National Park was up to something on the old railway incline up Ingleby Moor, so I went to see what the fuss was about. This is not the famous incline that once carried ironstone from Rosedale. It is one that runs roughly 350 metres to the south, leading to the Ingleby…
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