Astonished….
November 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
A couple of days ago I noticed comments appearing on this blog from the beasts of Internet hell… Yes, the spammers had found my tiny space on the web and had brought out their heavy artillery and were bombarding my site with all kinds of worthless comments.
I removed all those pathetic comments, decided to change the commenting system (I now moderate every comment before it’s released) and activated a cute plugin that zaps all presumed spam before it actually hits the moderation system of the system. Today I took a look at the logs to see the zapped comments. I was astonished to find over 500 comments for viagra, porn sites, drugs, investments etc. Incredible!
[digg-me]
Scots out by 2017…
November 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
Today I read a news item in which the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond was quoted with a statement that Scotland will be independent of Great Britain by the year 2017.
According to the article, this was the first time that a time frame was mentioned by an official. The Scots already have autonomy in the areas of health care, education, housing and transportation.
The statement is made in the same year that Scotland is joined with the British crown for 300 years.
[digg-me]
Mist or Myst?
November 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
Mist is definitely a phenomenon around here (it is indeed “The Misty Isle”). First, it tends to appear in just a couple of minutes. Second, it can be very local. We had a foggy day a couple of months ago - the world looked really miserable - while the weather in Dunvegan was clear and bright with sunshine…
Today was a misty day, however without any wind. The whole place looked like it was scooped from a scene from the computer game Myst: surreal, magical, light in all possible shades of gray, spiderwebs covered with little water drops, the loch as flat as a mirror… I felt like I should solve mysteries and look for the magical books to transport me to another Age…
However it was not a magical book but drizzle - which grew heavier over the afternoon - that transported me back to reality. By the time it neared half three it was better to get inside and leave the garden work for days with slightly better weather.
[digg-me]
Friends from Holland
November 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
From last week Thursday until Sunday we had Jeroen and Risette over from Holland. They’re friends of us and years ago we used to live in the same neighborhood in a housing estate in Utrecht. They had been in Scotland before and to Skye as well, during their honeymoon, 10 years ago. We were a bit uncertain about the weather, but it turned out pretty good.
On Friday we did the trip to Neist Point and walked the walk. Risette built a rock pile on the shore while Jeroen was hunting everybody down with his camera. The wind was fierce, but not too bad. To refuel, we stopped at An Strupag in Glendale and had a bowl of Cullen Skink soup (lovely!). Then we did a drive around Loch Dunvegan and afterwards headed to Waternish to visit Stein Inn for a pint.
Saturday we planned to go to Portree, as the weather forecast forebode pretty bad rain. But, they had it all wrong. It was cloudy but dry so we headed to the Coral Beaches after a semi full cooked breakfast (just eggs, bacon and tomatoes). We spent some time on the beaches admiring the magnificent views while the ladies collected shells. At about 13:00 we headed back to the car park and had lunch in the Dunvegan Castle restaurant. As a final outdoor event we headed to Orbost Beach and walked to the shore. Unfortunately the tide was high and it started to rain so we decided to head back home.
The shitting dog
November 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
A couple of miles down the road from our house on your way to Neist Point, you come through the village of Glendale. Just past the community hall, on your right, you will find a little restaurant called “An Strupag” (Gaelic for “cup of tea”). It’s a very special place and you have to be there to understand what it’s like. Besides good local food (we recently tasted the Cullen Skink which was delicious), they show a bit of artwork in a small gallery as you pass to the back of the place to visit the toilets.
Among the artwork on display are some small paintings depicting local scenery. All pictures are reasonably priced, somewhere between £10.00 and £50.00. That is… all but one. There’s one tiny painting, titled “Dog shitting in field” and its price tag reads… £1,000.00… Yes, that’s right! A whopping £1,000.00!! The painting shows a bright summer field with a human figure standing in it. Next to him/her there’s a shape of a border collie - not specifically painted in a certain position - but the suggestive title does its inevitable work here…
In total disbelief we left (”That must have been a printing error!”) but we will investigate further and report!!
Spammers
November 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
This blog has been discovered by the unholy spammers of this world. Today I’ve removed a fair number of comments which were nothing more than ads for drugs and even less interesting materials. To prevent this popping up and spoil my bandwidth I’ve decided that comments have to be moderated / approved before they appear.
So, if you enter a comment relating to any of my posts (which are appreciated) it will take a bit of time before the comment actually appears on the site… It’s a bit of a nuisance, but I’m sure none of you is interested in b******t comments on drugs, porn etc…
Welkom!
November 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
Welkom bij “The Dutch Corner”. Van tijd tot tijd zullen hier wat observaties van ons Schotse leven worden besproken. Het is leerzaam en uitdagend om in de Engelse taal te bloggen maar “je eigen moerstaal” is soms toch handiger. Deze kant van de blog zal geen foto materiaal bevatten en is meer gericht op de typerende verschillen tussen het Britse en het Nederlandse leven…
Commentaar is altijd welkom!
Glenbrittle revisited
November 12, 2007 | 1 Comment |
That title is not entirely correct but it was our second attempt at getting to Glenbrittle. The first time we tried, we missed the road sign just before you enter the village of Carbost.
The Glenbrittle road - a good quality single track road - will take you towards the south of the main part of Skye. You’re approaching the Cuillin mountain ridge, so you’re bound for some spectacular views along the way. As this was our first visit, we decided to park the car half way between the road that leads from Carbost to Glenbrittle. There are many parking places besides the road, most of them marked with the famous green signs indicating a walk. We choose one at random, and ended up at a rather stiff 9 mile walk.
The whole scenery reminded me a little bit of the road through Glencoe, although Glencoe looks a little bit more barren. The Glenbrittle road is next to a winding river, which must be lovely during the warmer days of summer. Today it was cold with a quite a blistering wind. When we eventually started our walk, the partially blue skies had almost disappeared. After 45 minutes of walking it started to rain and we decided to head back to the car.
Check out the pictures we made during the walk. It’s a gorgeous area with very nice footpaths, so no island hopping to prevent muddy feet. A part of the walk runs through forestry areas which add to the experience, varied with broad views across the glen and an impressive mountain ridge to the east. Definitely a place to visit again.
Unfortunately the pictures look quite dull. During our drive to Glenbrittle, the initial blue skies quickly disappeared to make place for heavy gray clouds full of rain…
Sumardale
November 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
Our house is built around a timber frame which was supplied by SkyeHomes, a local company specialized in designing typical Highland homes. Besides a portfolio of off-the-shelve designs, they offer a bespoke design service. This means that they design your house to your specific requirements and charge a nominal fee for that. In exchange they retain the copyright of the design so they can reuse the design for other customers as well. They also added our design to their portfolio and called it the “Sumardale”.
Having a tradition of naming their designs after local places, we were curious about Sumardale. We know for sure that Sumardale is a river on Skye, close to the Gesto Bay area. According to people from SkyeHomes it also used to be a crofting community which was depopulated during the Highland clearances. We’re not really sure why SkyeHomes choose this name. Maybe they just thought it sounded right.
Nowadays, hints to a once existing crofter community - remnants of houses - are not clearly visible like they are for example in the Osdale area close to the MacLeod’s Tables (although there are overgrown boulders visible that could point to remnants of old houses, but that’s not our area of expertise, so any opinion here would be presumptuous). The river Sumardale is there and so is a single farm house in the distance…
Guests
November 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment |
As we have friends over from Holland, there’s not much time to do the daily blogging. Fortunately I found time to stitch together a couple of pictures we took at Neist Point today. To the right you see the lighthouse. Enjoy!
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Latest music...
Hair (1968, Original Broadway recording). Some naughty lyrics for that time!!
An Rathad a Bhatarsaigh, by the Vatersay Boys