Scotland - Epilog Photos

Several of you have asked for more landscape photos of my trip around Scotland; here are eight, wrapping up this month's blog pictorially. Very scenic countryside indeed :-)
Put the mouse on each photo to get a short description of each photograph, please.

For the daily trip diary, click on the Scotland links in the sidebar upper right ---->>>

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 31, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Crock of Gold

Liam (IRL) asked last week for more pretty pictures of the sky. This one explains how one of the nearby houses in our village came to have a crock of gold in its chimney :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 29, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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My Obama/Merkel joke

Recently Barack Obama (number 44?) visited Germany here and met with our Chancellor Angela Merkel. Dr. Angela Merkel is a Wagner fan and wanted to get away quickly to see the opening performance of Wagner's opera "Parsifal" in Bayreuth. She mentioned she was going to the opera to Obama. Before dinner that evening, Obama thought he would surprise her by turning up at the same opera. So he called up the PR lady from the Ministry of Culture and asked her to take him.

In the first interval he asked her "Where's Mrs. Merkel? I can't see her here."
He was told in Wagner's opera "Parsifal".
"Where?" he asked, "I can't see her here."
"That's because we are hearing a cycle of European romantic music songs, also known as art songs, by Franz Schubert, because that's what YOU said YOU wanted to see!"
"No, I wanted to see Wagner's opera "Parsifal" too!"
"No, Mr. Obama, sir, you distinctly said 'Take me to your Lieder' " ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 27, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Judaism Joke

David (Israel) commented that I'd joked about Islam (on a friday, you noted?) and Christianity (last sunday, OK?) and asks when that irreverent Atheist (me) is going to do jokes on Judaism, "preferably highbrow, and not anti-semitic" ?

On a saturday, of course, David, so how about today :-)

Groups of religious fundamentalists of the Abrahamistic monotheistic variants get involved in a bloodthirsty war (nothing new there, peacelovers all) about which is the One True Scripture ^TM, Koran, Bible or Torah? . Who wins? Must be Judaism, because only they come out of the battle (@ Armageddon?) shouting : "Torah! Torah! Torah!"

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 26, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Your comments...

Joseph Nagy has asked (via Chip Camden ) why comments are turned off here. I choose to do without them, Joseph, to avoid having to prune offensive comments as required by our local laws. I refer you to my comments policy (see top of right sidebar). If you want to comment, mail me at , I collect the good ones ( ignoring spam) and post them here, usually on a friday, in lieu of a creation of my own :-)

Germany does restrict what we can say/write/see/show, particularly any NS stuff. For example the movies "Jud Süβ" by Veit Harlan, "Die Rothschilds" by Erich Waschneck and "Triumph des Willens" by Leny Riefenstahl are forbidden here. Although available via Amazon (Canada) and eBay (USA) it is a crime to import, let alone show, them. Thus anything officially deemed offensive or illegal appearing in my comments would need to be removed pronto. Yes, it has happened, which is why I censor comments.

NZ blogreader Kevin read last friday's "Conduct Unbecoming" post and sent me by way of comment this banner :-) Eighteen of you agreed with the tenor of my posting.

Diana (UK) sent this bit of the Bard's poetry, but didn't say whether she was really commenting on last friday's "Conduct Unbecoming" post or on monday's "Local Hero".

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:...

That's Shakespeare's Hamlet , Act 1, scene 5, if my memory serves me correctly.

As a result of monday's blogpost "Local Hero", four mainline journalists wrote asking me to have the pilot and skydiver contact them. So bloggers CAN be useful after all :-)

Liam (IRL) wants more pretty pictures of the sky. Next week, OK, Liam?

Last monday I blogged about Bizarre sexual practices - actually just making a bilingual pun - but several of you saw fit to point me to the most amazing YouTube videos and web-pages. Alas I'm too prudish to reproduce those feeeeelthy weblinks here. But yes, Cappy, your taste IS peculiar, in fact, it stinks! Meanwhile, Jake (USA) - adapting my bilingual pun - tells me that american bizarre sexual practices include bestiality with a donkey. Surely it's enough reading about various Republican politicians' escapades ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 25, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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After the dawn rain...

The water-covered flat roof of my garage reflected the sky beautifully, don't you think?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 24, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Photoshopped ?

Has someone photoshopped the gun out of this Sky News photo of Gordon Brown?

Seriously though, assume a world leader were to be captured by terrorists whilst in the Middle East. How much ransom money would you pay to get Gordon Brown set free ? In the case of Dubya, wouldn't we all pay MORE to have them keep him ? ;-)

Caveat : This is political satire, not to be taken seriously.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 22, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Local hero

Oh man! Would I have been that brave and so cool-headed? I doubt it.

Near disaster struck recently 3,000ft above the Joint Service Parachute Centre at Bad Lippspringe (not 20 miles from where I live). We civilian pilots fly the british parachute jumpers (hobbyists) in large-cabined single engined planes there. We don a single seat-pack parachute (for our own safety) and fly the plane from which all seats but ours have been removed. The side door has been removed too. The (double-chuted) jumpers pile in the back, and when we reach the jumping point they step out onto the undercarriage then leap from there, opening their chutes soon at these low altitudes.

Last week it all went horribly wrong :-(

The last jumper didn't clear the step properly and his main chute got entangled in the undercarriage. So he was being dragged along by his shroundlines and battered in the slipstream. Landing(at 60+mph), even on grass, with him being dragged along by the undercart would have at least seriously injured the jumper. But the pilot heard him screaming, coolly put the plane on autopilot (just a wing-leveller afaik), unbuckled and clambered back over his seat, stepped out of the side door onto the undercarriage-step - no safety harness attaching him to the plane - leaned down and (using his own shroud-knife) cut through the shroudlines of the jumper's main chute. The jumper then fell away and landed safely using his reserve chute. The pilot then fought the slipstream to clamber back up into the plane which he subsequently landed safely.

Wow! Rather he than I. Would I have been that brave and so cool-headed? I doubt it. I shall recommend him to Buck House for the UK's airmanship medal!

PS : The Brit press is reporting this tale today, albeit with a wrong (stock) photo.

PPS : This is a fictionalised account, I was NOT there at the time, so take this version with a grain of salt please. Fox News has the plane as a BN Islander, which is a twin. Which is plausible in Bad Lippspringe.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 21, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Sunday's divine message from Rio, by Jove

If you really need the crutch of religion because you are too weak to be an atheist, then please at least make sure you choose the clearly superior god(s), by Jove!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 20, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Conduct unbecoming to gentlemen :-(

Sadly, I must tell you a tale of what is IMHO morally reprehensible behaviour today.

Once upon a time there was a person - whom I shall call young Mr. E - who was the owner of a certain domain-name in the internet. Mr. E had had no great success filling said domain with interesting content, Google certainly didn't rate him at the time. Another blogger - Mrs. C - offered to fill the domain with attractive content. Within three years of hard work she had pushed the domain up to worldwide number 1 for the domain-relevant keywords according to Google. No effort at all was required of young Mr. E who merely (and in retrospect sadly) remained the domain owner.

Subsequently young Mr. E passed ownership of the domain over to a third-party, a certain Mr. L. This, although he had promised it (in writing) to Mrs. C who had made it Google's number 1 through her content. Young Mr. E had thus gone back on his word - morally reprehensible - this is certainly not something a gentleman would do.

The aforementioned Mr. L did not of course get Mrs.C's content, just the domain-name. He now proposes to start a begging blog there with his own content. This too, I find morally reprehensible, certainly not something a gentleman would do. Why? Because Mr. L effectively inherits the worldwide number 1 Google ranking, at least for a while, until Google gets to rate his content. And because Mr. L effectively inherits several hundred hits a day from people who want to read Mrs. C's content, not his. When he counts his 'success', he needs to realise it is not from his 'efforts' or the 'non-effort' of young Mr. E; instead they are lilliputians standing on the shoulders of a giant, the success earned over 3 years by Mrs. C. Have they no shame?

A hollow victory, 'gentlemen?', undeserved, attained IMHO immorally, socially surely reprehensible, conduct unbecoming to gentlemen. I despise you !

Sadly, tales like this are not uncommon on the internet. A good friend in Scotland was also the sufferer of domain-grabbing some years ago. His popular blog - which had achieved press-mentions in the UK - was stolen by a gay-porn domain-grabber. So he too lost a good Google placing and several hundred daily hits. After a while the gay-porn domain-grabber dropped the domain, because his own content was so third-rate that people lost interest and he had few readers left. A not unusual scenario.

Mr. Spike Milligna - the well-known typing error - sums up that scenario here :-

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 18, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Divided we fall ?

Some of my blogreaders appear to be still having a problem with arithmetical division, my search-query report tells me. Amongst my maths pages there is one on Divisibility by prime numbers under 50. The aforementioned searchers appear not to have grasped why I only give the divisibility check shortcuts for the prime numbers. Specifically they searched for "test of divisibilty by 6" and "Divisibilty by composite numbers under 50". Apart from their spelling mistakes screwing up their searches, it seems I need to explain again that :-

A number N is divisible by a composite number C if it is divisible by all of the prime factors of C (e.g. A and B, where C=A*B).

Thus number N is divisible by the composite number 6 if it is divisible by both 2 and 3.

All clear now, you division-belles?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 17, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Places visited in Scotland

Patricia has asked me to complete my blog-diary of the trip around Scotland by providing an outline map of Scotland marking the places to which I went that are mentioned on my blog-diary of my trip. Consider it done (see link), Patricia.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 16, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Bizarre sexual practices ;-)

An upset Jenny Taylor moans (sic!) about my misuse of her name in the previous post for a "cheap shot at sexual innuendo", whereas A. Pashen gets it all the time, she wrote. I'm sorry, I'll say that again, gets wierdo phone-calls punning on her name, which is why she's gone ex-directory. Be that as it may . . .

So let me tell you about the final consistent example people almost always use when the talk turns to bizarre sexual practices. Perhaps you've noticed it too ?

Ever since I was an innocent teenage lad, barely (sic!) into the missionary position, I'd noticed that whenever the talk turns to bizarre sexual practices people always use one consistent example : "Have anal sex on a sticky substance" or words to that effect. Didn't matter whether the subject was sado-masochism, sheep-shagging or lonely gays on a pogo stick (whatever ;-), someone would always wrap up the discussion with that very example : "Have anal sex on a sticky substance", said colloquially.

Was I missing something? I was curious (yellow?) & needed a discreet way of asking, as polite as Hollywood movie ratings, like the 'merkins have, God bless their little R-souls.

And so when someone said "Have anal sex on a sticky substance, as the French say", innocently I asked for clarification : "What exactly IS it that the French say?"

And got the usual bizarre-sex example reply , literally : "Shag an arse on goo!"

It was only then that I realised that everyone had been quoting a line in French ;-)

Bizarre sexual practices??? "Chacun à son goût" ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 14, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Your Feedback this week

Got a phone call from "Jenny Taylor here" again, this time about tuesday's maths article Special Cases. Now I think I must be getting obsessed with sex in my old age, or else I was wearing a Freudian slip instead of a hearing aid, because I could swear the first thing she said was "Genitalia hair" ;-) Be that as it may, she pointed me to a recent xkcd cartoon, fittingly from the following day :-

On the biking-around-Scotland theme, Chet (USA), tells me he too will soon be visiting England (sic!) and - inspired by my BritBike photos on July 3 - wants to buy a decent classic bike to ship back home; so do I have any addresses for him in the UK?
Well, Chet, here are some links, but I have no experience with any of them :-

• Lannivet Motors (in Cornwall)
• DK Classics (in Staffordshire)
• RWHS classic bikes (also Staffordshire)
• North Leicester M/Cs (Italobikes)
• Clarke's Classics (in Kent)
• D.R. Classic Motorcycles (Burton-upon-Trent)
• Elm Villa Classics (in Suffolk)

Out of the blue came a mail from long-lost Anna Pashen who hails from Brisbane, Australia. She asks about geographical variations in the price of fuel at the pumps :- "Soon I will be venturing north . . . where fuel will be more expensive again. The further north you go in Australia, the more expensive fuel becomes due to the cost of shipping it over land (by water there are big restrictions due to the barrier reef). I suspect the sunny north may have developed a record number of moped drivers by now. Usually it's about 30-40cents more pricey up there which makes me very nervous for farmers."

It being a small world, I met some folks from Brisbane (Oz) when staying at Duntulm Castle on the Isle of Skye and have asked them to take back a card for Anna, so I hope it reaches her. Certainly in Scotland there was a price gradient. Fuel was cheapest in the lowlands (Glasgow-Edinburgh areas) and got more expensive (and scarce) the further north (and closer to the actual North sea oilfields!) that I got. Transport costs?

HaggisChorizo has been complaining about abusive and obscene comments on his blog. I turned comments off in this blog for that very reason; you have to mail any and all comments to me. Mind you, some of the obscene comments I got were quite amusing. One of them - telling me to Piss off! - was co-signed by Yuri, Nate, and Mick Tate ;-)

Peter Harris and I have been discussing noise-cancellation SW. Maybe that's what HaggisChorizo needs for his blog's comments ;-) Peter gives us a neat video link about noise cancelling telephones. Afaik ANR (automatic noise reduction) works by having a separate external mike pick up the undesired noise signal which is then subtracted from the desired internal signal so that when both sounds (message - noise) and (+noise) arrive at the eardrum, only (message) is left. ANR can take out 25 to 35 dB of noise AFAIK. Sadly this situation does not apply to my bike videocam, no way to distinguish between engine sound (wanted) and airflow noise (unwanted) :-(

Alaskan blogreader friend Klaus has put his De Havilland plane on amphibious floats. He even sent me a half a dozen unfuzzy close-up but scenic photos of his Beaver ;-)

Finally, congratulations to young Heiko, who just turned 18 (= adult) yesterday. This means you can do anything you like now, Heiko! Well, at least until you get married ;-) [This old joke courtesy of Horace Rumpole and SWMBO (She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed)].

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 12, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Talking Scots, not English ;-)

Recently I've been blogging my motorcycle tour of Scotland. Of course I had few problems understanding the various local dialects of Scots spoken there. But I met a group of Belgian bikers on the ferry back to mainland Europe who complained bitterly that the English they had learned in school did not suffice for them to understand what was being said. That's because they'd been taught English and not Scots ;-)

But, dear blogreaders, I'll leave you to judge for yourselves. Here's a 6 minute video of old Billy Stark, who hails from Selkirk and speaks Scots with the local Lallans accent.

Well, how did you cope? True Sassenachs will fail to understand him at all ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 10, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Special Cases

Coaching some kids who had fallen behind in their maths classes, so I thought I'd pass these pearls of wisdom on to you, dear blogreaders, too. Their complaint was that "didn't understand all these special cases". The exam question with which they were having difficulty was :- Which pairs of equations represent a special case, and why?

1. 3x+4y=12 ; 4x+3y=11
2. 3x+4y=5 ; 6x+8y=11
3. 3x+4y=5 ; 6x+8y=10

Pairs of equations like these which are simultaneously true and are linear ( i.e. they can be represented graphically as straight lines) are known as simultaneous linear equations. School examples will generally only have two unknowns (x and y). Let's take the first pair and draw their graphs as in the sketch on the left below. 3x+4y=12 is the equation of the line B-B' and 4x+3y=12 is the equation of the line A-A'. There is just one point of intersection (where both equations are simultaneously true) and you can calculate it from the equation pair using these simple steps :-

1. Multiply the 1st equation by the x-factor of the 2nd equation, getting 12x+16y=48.
2. Multiply the 2nd equation by the x-factor of the 1st equation, getting 12x+9y=33.
3. Subtract these, getting 7y=15; thus at the intersection y=15/7.
4. Multiply the 1st equation by the y-factor of the 2nd equation, getting 9x+12y=36.
5. Multiply the 2nd equation by the y-factor of the 1st equation, getting 16x+12y=44.
6. Subtract these, getting 7x=8; thus at the intersection x=8/7.

And so equation one has one unique solution which is the normal case.

The sketch on the right represents the special cases. Note that the lines are parallel, there are NO intersections, and so the equations have NO solution. If we look at the second pair of equations ( 3x+4y=5 ; 6x+8y=11) we can see this. We can multiply the 1st equation by the x-factor of the 2nd equation, getting 18x+24y=30. We can multiply the 2nd equation by the x-factor of the 1st equation, getting 18x+24y=33. And because the x and y factors are the same, we can tell we have the parallel special case. Subtraction would give us 30=33 which is not possible, and so, NO solutions.

Now let's see what happens when the distance between the parallel lines shrinks to zero. That is, the line C-C' becomes the same as the line D-D'. Both lines are the same. This can be seen in equation pair three (3x+4y=5 ; 6x+8y=10). Doing the same steps shows us that the x and y factors are the same and subtraction gives us 30=30 which is ALWAYS true, and so there are an infinite number of solutions in this second special case. There now, you non-maths-geeks, that wasn't too hard, was it? Easy!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 8, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Congratulations, Anne and Jana !

G ood friend and long-time biker Anne - she of the GS500 - had a major birthday last week. She's one L of a girl now, as the Romans would have counted ;-)

We were all invited to a lunch-party on saturday and I must say, she and her husband Peter did us a fine treat. I put on a pound ;-)

So this belated message is just to wish you health, happiness and many happy returns of the day. May the next 50 years be just as good as the first 50 ;-) Keep on biking . . .

And congratulations too, to my young friend Jana, who made her first free-fall parachute jump on saturday. 12,000 feet is a looooooong way down!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 7, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Ow to confooze a nidiot

Thanks to my Beetlefun friend Olaf, from whom I stole it.

Copied by Stu Savory on July 5, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 13, Trossachs to Newcastle

Several of you bikers reading this blog account of my trip have complained about a lack of bike photos (other than mine), so here they are today. The top one is a Wankel-engined Norton Commander in the ferry queue at Newcastle. What a fantastic sound Wankels make!

This second photo is just to give you Brit-Bike fans something to drool over. It's a homebuilt NorVin, not unlike the one I wrote an adulatory poem about, back in 1965 :-)

Happy now, bikers?

I spent the last morning of my Scotland trip touring the Trossachs (Callender, Loch Lomond, Loch Katrin etc) and taking one last look at the heather on the moors.

Then I headed off down to Newcastle for the ferry, via the Edinburgh ring road (big mistake) and the A road through Galashiels, where there are literally dozens of speed cameras (whence the logo at the top of today's blog ;-). The ferry was 101% full, so imagine stepping through between 100 yards of interleaved strapped-down bikes ;-)

Chopper-Alex asked what places did I regret missing? That'd include Castle Stalker which is on a tiny Island on Loch Laich up near Fort William (I just plain forgot to go there!); some of you may recognise it from the Monty Python films. I also would have liked to have seen Edinburgh Castle, but I was deliberately avoiding the big cities. And down south nearing Newcastle, I'd planned on spending an hour at Hadrian's wall, built by the Romans all those centuries ago. However that would perhaps have left me late for the ferry and so I skipped it. Also, I could no longer find Auchenshoogle ;-) Nor did I have the time to see Brigadoon ;-) But, despite midges & rain, a great holiday :-)

Kathy (US) has asked if there are are companies which organise tours like mine (I did my own organisation). Take a look at the HotScot page at Europemoto, Kathy.

Pierre (Belgium) morbidly wants to know about the accident statistics in Scotland. Why?

Apropos statistics, I was 15 days on the road (2 crossing mainland Europe), rode only 5000 kms as planned (to avoid having to renew tyres during the trip), and consumed 239 litres of Super. That's only 4.8 ltrs/100 kms compared to my usual 6.1 at home. Probably due to my much lower speeds in Scotland. My average country-road rolling speed (excluding breaks etc) was 68 km/h instead of 82km/h here in Germany, so I spent 74 hours in the saddle, that's almost 5 hours per day actually moving. Stopped to take upwards of 400 photos (2 chips), of which I have shown you 70 (=16%). Met a few scottish bloggers and other interesting people, to all of whom I say Thanks!

Copyright ^© Stu on July 3, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 12, Stirling Castle

I promised Schorsch some photos of Stirling Castle, famous for its involvement in the Battle of Bannockburn. This is what the internal entrance (portcullis gate) looks like, of course in 1314 (Bannockburn) the castle was much smaller and wood (geddit?) have been surrounded by spiked wooden palisades rather than (15th century) stone walls.

Outside the castle is a monument to Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland at the time of the battle of Bannockburn where he defeated Edward "Longshanks" of England. Inside, well-informed guides were dressed up in period costumes. The man in the chain mail played the role of Sir Philip de Mowbray, who held Stirling Castle prior to the battle. He was NOT from the Czeck republic, which disproves once and for all that the Czeck is in the mail ;-) The lad on the left played his squire. Yours truly got to try on the replica medieval helmet, albeit without the horsehair padding. Damn tight fit on me, so no padding! Surprisingly good visibility and ease of breathing, but loud when whacked :-( Folks, even in 1314 you could damage your hearing, whacking off (your helmet) ;-)

Over the centuries (this castle is many centuries older than the US of A) new sections were added to the castle. This piece looks like it dates from the Queen Anne period.

The throne room is huge and very high. It contains some impressive old tapestries :-

Over on the other side of the valley you can see the monument to Sir William Wallace who won the battle of Stirling Bridge, 17 years before Bannockburn.

Many of you readers will have seen the film Braveheart in which this battle was portrayed. Lots of historical inaccuracies in the movie of course. To quote (from Wikipedia) but two :- One of the most notable inaccuracies is the idea that Isabella of France, wife of Edward II, had an affair with William Wallace, and that Edward III was the result of this liaison. Their supposed affair occurs in the film after the Battle of Falkirk, which occurred in 1298, when Isabella was about 3 years old. To compound the film's time-line problem, Edward III was born in 1312, some 7 years after Wallace's death, and 14 years after Falkirk. As well, historian Sharon Kressa notes that the film contains numerous historical errors, beginning with the wearing of belted plaid by Wallace and his men. She points out that in the period in question, no Scots "wore kilts of any kind," and when highlanders finally did begin wearing the belted plaid, it was not "in the rather bizarre style depicted in the film".

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 2, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 11, Loch Ness to Braemar

Kicking off this month's blog by giving you the last three days' diary entries of my motorcycle trip through Scotland. The first 10 days of the trip are in the June archive.

Having sobered up after the sampling-trip through the Glen Ord whisky distillery :-) ,
I next rode down through Drumnadrochit to Loch Ness to look at Urquart Castle :-

I refused to pay their iniquitous entrance fee to wander around the ruin and so just took the obligatory photo here from outside the fence. I was not the only one!
Back in Drumnadrochit, there was the Nessie exhibition complete with metal mockup, here a couple of cheesy photos ;-) There's a poor Wallace museum there too, FWIW.

My next stop was at the Bridge of Carr. The old (cart?)-bridge is magnificent, a simple bow of pure stone blocks, hundreds of years old, the brook babbling quietly beneath.

The road to Braemar takes you through part of the Cairngorms, the beautiful mountain range (still with some snow on top) affording some spectacular views.

My final stop before tiny Braemar was to see Balmoral Castle, scottish home of the UK's royal family (in August). For your entrance money you get a long walk up to the castle, a walk around the outside and a peek into one room only, the ballroom :-(

Alun (England) has asked me what were the best whiskies and beers in Scotland? Well I only visited two distilleries, Talisker on Skye and Glen Ord. I preferred the Talisker. As far as the scottish beer is concerned, my favourite proved to be the Black Ale brewed by the Isle of Skye Brewery, available on draught at e.g. the Duntulm Castle hotel.

Schorsch asks "didn't you visit any towns?". Almost none, I wanted to avoid big towns and concentrate on the scenery and the small single track roads to out-of-the-way places. I did visit Stirling, but only the castle, which I'll be showing you soon.

OT Bad News, I'm afraid. US blogger Winston Rand died suddenly at the weekend; my heartfelt condolences go to to his wife, Roomie. He was a good chap, and a thoroughly entertaining blogger. Thanks to Liz for the heads-up on this sad, sad, message today.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on July 1, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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