Monthly Archives: January 2009

Three climbers killed in avalanche on Glencoe’s Buachaille Etive Mor

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Three climbers have been killed in an avalanche on Buachaille Etive Mor, the mountain guarding the entrance to Glencoe. Two are brothers in theeir sixties and from Northern Ireland -  Eamonn and John Murphy and one is a Scot from Monifeith, Brian Murray.

Helicopters were called to the mountain at 12.00 on Saturday (24th January) when a total of nine people, in different parties, were caught up in the avalanche. One was an RAF aircraft from Lossiemouth and the other from the Royal Navy’s HNS Gannet.

Buchaille Etive MorThe RAF SAR helicopter from Lossiemouth took two people off the mountain and flew them to Belford Hospital in Fort William. One man was pronounced dead on arrival and the second died later. The third body was found later in the snow.

This afternoon (Sunday 25th police confirmed that there were three dead, including the two brothers.

Tom Richardson, a walker who  survived the avalanche and called the rescue teams said: ‘As I got to the top of the pass, the edge of the slope – it wasn’t corniced – broke away and we were taken down in an avalanche, some of us rode out the top of it and others got buried’.

Five others were rescued from the mountain and one person is being treated for a shoulder injury.

John Grieve, Glencoe Mountain Rescue leader, paid tribute to the team the dead men were with. He said: ‘The first two had been dug out by the party themselves. They did very well. They located one of the buried friends and started resuscitation. Then using their ice axes as probes they quickly located the second member of the party and dug him out as well’.

Northern Constabulary is advising climbers that the risk of avalanches will remain high for the next couple of days. Sport Scotland’s website is putting the risk at category four, on a scale of one to five.

The photograph, by Colin Souze and licensed under Creative Commons, shows a view from the summit of the Devil’s Staircase looking south over the east end of Glen Coe,  towards Buachaille Etive Mòr with Creise and Meall a’ Bhuiridh beyond.

On Rabbie Burns’ 250th anniversary, Inveraray reminds itself that he wasn’t impressed with the town

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Inveraray 250th Anniv Burns SupportHomecoming Scotland 2009 begins with Burns and ends with St Andrew and Inveraray Burns Club held its 3rd Burns Supper on the 250th birthday of the Bard, Rabbie Burns. The event was a sell out and the guests ate well on the traditional Burns supper of Haggis and Neeps.

The location was the Argyll Hotel where the Bard stayed on his only visit to the town. The Club’s President, Jim McMillan, delivered the Immortal Memory and reminded members of the bards not so happy visit to Inveraray.

Burns was not impressed with by the welcome he got when he arrived at Inveraray in June 1787. In fact he was so un-impressed that he left his feelings for posterity, scratching the following verse on the hotel window:

Who e’er he be that sojourns here
I pity much his case
Unless he come to wait upon
The Lord, their god, “His Grace”
There’s naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger:
If providence has sent me here,
T’was surely in an anger.

(Robbie Burns June 1787)

In mid June 1787 Burns saddled up his faithful mare, Jenny Geddes and rode out of Inveraray for the West Highlands. It is assumed that Burns was collecting subscriptions for the Edinburgh Edition on this tour and that he was accompanied by Dr George Grierson and Mr George Gairdner of Ladykirk.

The farthest extent of this tour was Inveraray, seat of John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll. It was unfortunate for Burns that the committee of the British Fisheries Society, of which the Duke was President, was meeting at Inveraray prior to selecting Tobermory as a new fishing port in the Island of Mull. The result was that the castle was full, the local inn was crowded with guests and Burns got very poor service – hence the rage he vented on the window pane.

At the Supper last night (24th January), the guests were entertained into the wee hours with song and verse. The highlight of the evening was an extremely energetic and amusing recital of Tam O’ Shanter by Secretary Kenny Stark.

The photograph shows Blatherskite delivering the entertainment at the Inveraray Burns Clubs’ Burns Supper on 24th January 2009.

Homecoming 2009 and a big day at For Argyll

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Today is the official start date for Homecoming Scotland 2009 and it is the start of two developments at For Argyll.

We are launching our own contribution to the national celebration of Scotland that is Homecoming 2009, running from Burns Night to St Andrews Day on 30th November.

From today onwards, For Argyll is launching Homecoming Argyll, a series of features, interviews and quirky facts pulling together people, communities and business in Argyll with people, businesses and communities all over the world with historical and accidental connections to this place.

It will be an ongoing lucky dip where the reach of Argyll will be better mapped and a new worldwide Argyll community will be set in motion. It’s about fun, an extended circle of contacts and more places to go.

This network of information and people may be launched today but it will not end on 30th November, It will become a permanent and growing feature of this site, keeping Argyll’s connections alive, meaningful and intriguing.

The second development today is with the site itself. At some time later on when you visit or revist the site, it will have changed. The change is quite a major one and it is still ongoing, so you can expect to see a whole series of quiet developments in services, functions, navigation and features over the next couple of months.

The For Argyll audience, internally and externally, is a large one and hungry for information on Argyll, its places, communities, achievements, resources and concerns. The site development is designed to support these interests as fully and efficiently as possible.

So wherever you are in the world, if you have an interest in Argyll or any conection of any kind with it – however coincidental or daft – let us know about it.

Guests at Jura’s Barnhill pestered by Orwell stalkers

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Barnhill, beyond Ardlussa in the north end of Argyll’s Isle of Jura is under siege. It is the house where George Orwell stayed when he wrote his then futurisrtic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, predicting the surveillance-obsessed and restrictive legislations of David Blunkett and Jacqui Smith.

With no central heating and no generator, Barnhill is too cold and dark to be let in the winter but it is a holiday home on the market from May to October. People renting it are regularly finding Orwell-obsessives peering trough the windows and wandering around this very remote property where they had expected peace and privacy to be guaranteed.

Just how remote Barnhill is and just how much effort the Orwell-experience stalkers are prepared to put in to satisfy their habit is clear when you realise that a rough track beyond Ardlussa delivers you 4-5 miles short of the house. And the usual route to Jura involves a ferry to neighbouring Islay, a drive across that island to take another short ferry to the south of Jura ,with a long and difficult drive to the north end still ahead.

Kate Johnson’s family own and rent Barnhill, marketing it as a widerness experience in an island with around 200 people and 6,500 red deer. Mrs Johnson says: ‘People appear here from all over the world. They usually start walking up here in April although you even get them walking up in the winter time. … It’s a private house and if it is let out and people are there for a holiday they don’t want people poking their noses through the windows’.

But they are doing just that and its an eerie echo of the always-under-scrutiny world Orwell envisaged in the novel.

Isle of Lewis to host one of world’s largest ‘wave farms’ generating renewable energy

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It has just been announced that Sladar on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides is to be the location for a wave farm generating up to 4MW, enough to power around 1,500 local houses.

The project is a collaboration between npower Renewables and Wavegen and is expected to generate  not only electricity but about 70 jobs in the area. It is one of the first marine renewable energy projects to be approved in the UK.

First Minister, Alex Salmond, announcing the go-ahead, said: ‘Today’s announcement is a significant step in Scotland’s journey to become a world leader in renewables’. Director of the conservation body WWF Scotland, Richard Dixon, said: ‘Scotland is a world leader on wave power and continued support for these green energy scheme will deliver huge export benefits in technology and expertise’.

Inveraray’s Eden Deli goes from strength to strength

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A relatively new business that has significantly added to lifestyles in and around Inveraray – the Eden Deli – is already extending its services.

Part of what it does is cook fresh meals daily both to order and for counter sales. This is welcomed by people out at work who can order and pick up at either end of the day because the delis hours are long. It’s also making life very different for single elderly people who would not cook for one.

Now the deli is adding three more services on this front: an extended vegetarian menu; weekend specials; and a slimmer’s menu.

Barbara, one of the two partners in the business and cook to the 12th Duke of Argyll for many years, has, enterprisingly, been to discuss menus with the ladies swimming club. Most swim to slim and to stay slim and are very diet conscious so Barbara has discussed food preferences and recipes with them. She is now cooking some trial dishes for them that will lead to a special dietary need service.

ForArgyll Awards 2008 Winners’ Certificate Citations

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An Taigh Osda: Best Accommodation and Best Restaurant

  • It was clear from what was said in the nominations and from the sources of the votes cast for An Taigh Osda that this young boutique hotel and restaurant already has a devoted following. This response to the quality of its accommodation and its food was not only encouragingly strong in its local context but drew significant votes from well beyond Islay and from well beyond the UK. Such evidence is testimony to the extent to which a wide range of tastes and expectations values this new hospitality business, heightened now with its triumph over its well established and highly rated fellow finalists.

Inveraray & District Pipe Band: Best Group Achievement

  • This award has gone to a group achieving the highest possible recognition – World Champions – in one of the greatest challenges any group can face. Playing together as musicians in highly competitive circumstances and in a form of musical performance also requiring physical coordination and the greatest discipline is a severe test for any group. Inveraray & District Pipe Band is mainly a young group, making this achievement remarkable. Nominations and voting testified to gratitude for its contribution to community life and to the lives of its young people and to its worldwide respect.

Angus Gray Stephens: Best Individual Achievement

  • This was a very closely fought and competitive award category and it went to its youngest contestant. The nature of the nominations and the sources of the votes for Angus Gray Stephens demonstrate significant respect for the achievements of a young sailor in a sport demanding a high degree of skill and a fast strategic intelligence. It was also evident that the achievement of national recognition and selection for inclusion in one of the national squads in the cut-throat Topper Dinghy class gave pride to Argyll and hope for future success.

The Robin Jenkins Literary Award: Best Arts Website

  • Both the nominations and the votes for the Robin Jenkins Literary Award Website were a tribute to the man whose own achievements the literary award exists to celebrate. The encouragement and support it offers to other and emerging artists was also clearly held in great respect. The geographical spread of the sources of the votes in support of this contestant spoke equally for the cultural reach of Robin Jenkins and for the award that keeps his name engaged with his art and with its development.

Islay Weblog: Best Blog and Best Community Website

  • This website emerged the winner in not one but two closely fought award categories, each of which recorded a huge and internationally widespread vote. It was evident in the nominations and in the votes that this website is regarded both by the islanders of Islay, which it exists to serve and by visitors and would-be visitors as an inventive and informative representative of an important place. The fact that this site is so strongly embedded in its place and held in such affection by it is the strongest possible evidence of an exemplary online service, particularly since it is produced by an honorary Ileach in the Netherlands.

Lismore Armistice Day Event: Coming Home Again: Best Community Event

  • The strong support for this winning contestant in an important award category reflected the profundity of the achievement. Coming Home Again saw a group of young people led, inspired and freed to explore, identify with and conjure the presence of the lives of people from their place but from a very different time and from an experience one hopes remains foreign to them. The gift to a community of the recovered local lives given new expression and given back was poetic, powerful and innovative in performance and crossed the generations.

Ardrishaig Community Council: Best Community Initiative

  • Community Councils are often the Cinderellas of democracy. This award demonstrates the degree of support and recognition that exists widely for a Community Council which has regenerated itself and is energetically setting about regenerating its community. The nominations and the votes for Ardrishaig Community Council came from residents, businesses, officials and from other communities. This creates a picture of embedded and three-dimensional local respect for initiative and of generous acclamation from outside its own community.

Loch Fyne Oyster Shop: Best E-commerce Website

  • This award was introduced to focus attention on a crucial aspect of business operations today. It is appropriate that the winner is a business which has led the field in a wide variety of innovations in Argyll and whose successes have they been supportive of Argyll. That those successes have been national and international is a tribute to the efficiency of Loch Fyne Oyster Shop’s online business. The nominations and the geographical spectrum of the vote supporting this contestant paid tribute not only to the product but to the online sales and service that distributes it so widely.

Ride of the Falling Rain: Best Event

  • This was one of the most keenly fought award categories, marked by the universally high calibre of the many finalists. Votes came in huge numbers from all over the world. The winner is an event utterly in tune with its place in almost every way. Ride of the Falling Rain – a one hundred mile collective round-Islay cycle ride – works with the resources, experiences and communality in the nature of the island. It marries good organisation with a keen awareness of the importance of the right information being available at the right time, with making friends  – and with a poetic cool evident in its name.

Appin of Yesteryear: Best Heritage Website (Joint Winner)

  • This website contributes to its community and to those interested in Appin not only by preserving records of the area but in energetic research retrieving the substance of lives lost and service unrecognised. The site is quite recent and has presentational innovations, which reinforce the chronological development of the area. The nominations and very high vote for Appin of Yesteryear told an interesting story. They showed the ideal but not often found pattern for such a service – supported widely and deeply by its own place, with votes coming from every part of the area and from areas immediately surrounding it.

Arrochar, Tarbet and Ardlui Heritage: Best Heritage Website (Joint Winner)

  • This website immediately demonstrates the spread and depth of its coverage with the recitation on its front page of the names of its wide-ranging and evocative townships. The range of researches and the records kept and made accessible are impressive and valuable in perpetuity. Unusually and importantly Arrochar, Tarbet and Ardlui Heritage embraces the recent past and present, the heritage of the future. Nominations and votes for this contestant in the high voting and most closely fought award category of all – ending in a dead heat – demonstrated the strength of its support in its own place and in its own diaspora.

The Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard: Best Local Newspaper Website

  • The great challenge for all newspapers today is the challenge of the Internet and constructive responses are slow to emerge. The Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard itself would not pretend yet to have engaged with this. Nominations and voting however, demonstrated less of an awareness of this issue than a very real and widespread respect for the newspaper. It was clear from these that the standard of its journalism is regarded as the best in Argyll’s stable of local newspapers, that it is seen as energetic and innovative in its copy and widely read in and beyond its area.

Crear: Best Music and Arts Organisation

  • The many and varied finalists in this award category demonstrated the strength of Argyll’s textured cultural base. It was fiercely contested with high and very widespread voting patterns. Crear emerged fro this as a strong winner. Its nominations and voting together showed a depth of understanding, respect and esteem for the unique service it provides to the creative arts and to the artistic life of Argyll. The marriage of support for artists with the creation of an interface between the artists and audiences in Argyll – all in a magical and remote location benefiting from the awareness the studio brings is individual and successful.

The Walking Theatre Company: Best Potential for 2009

  • This innovative theatre company is creating new and organic relationships between people, place, past, present and performance in Argyll and beyond. It is also bringing new performance forms to Argyll with energy and invention. The nominations and the voting patterns for The Walking Theatre Company made clear the widespread appreciation of its freshness and professionalism, now widely recognised in Scotland – and a strong wish to see more. A major recurring feature in its nominations was gratitude for its creative contributions to the development and reinforcement of community culture.

Our Power, Cairndow: Best renewable Energy Project

  • This award category was very competitive, with Argyll moving to become a major player in the development of renewable energy technologies. What marked out the winner, Our Power, from its competitors – evidenced in its nominations and in its votes, was that it is a project in tune with the time and quietly delivering energy with real benefit to its community, It was quick to engage in biomass energy generation and has also, enterprisingly, moved to take advantage of the Scottish Government’s prompt to explore the development of small local hydro-electric schemes. It is seen to deliver more than it promises.

Machrihanish Dunes Golf Course: Best Sporting facility

  • Competition between the finalists in this award category was very keen – but Machrihanish Dunes Golf Course emerged a very strong victor. Its nominations testified to its excitement of real interest as the first golf course in the UK to be built from the outset within a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The nominations indicated admiration for the way it has worked closely with Scottish Natural Heritage on the development. The local strength and the international reach of its voting support testified to its perceived role in a sport important to Argyll and supporting a powerful constituency amongst residents and visitors alike.

Islay Info: Best Tourist Website

  • In a notably energetic and high voting local, national and international award category, Islay Info was, in the end, a clear winner. The site is marked by its attention to detail in the information it provides, the spectrum of interests, resources and facilities it covers and the love of place which, almost on its own, would draw others to come there. Its nominations mentioned help and advice offered promptly in response to individual enquiries and at a level beyond the most optimistic expectations. Both nominations and votes evidenced local appreciation of the service the site provides and its impact on international visitors.

Easdale Island Community Hall: Best Village Hall

  • This is an award-winning hall in terms of its remarkable design. It is also a hall that lives a constantly active life in and for its community – usually filled with the music and laughter, stories and songs of residents, guests and visitors. It hosts a lively and respected arts programme and supports innovative local events. From the evidence of the awards nominations for Easdale Island Community Hall and the strength and geographical spread of voting in its support, islanders have pride in and affection for their hall and anyone who’s been there has never forgotten it.

Easdale Island: Best Visitor Attraction

  • Easdale Island is the king pin in a cluster of highly competitive local finalists in the ForArgyll awards 2008. The others were its fellow award winner, Easdale Island Community Hall as Best Village Hall; Easdale Hall Arts Programme in the Best Arts Organisation category; and the legendary Easdale World Stone Skimming Championships in the Best Event category. When you put this picture together with residents possessing the gift of light hearts and add the lot to the history and location of this island-like-no-other, it is not difficult to see why Easdale Island attracted a massive winning vote in this category.

RSPB Mara & Breagha: Best Wildlife Website

  • This website is a true blog, regularly – and conversationally – refreshed with information and insights into its subjects. Mara and Breagha are two young white-tailed sea eagles hatched on the Isle of Mull. The information this site provides on their development and adventures is heightened by its major innovation. The RSPB has had the sea eagle siblings electronically tagged, allowing their movements to be tracked by satellite and recorded on the website. This enables anyone anywhere to see the widening areas over which the eagles fly. Nominations and votes evidenced the international audience this website has built.

Carradale’s Lorne MacDougall piping and talking on BBC Radio Scotland

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Lorne MacDougall from Carradale in Kintyre, a talented young piper, is in the Final of the Young Trad Musician of the Year Award which will be broadcast live on 1st February on BBC Radio Scotland. He is the only piper in the final.

Tonight (24th January), in recognition of Lorne’s achievements,  BBC Radio Scotland’s piping programme will feature Lorne in interview and playing three sets. The tunes he has chosen to play include some about Kintyre and some composed by Kintyre musicians.

Tune in tonight.

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Keen walkers needed for Kilbride Farm walkover survey

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Kilmartin House Museum is running a Walkover Survey at Kilbride Farm from Monday 26th January to Thursday 29th January and from Sunday 1st February to Thursday 5th February.

If you are interested in getting involved in this, meet at 9.00am at Kilmartin House Museum.

You will obviously be outside for the duration and walking over rough ground for over 5 hours a day – so please come with appropriate clothing and provisions.

Katy Crowson and her colleagues are hoping to see you there.

Falklands War surrender signed on her deck – but you can buy a piece of Clydebuilt HMS Intrepid on ebay

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Not the most dignified end for a fighting ship but at this moment HMS Intrepid is being taken apart in the UK’s biggest recycling project – with hazardous marerials like asbestos already safely removed.

The Technical Demolition Services team dismantling her at Liverpool dockyard  aim to save almost 96% of her materials.

Around 11,000 tons oof steel, iron and copper will be melted down for re-use. Items like her engines, anchor chains, winches, metal lavatories, plastic mess chairs etc will be sent to recycling agents for selling on or sale as scrap.

Built at the John Brown yard on the Clyde, Intrepid was launched in 1964. She was the eighth Royal Navy ship of the name, the first being a 64-gun wooden ship, the Serieux, captured from the French in 1747.

Along with HMS Fearless, her sister ship, Intrepid was at the heart of the amphibious assault in the Falklands War. She was Command HQ for the Royal Navy Commandos, home to around 1,000 troops, 15 tanks and up to 4 Lynx Helicopters. The surrender ending the War was signed on her deck.

Many veterans wanted her to become a floating museum for the Falklands conflict. More than 300 of her former crew signed an online petition on the No 10 website calling for Gordon Brown to save her. They are now angry that with the petition open until 7th February, demolition has begun.

Some important items from the ship will be saved for purchase by former crew members as mementoes. Others will be put on ebay for public bids.

This has already begun, with the breaker Levesley International selling items including an officer’s bath (£50), a soap dispenser (£5) and the ship’s compass (£740).

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