This has to be inspirational entrepreneurshiip at its best – private sector risk and an imaginative, intelligent reading of opportunity.

A new £2million vessel which aims to tap into Scotland’s growing renewable energy market was launched on Saturday, 19th May.

The Helen Burnie, built to a unique design at Macduff Shipyards in Moray, will create up to 12 new jobs once she is working to capacity.

The workboat is equipped with the latest technology to allow it to tackle specialist offshore windfarm and tidal survey work, as well as the more traditional workboat contracts.

At a time when many companies are laying people off, the venture represents a huge leap of faith in Scotland’s renewable energy market by Inverlussa Marine Services, a small family business based on the isle of Mull.

The company, which has two other vessels, has already carried out some tidal exploratory work off the islands of Skye and Islay.

And Ben Wilson, Inverlussa’s Operations Manager, speaking at the launch of the Helen Burnie in Oban, said he believes renewable energy opportunities have a lot to offer far-flung communities.

He said: “We think it’s a good time to invest in the renewables sector and the boat has been built completely with renewables in mind, because we do feel it is a sector with vast potential.

‘This is a state-of-the-art vessel, a total one-off design. It’s got the latest winch system and the latest crane.

‘It is a general purpose coastal supply vessel, available to assist with all the traditional marine service tasks which are the backbone of our business such as fishfarm feed deliveries and dive support work, but it is also kitted out to work on the construction stage of tidal and offshore wind farm sites.’

The company, evolved from a one man operation started by Mr Wilson’s father, Douglas, the company’s Managing Director, over 20 years ago, has employed 15 people in recent years.

As the Helen Burnie sailed off on her first delivery contract to the Shetland Isles, Mr Wilson said: ‘The new boat has already created six new jobs, all local jobs, but there will be up to twelve jobs created on the island, depending on the contracts we secure’.

The boat will be available for all logistical marine services, including cargo transport, general dive support, fuel and fresh water transfer, cable laying, container transport, plough dredging, anchor handling and towing work.

But Mr Wilson, whose company has received the backing of the Clydesdale Bank for the project, said: ‘Due to her versatility and high manoeuvrability we expect that Helen Burnie will be in great demand for a variety of renewable energy projects – from offshore wind farm work to tidal energy surveys.

‘There is a lot of money going into these windfarms and I think it is a great opportunity for the West Coast to be involved in an industry which is attracting investment.’

Argyll SNP MSP Michael Russell said: ‘It is great to see such a significant investment being made by a local company and it shows the huge potential of renewables in this area. I wish them every success with this exciting step forward.’

The Guardian on Monday published their monthly poll conducted by ICM. As readers will be aware, UK wide polls only provide a small sample of Scottish opinion.

Even the sample at UK level drops significantly once those who are not certain to vote (9%) do not know who they will vote for (23%) or refuse to answer (8%) are excluded.

In order to obtain a more significant sample I have averaged the Scottish sample over the last five months from the beginning of the year. This helps iron out what otherwise are results that appear out of context with recent actual election results.

The average Conservative support turns out at 14.4% which is close to their result in the recent local elections (13.31%). It places the March finding of Conservative support at 22% and the latest poll finding of Conservative support at 9% in a more likely context..

In every monthly poll this year the SNP leads and as the question is about how Scottish voters would vote in a Westminster general election held at the time of each survey, the outcome is in marked contrast with actual previous UK general election results where Labour has been the largest party.

The SNP lead over the Labour party averages 9.6%.

This poll of 2012 Guardian polls puts Scotland’s political parties on the following percentages, figures in brackets are the actual percentages in the recent local government elections.
SNP                 41.6%                        (32.32%)
Labour            32.0%                        (31.39%)
Con                  14.4%                         (13.31%)
L/Dem              6.4%                         (  6.59%)
Green                 2.2%                        (  2.20%)

How close the average of Guardian polls this year is to the local election results provides a degree of validation for the methodology adopted in this analysis.

The SNP were the only party to achieve a share of the vote in the local elections well below the Guardian poll of polls.
Discounting around 2% in the local elections in Scotland for minor parties, independents standing in areas that the SNP did extremely well in the 2011 Holyrood elections achieved 11.86% of the vote across Scotland in May.

It would be simplistic to conclude these voters had largely voted SNP in 2011 but it is also not an unreasonable hypothesis.

Another point to note about May’s local elections is the lower turnout, even although that has not seemed to affect the other partiy’s comparable share of the vote.

An additional factor that has not received much comment is perhaps a reluctance on the part of the electorate to allow the SNP to sweep all before them at every election.

This degree of containment in the local elections could serve the SNP well enough come the referendum. The electorate likes to have options and democracy is better served even if Labour hegemony has been a past feature of Scottish politics.

The analysis of Scotland’s voting intentions in a UK general election does not tell us much about how people will vote in the Independence Referendum other than indications that voters are continuing to place their faith in the SNP as the party most likely to further their aspirations.

Indeed, thinking about the next UK general election raises some interesting constitutional issues that have had no coverage. If we vote YES? – what happens in regard to a UK general election due to be held around 8 months after the referendum?

Independence negotiations are expected to take around 12 months with a Scottish general election taking place in May 2016. Until Independence Day, and yes, we are getting ahead of ourselves here, Scotland remains entitled to representation in the UK Parliament.

In this situation it is unthinkable that England and RUK would have Scottish MPs sitting around Westminster for a full five-year term.

Their exit on Independence Day no doubt would be part of the Independence negotiations and involve a compensation settlement as they become redundant and surplus to requirement.

The implication of this is that all Scottish MPs, except SNP MPs, will be manning the No campaign barriers.

Might there be exceptions?

Maybe there will be some with an eye to a future in an Independent Scotland.

The challenge for all the parties, including the SNP, is that their support will be split in the Independence Referendum. Most of all those who have in the past been Labour voters.

But more interesting are the continued rumblings in the Conservative party by those like Peter Fraser who knows there is no return to their past as a major political party in Scotland.

For those who believe there should be a future for a moderate right of centre party in an Independent Scotland they have a difficult decision to make:

• to break away and form a pro independence centre right group in advance of the referendum, to which some credibility might be attached
• to remain staunch unionists and go down fighting with a Damascene conversion in the event of a YES result.

Russell Bruce

If one can describe great weather as ‘a following wind’ this was how the gods smiled on Auchindrain’s first Food Fair over the weekend of 19th and 20th May.

In typical Auchindrain style, the event at the preserved farm township was a fusion of then and now, with traditional food production methods – like churning for butter and buttermilk and making griddle scones and clootie dumplings on a peat fire – blending their aromas with those of the here and now and the classics.

The scent of the lamb spit roast -  part of the buffet organised by Leanne Muldowney of Inveraray’s George Hotel – dominated the outdoors centre of the event up beside the wooden ‘Colt House’ that is a listed building in its own right.

Down inside the ultra-couth reception centre, with its gleaming and open stainless steel kitchen. Chef Andrew Maclugash performed a cookery demonstration – with mass tastings. He smoked a mackerel, made mackerel pate, oatcakes and nettle soup.

Andrew’s cheffing credentials are very interesting – you could say mouthwatering. He was a chef on the Hebridean Princess – and we know how high-end that is, travelling to all of the glorious nooks and crannies of the Scottish inshore and offshore coast with the ship. He then transferred to its sister ship and did the Carribbean side of the business. He now works on developing ‘ready meals’ for Waitrose, through a company contracted to deliver this service.

So when Helensburgh gets its new Waitrose, there will be a readymade Auchindrain connection through Andrew Maclugash’s impact on the ready meals available there.

Up at the buffet area, there were stalls and skills, with Jill Bowis spinning even more yarns than usual.

The sheep that provide the raw material looked curiously through the fence.

The stalls featured a Celtic art gift display, Paradise Kitchen preserves from the Isle of Seil, Pamela Airlie’s jewellery from Ford on Loch Aweside.

And the most spectacularly irresistible (we fell at first sight) collection of cup cakes from two Inveraray women who just do this as a favour for a select few special events.

Karol Chodorowski from Eastern Poland who is one of the two new members of staff, churned butter in the thatch-roofed Bel Pol’s cottage.

Sheena McAlister from the Campbeltown Heritage Centre made wonderful griddle soda scones and clootie dunplings over peat fires in one of the cottages.

Both were served – as were all of the stall holders, the buffet and the arriving visitors at the gate by the hard working and cheerfully good mannered 14th Midlothian and Bonnyrigg scout troop.

They laboured endlessly with buckets of water hauled around the long township to all who needed it. They helped the spinner and the Inverclyde Gaelic Waulkers and they guided visitor parking.

Their camp site down by the burn below the Colt House was a bright splash of alien colour – and some of them had managed to get permission to sleep in the box beds in a couple of the cottages that night.

As the last of the visitors dallied with the griddle scones, little groups of the 14th Midlothian and Bonnyrigg legion slid politely behind backs topping up the peat fires. They wanted to be sure of a warm night. They’d heard the stories of the troop’s 2011 experiences when, in dreadful weather one of their tents became a kite and the boys who slept in the cottages were colder than those in the tents.

Eva Paterson (Swedish, now a resident Scot, snaffled up by a smart Loch Fyneside farmer)  who runs the catering service at Auchindrain, was on hand to support the buffet operation and meet old friends.

Bob Clark, Auchindrain’s Development Manager was everywhere but made sure he got to the butter shortly after it emerged from the churn, He had earlier welcomed Argyll and Bute’s MSP, Michael Russell to the event.

Cathy Wilson of Islay’s Ailsapress, dropped in with visitors from near Munich who were going on to stay the night in Kilmartin – because Bayern were playing Chelsea and they could catch it live if they waited to take the Islay ferry the next morning. (Given the result, we’d better say no more on this topic.)

Storyteller, the magnificent Padraig MacNeil, told us about Stirling twinning with Galway in the west of Ireland and sending over the Wallace sword for the agreement between the two towns to be signed on.P{adraiog has been commissioned to write a poem to commemorate the marriage – in Scots and Irish Gaelic and on the Doric. He gave us a sneak preview in song and recitation . This will definitely be an event to witness.

Residents from across Mid Argyll and Cowal mingled with visitors from all parts – some maxing out with a parallel visit to the established Loch Fyne Food Fair running at the head of the loch.

There were people everywhere, the Auchindrain livestock attracted cameras and a wary eye to those horns. They had some visitors VERY attracted by the smell of the Lamb Rolls.

On the second day there was a shinty match played by the Camanach Cup winning Inveraray Club on the field which Karol had cut two days earlier; and Cowal’s Walking Theatre Company amazed and astounded its audience as it towed them around the township, anxious to miss nothing.

All in all, this was a major success for Auchindrain and its unsleeping team – and a very enjoyable (and well  fed) experience for everyone.

And if you want cute…

An immediately unusual boat – the MV Ocean Nova, was at Oban’s North pier – and was the length of it – on Friday 18th May.

Long, narrow, tall, sheltered, with expansive observation facilities, five or six Zodiacs stacked on her top deck and a stout bow, she seemed built for action and possibly action in cold climes.

Research shows she’s a polar specialist, built in Denmark in 1992, as the Sarpik Ittuk, designed to navigate the ice-cluttered waters off Western Greenland.

She had a major refit in 2006 with a glass-enclosed forward observation lounge constructed on her top deck.

With a capacity of 98 passengers she carries only 68, with a very good ratio of a 38 strong team of crew and polar guides who oversee daily shore landings – by Zodiac – and lectures on Antarctic wildlife.

A serious activity cruise and adventure ship, the menu of opportunities she offers stress just how active is the experience aboard  – or off – Ocean Nova, Pretty well all embarkations and disembarkations – as well as shore landings and retrievals, seem to be by Zodiac – so the fit, flexible and relatively young seems her target market.

For the winter she appears to be based in Antarctica with passengers getting themselves to southern Chile (Punta Arenas) or Argentina (Ushuaia), depending on the chosen adventure.

Holidays seem to be priced from from either port, with fly/cruise from Punta Arenas – flying from there across the drake Passage to King George Island in the South Shetlands, in Antarctica; and then embarking the Ocean Nova by Zodiac from the shore of Fildes Bay.

One alternative option is an Express adventure from Ushuaia in Argentina. Here you embark Ocean Nova from the port

This takes the Beagle channel to the world’s most southerly town, Puerto Williams, on Navarino Island and then heads for the awesome Cape Horn where, weather permitting, the Zodiacs take passengers to the lighthouse.

After that the ship crosses the Drake Passage to King George Island, does some wildlife and iceberg watching, with a flight back to Punta Arenas in Chile, from where passengers make their own way home to wherever.

The menu of possibilities includes wildlife watching and whale photography. (Reincarnation or cloning becomes increasingly attractive – if not necessary.)

This is the boat’s winter programme which runs to the end of March.

Further research, prompted by the fact that here she was in Oban in May and we could find no evidence for what had brought her there, shows that she also does a summer programme of the same sort of adventure cruises around Iceland and involving the Faroes and possibly Greenland.

Oban now seems to be a starting point for these particular adventures. Obanites may well have already seen her berthed alongside the North Pier but certainly seem die to see more of her over the season.

She’s the perfect size of ship for the North Pier and her specialism in colder waters and polar exploration chimes with our natures and interests here.

She was a muscular and exotic addition to the Oban bayscape on Friday and we too hope to see her again.

So here it is: my finished piece for stone setting. It’s been a super busy week – I had my Second Year Assessment (results pending) and had to finish this piece for Friday too.

I set the stone on Wednesday and polished it up on Thursday, so thankfully I managed to get everything done in time.

I was pretty stressed out at certain points, but I just had to remember a few things:

Friends care (so long as you aren’t super whiny):

The whiny part is pretty important here; as everyone is happy to listen to you and console you when it isn’t going the way you want, but only as long as you’re being pro-active about fixing it. No one likes the ‘why meeeeeeee!’ speech more than once.

Nothing is ever really that broken:

This is where Artist’s in Residence’s and Lecturer’s come in. They genuinely have all the answers. Especially to the questions that you really didn’t think could be answered or the problems that you were sure couldn’t be solved. The trick is, they’re already done an Silversmithing and Jewellery course, so it’s important to remember that you are still a little fish in a big pond, who will learn more and more of the answers as time passes.

Get happy about the little things:

Triumph over being able to set the stone, even if it wiggles a little to begin with. It will soon be sturdy and solid, once you’ve set it fully. During this time, remember that you’re using a skill you’ve only just learnt (this applies to EVERYTHING) so you can’t be a genius at it yet. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try… you get the message.

And, importantly, when it does go right, BE SUPER HAPPY:

That one, is perhaps a given. But it’s still worth mentioning.

So there you go – another project done and its nearly summer. I can’t believe how much more I know technically than I did at the beginning of the year; and I’m hoping these skills will just improve more and more as I move further up the year groups.

Meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy the last few weeks of Second Year.

Ellis Cameron, Young in Argyll correspondent

The photographs accompanying this article are by Ellis Cameron.

Ellis Cameron lives in Benderloch and is a second year student in Jewellery and Silversmithing at Glasgow School of Art.

The mighty challenge of the Scottish Islands’ Peaks Race was all over Oban on Friday (18th May).

The moorings at Oban Sailing Club were swollen by just short of 50 boats in a huge fleet for the 2012 epic. Then at least two runners per boat took to the roads for a run up around McCaig’s Tower and back.

This is only the starter for a race that sees the combined skills and strength of road runners and yacht race tested to the limit in a unique challenge involving three islands, three mountain races, heading five peaks and a last sprint for the finish at Troon.

Nothing ever stops. When the crew aren’t sailing the runners are on the hills. If the weather turns wholly nasty – which it often does, if may need all hands on deck. Most of the rest of us, like two of the board of the hugely useful Cardingmill Pontoons and Moorings here, Adrian Lauder and Professor Duncan, enjoy contemplating the effort.

Food and sleep and grabbed equally hungrily in the down time of each contributor.

In Oban the returning runners are rowed back by dinghy to their boat by one member of the crew, heaved onboard along with said dinghy while the sails go up for a no holds barred race first to Salen on the Isle of Mull.

There the runners are rowed ashore to, well – run up Ben More, Mull’s only Munro. Just like that.

Then they’re rowed back for the yacht race to start again – this time back east through the Sound of Mull, south into the Sound of Lorne, through the Dorus Mhor, past the Grey Dogs and the Corryvreckan and into Craighouse on the isle of Jura. This is sailing that ticks an awful lot of boxes in the legendary west coast waters.

Splash goes the dinghy with the crew oarsman to set the runners ashore – to run all three Paps of Jura.

The crew get their heads down for four hours or so while the runners are murdering the Paps and the Paps are sapping their strength.

Another mad row back for the boat and it’s off out of Craighouse to round the Mull of Kintyre, past Sanda Island and the South of the isle of Arran to head up round its east coast to the Holy Isle and into Lamlash Bay.

Here the runners, who’ve been in their bunks since Craighouse, head for the top of Goat Fell, while the crew sleep.

Rowed out again more dead than alive they get food and this time the chance to collapse into their pits without having to face another mountain.

Now it’s all down to the crew in the last yacht race to Troon in Ayr, first negotiating the notoriously fluky winds off Holy isle.

As we write this, they’re on that last leg already. And the runners did the Paps of Jura (dawn)and Goat Fell (midnight) in the dark.

The start at Oban

Several in the large fleet couldn’t get a mooring, some using the Cardingmill Bay pontoons as a staging post until they had to go off and tootle around in the moorings until pick up time.

Pick up time is, of course, preceded by effort of a different kind. The starter run up to McCaig’s Tower.

In the hour before the start at 12.00 noon, runners are walking around, limbering up, going off on short runs to loosen up. There are serious  runners here from all over the UK, dauntingly fit.

The best of them seem to semi-levitate, moving in an even glide that barely touches the ground, upper body held independently off the lower body. They look as if they could run for ever and many probably do.

We meet the runners from the dark blue-hulled yacht, Riva and some determined  Norwegians from one of the boats briefly alongside at the  Cardingmill pontoons.

There’s  a Swiss boat too – on a mooring.

Just off Cardingmill Bay and at the edge of the moorings is Pole Star, one of the Northern Lighthouse Board’s two heavy duty work boats that maintain buoys around the west coast and islands.

Then there’s a team from Fettes College ashore from the yacht Lydia, with enough runners to have one set do the starter run around McCaig’s Tower while others wait to face the challenge on Ben More.

A red helicopter comes in over the Isle of Kerrera and vanishes, dropping down to land. It looks like it’s headed for the Manor House Hotel – but is there landing room there? This aircraft will reappear in the not too distant future and all will be known.

The gathering at the Sailing Club, with runners galore, yellow-jacketed Bruichladdich Race Control organisers, photographers and the frankly amazed gets bigger by the minute. The narrow road has been full of parked cars all along. it appears that this is not down to the race but is mainly the cars of CalMac staff down at the harbour who park up here.

The start is awesome. We almost forget to get out of the way. And the road falls silent as all that energy vanishes elsewhere.

This whole area is one Oban needs to address seriously  and coherently – and why this was not part of the failed CHORD project is hard to tell. The shoreside area is ill maintained by the council and undeveloped. The slipway is overgrown and less than it might be, Access to the shore is otherwise left to nature and the risk of broken ankles, There is no rational use of space.

There’s an odd, quite narrow fenced off strip of overgrown land just shoreside of the wall at the edge of the footpath. What’s supposed to happen here? There’s recently cut grass running down from the charming little Temple of Seafood stone building beside the Sailing Club and tumbling, literally, onto the boat park at outdoor adventure Stramash’s wooden hut.

This area has all the ability to develop into an ad hoc shanty town if heads are not banged into stopping down all additions until there is a rational plan for the the strip from, say, the Sailing Club north to the end of Cardingmill Bay. This could be a designed area, built for a future with watersports, leisure sailing and support ervices, with some aesthetic and created with a considered and enabling functional relationship between its elements.

What are the odds? The track record suggests that ‘shanty town’ may well win out.

The first runners appear from this 30 to 45 minute warm up run and the different tactics become evident. The shore is spattered with waiting dinghys and rowers looking at their watches.

Based at the vantage point above the Cardingmill pontoons, we see some runners come down the grass and then take a short cut down the steep and uneven earth bank before hitting the stony and slippery shore to head for the dinghy on the waterline.

The smart ones run further but, to our eyes, gain time – heading to the slipway where they can carry on running to their dinghy. The bank descenders have had to walk, break rhythm and cannot risk even a trot across the shore.

The major competitors on the moorings already have their sail covers off and their sails hooked on ready to hoist. Some more leisurely – or supercool -  boats haven’t even got their mainsail covers off yet.

Somewhere in the bedlam on the moorings is Bequia, skippered by Colin Craig of West Coast Motors, with his brother Ian, MD of Lothian Buses, John Grant of Owen Sails and runners Stuart Malcolm and newbie to the team, Gordon Lennox.

Bequia is tweeting its race – as they have done for the last two – and you can read all three race accounts.

One of the multihulls, a big cat, Sail number GBR 715M, is first out of the moorings followed in close company by a monohuller. They tack off fast, past Pole Star, down the east side of Kerrera heading for the exit from Oban Bay.

Soon there are two more, already racing out of the moorings, well heeled over. We think the first of these might be Bequia. (Note: It wasn’t – but Bequia was 8th out of the bay.)

On the moorings local legend, Tangle o’ the Isles (second shot from the top) – with some unbelievable passages behind her and more to come, waits for her runners. The Norwegian boat (the dark blue hull in the shot below) jills around and the Swiss mark time.

Then it’s all activity, little dinghy’s bundling out from the shore, bodies climbing and being hauled on board, dinghys hoisted in and secured, sails up and flapping, waiting to be sheeted in and power the boat away. There are some close calls between urgent crews fighting for space – but that’s racing. Others take a chance and go inside the yellow buoyed reef known locally as ‘the Scrat’. We’re told that there are two types of sailor in Oban – those that have hit the Scrat and those that haven’t – yet.

As the moorings clear, it becomes even more obvious just what a visually stunning place to sail this is – and if you read the tweets from Bequia, they testify to the role the place plays in doing this race. Ian Craig – who we think was doing most of the tweeting, constantly catches his breath in mid-tweet at the seascapes and landscapes unfolding as Bequia moves purposefully on.

With most of the fleet on the move, the big cat is clear of the fleet, still with her shadow though, both tacking across the head of the bay from under Dunollie Castle and over towards the little island of Rudha Cruaidh off Kerrera, where they will vanish off to Salen.

In the middle of it all emerges a very large, sleek black shark – Pharos, the Northern Lighthouse Board’s main workhorse of the seas, chooses to leave her berth right now and drives forcefully toward the entrance to the bay, on her foredeck the punctuation mark of the red helicopter that flew in earlier.

Within minutes she’s mixing it with the full fleet under Dunollie, She gives five loud hoots – code for ‘Get out of my way’. Not a chance. Doesn’t she know these guys are racing? ‘Steam gives way to sail’ and, mad as it seems from the shore, this is ‘not an inch’ time afloat, The yachts sail on. Almost none deviate. The skipper on Pharos abandons the code of hoots and just keeps his thumb on the horn. The angry sound echoes far and brings not one jot of change to the fleet.

Later the Calmac ferry from the outer isles comes in through the tailenders. She hoots as well – but not the full high five. she has less need now and ploughs steadily in to her berth.

With Bequia

Online, Bequia reports getting into Salen at 15.05 with their runners are away by 15.15. Neat. The crew expect them to do the Ben More run in 4.45 hours and to be away again by 20.00.

Hotntot33′s Robbie Simpson, does it in 3 hours 11-59, taking almost 14 minutes off the record. Bequia’s Malcolm and Lennox do it in 4 hours 11, seriously under expectations – and the boat’s out of Salen ‘like a shotgun’ and away for Craighouse, marveling that at this time it’s still daylight as they come under Duart Castle.

Bequia’s in Class 2 where the racing seems to be tight at the top, with Dorothea who beat Bequia into second place last year, a contender to be respected along with Clockwork and Sea Fever. The arrival order in Jura at 4.40am (Saturday) was Dorothea, Bequia, Sea Fever.

By 9.15 the runners are back on board [ having done an anticipated 5 hour run across the three Paps in 4 hours 18. A massive achievement.

With Clockwork and Sea Fever ahead, Bequia is on a spinnaker reach until the wind steadying east ahead of the beam allows a fast reach south. They say they’re ‘smokin’ at 8 knots. Light winds and a few predictable problems with the spinnaker behind them and a quick photo of the glen through from Machrihanish to Campbeltown ‘for the Kintyre brigade’  they round the Mull of Kintyre around 5.30.

Colin Craig sees his own Stormforce ferry, Kintyre Express 111, headed into the North Channel en route for Ballycastle to pick up passengers from the North West 200 bike race before Bequia leaves the Pladda Light south of Arran abeam, with Clockwork, now the class leader, ahead. Kintyre Express III appears later, for a ‘fly by’ on the return trip from Ballycastle.

Bequia is 4th boat in to Lamlash at 23.45, having improved four places since leaving Oban eighth in the fleet.

Clockwork gets away at 03.35 and Dorothea at 03.45, with John Grant of Bequia ashore waiting to retrieve their runners. They were back aboard by 04.05, leaving the crew to deal with the frustration of the fluky winds around Holy Isle and settle down for ‘the straight drag’ east to Troon. They were predicting: ‘ a grandstand finish between Bequia, Moby J, Sea Fever & Dorothea’. Racing all the way in to the inner harbour.

And now they’re in: 08.48 Sunday morning, 20th May – provisionally finishing second in their class and 4th overall – a mighty performance.

Now for next year.

Postscript: Other boats have been complimenting Bequia on its tweeting – with good reason. They took us with them, through the dawns, the pasta, the sunsets, the places they love, the strategies, the frustrations, the great blokey banter, the camaraderie with the other competing boats and that edgy competitive spirit that saw them race to the last into Troon’s inner harbour. Thanks guys, This is your story.

The 2012 Festival of the Sea, run by the Scottish Marine Institute (aka SAMS) for Oban, Lorn and the Isles got off to a running start yesterday, 18th May,

The bore is that we have a problem with the newsroom’s online operation at the moment and cannot use the photographs we took – but will upload them as soon as the problem has been resolved.

This festival has always been an inspired idea. This part of the world has physically and historically been shaped by the sea, which governs our key internal movements today.

The revered Scottish Marine Institute, part of the University of the Highlands and Islands is headquartered here in Argyll, at Dunstaffnage, must north of Oban.

This institution is making headlines for the quality of its degree teaching, its research and its managed knowledge transfer to commercial implementation,

This has most recently borne fruit in major business developments at one of the companies involved in this partnership, Aquapharm, developing marine material into products combating digestive disorders.

There is a strong logic in developing a recruitment base for study and research in marine sciences amongst young people in the area where SAMS/SMI is based.

There is an equally strong logic in developing a relationship of ownership with the area n which SMI exists.

The sea is of course the link between the two. We all exist with the sea here and SAMS is a specialist research and teaching institute on marine sciences.

SAMS has realised that it is the interface in developing the relationships described above and has been imaginatively proactive in a host of initiatives to move this forwards.

The Festival programme

The Festival of the Sea is one of these initiatives – a major one – and is designed to activate interest and engagement from the youngest local school pupils to SAMS peers in the academic world.

So the programme for the Festival of the Sea runs the gamut from storyteller Patsy Dyer researching a wide spectrum of cultures to find myths and legends based on seaweed – and she did it; to a three day academic conference on Scottish Sea Lochs and Adjacent Waters, run by the Estuarine and Coastal Sciences Association.

In between these polarities are a host of events of all kinds for all audiences and involving partner organisations from Oban’s richly fascinating Dunollie way out to Lochmaddy in North Uist and an exhibition called the Secret Sea – Cuan Uibhist at the arts centre there, Tigh Chearsabhiagh.

You can find all of the programme information online here (www.obanseafestival.org) but i a way the hard copy of the pull-out leaflet wIth the programme rams home most powerfully just how huge and varied – AND ACTIVE – the Festival of the Sea programme is.

SAMS, the new Guide badge and the Tobermory connection

It’s far too glorious a set of opportunities even to attempt to summarise – but even the programme is something to immerse yourself in – fast. You can get to see places you’d never otherwise get near, to learn about fascinating subjects you’ve not even thought of and to do coasteering, family canoeing and RIB trips to all sorts of the amazing coastal and island nooks and crannies in Argyll.

Yesterday we learned about an innovative link between SAMs and the Scottish Guides Association, developing a special Ocean Challenge badge – and running a competition for the design of the badge.

The idea for the Guide badge came form Anuschka Miller, who leads the communications team at SAMS/SMI and is herself a marine scientist by training.

This has been won by Asha Nelson of 1st Tobermory Guides – and you can see Asha’s design for it above

The World of Algae

Yesterday, at the Argyllshire Gathering Halls in Oban, this theme included information on algae – with the glow-in-the-dark algae that are plankton and whose effect we call phosphorescence; and with an ingenious experiential display where the scientists enabled visitors to see this effect in action. Try it.

There was a competitive exhibition of art work produced in 2009 around the theme of algae, with a stunning spectrum of shapes and colours, hung by Helen McNeill from the SAMS communications team.

The winner was Mariano Sironi with Green Tide in Patagonia. (left) While it showed a 14 metre long (43 ft) Southern Right Whale mother with her calf, swimming along the shore of the Peninsula Valdes in Argentina, you wouldn’t have realised that they were the subject. Why? Because what yo see is not the whales but their impact on the glow-in-the-dark algae. As they move their tails stir up a green tide of planktonic algae behind them – and this is what the aerial photograph records. Spectacular.

A shortlisted piece of magic was by Galice Horeau, called Enchanted Cavern (top photograph). This shows the view looking out of an underwater cave off the coast of Brittany, at Roscoff, three metres down and looking into a forest of giant algae.

The storytelling

We’ve mentioned above the challenge faced by storyteller, Patsy Dyer from Ardfern in having to find a find of stories based on seaweed, one of the algaes.

She found Japan and Hawaii fabulously fruitfully cultures for such material and ended up with some compelling insights.

Britain, Ireland – and Russia – are the most romantic. And the Lofoten Islands are the most terrifying.

Patsy was merciful to her young audience on Friday and did not include Lofoten material amongst her repertoire for the day. So it was all Oohs, Aahs and smiles.

Virtual Landscapes and Future Seascapes

This touring experience from the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen – a year-old marriage of two existing academic institutions, one in Dundee, one in Aberdeen – was on show yesterday.

Professor David Miller, with an assistant on the remote controls, guided young audiences – with some hands on navigation – around the landscapes of Oban and its surrounding areas. looking at hew perspective is affected by specific standpoints and marveling at how others see us.

Professor Miller had the enviable ability to engage easily with young people and to enter in to their ready excitement and curiosity.

And the unique CD?

Called Essence of the Sea, this is a compilation of music by musicians from Oban, Lorn and the Isles, agreed and put together by Finlay Wells, whose abilities are breathtaking.

The idea came from former councillor Neil Mackay who can take well deserved pleasure in seeing it come to fruition so well.

The CD is there to help to make money towards the cost of the event and the generous contribution to it by the musicians involved is very much a spirit of the times in Argyll and the Isles, with which Neil Mackay was also involved from the outset.

You can buy it for £10 and having listened to ours in the car on the way home, you won’t be disappointed. You’ll find Skerryvore, Angus MacColl, Gunna Sound, Mary catherine MacNeil, Skipinnish Ceilidh House Band, Joy Dunlop, Angus Smith, Macadam, Achnaba, Oban High School Pipe Band and Finlay Wells with Sileas Sinclair.

So…

Get the CD, get hold of the programmne and dive in. The Festival of the Sea is a once-a-year pleasurefest of information, conundrums and experiences of the marine world and the coastal environment.

The problem is one of choice and available time. It could not be more rewarding and it demonstrates that the best of the academic world can make itself fully accessible, enthralling and welcoming.

The Leacainn River has undermined the Shore Road in the village of Furnace on Loch Fyne. As can be seen from these photographs, the run of the stream is continually working away at the concrete buttressing of the road at this point, swinging into it as it exits the bridge.

It is obvious that the collapse of the concrete support has happened now because, over time, the river has eaten away the earth bank behind it. The upper horizontal structure remaining is little more than an unsupported concrete biscuit.

This road runs down to the first house visible in the top photograph, swinging to the right at its gate to run down to and along the shore, offering access to a handful of other residences. The people living in these and the two houses visible here, whose access is from this road, will have concerns about the stability of the road.

Argyll and Bute Council claim that this is a private road and is not their responsibility. This would seem to be the case. Locals say that when the river previously undermined this road – around 40 years ago – it was repaired by the local landowner, the Cumlodden Estate.

At this very moment there’s a natural film set waiting for a survivalist movie – just off the A83 at Crarae Garden on the shores of Loch Fyne in Mid Argyll.

Existing cheek by howl with the teasing, dramatic yet tranquil beauty that has made this garden’s name as a Himalayan gorge delight right here in Argyll, is a very different world, full of powerful forces, destruction and an unexpected beauty of its own.

Crarae, reopened recently for the 2012 visitor season, is still dealing with the scale of the consequences of the gales on the 3rd January.

Following the loss of some 30 trees in the lesser December gales, Head Gardener Nigel Price found a scene of unimaginable and chaotic devastation near the northeastern boundary of the garden after the January gales.

The winds were the cause of the power outage that saw that saw much of Argyll cold and dark at the turn of the year for around 60 hours – with Islay even worse off than that.

Crarae has another direct link with that stormy time.

Access to the cable that had dropped the power was uphill through the garden – on the path across which lay many of the 200 trees Mr Price discovered downed in the winds.

The Scottish Hydro engineers, unable to take a van or even a quad bike up the path, had to physically carry every single thing they needed up the hill to the damage site – and not only that, they had to get it all up and over or around an endless array of fallen trees. Nigel Price speaks of the work they did with an awed respect.

That path is now cleared, of course, with the chopped-off end of trunks hard on each side of the path and massive root plates creating the barriers, chasms and defiles of a world of secrecy and potential menace.

You can’t take your eyes off it – although Nigel Price would be very glad to be able to do so. We were free to catch our breath and reach for the camera. He has to get it sorted.

There is money in much of the fallen timber – but getting it out will be so difficult and cause so much physical disruption that it will probably take all it has earned to see to the restitution afterwards.

But much of this is part of the business of looking after any major garden. Nature does not run on set tracks but can take off in unexpected directions. It’s a case of looking at the positives. They are always there.

The 200-odd trees taken down in the January gales are to be replaced by a fabulous redwood forest – which none of us will see in its maturity but will be quite splendid.

Some individual tress that blew over elsewhere in the garden have let a blaze of light into dark areas, with new glimpses for visitors and growth potential for new plants.

Walking through the garden now, you run the gamut of experience, all of it unforgettable. As always, you need to look for the detail, the moments where there is a fusion of the two beauties, one born from care, the other from destruction. By the stump of a fallen eucalyptus are some bluebells and a curl of new bracken softening the cut.

You take in the drama of the momentous energies that reshaped where they struck; and you exhale with the brilliance of the flowering shrubs, the sound of the burn, the birdsong – and the secret paths vanishing out of sight and promising whatever you imagine…

Any great garden has a skyscape and here your eyes follow the endless vertical trunk of a Californian Grand Fir that a 14 year old Sir George Campbell planted or are intrigued by a twisting trunk that has been created by wind torsion.

Every so often you get glimpses of the loch below and some expansive calming scenes of rolling fields and grazing sheep.

You may see a splendid rhododendron with some of its foliage looking on the droopy side. This is another of the challenges Crarae is currently confronting – the transmission of Sudden Oak Death disease (Phytophthora Ramorum) – which does not affect British oaks but absolutely does for the rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and magnolias that abound in Crarae.

This is a notifiable plant disease and those diagnosed to be afflicted by it must be felled and burned where they lie  -  along with the gathering up of any fallen leaves in the vicinity.

There are two types of Phytophthora ramorum. They differ in the degree of speed they travel. Fortunately Crarae has the slowmo – but they’re on guard for the first trace of the more virulent sibling.

Who’d be a gardener? There’s another little plague sculling around. This is the nasty little ‘Scale Insect’ disease which sees the tiny blighters consume leaves leaving a sticky honey excretion on the stems and branches. This attracts a sooty black fungus making plants suffering from it look for all the world as if they’ve got charring damage.

The plants will probably survive this attack but Nigel Price takes proprietorial offence at the dusty blackness that mars their vitality.

There is development as well, to lift the spirits of the gardening team. A group of volunteers have recently cleared an old drovers’ road running through Crarae, probably from the southern parts of Loch Aweside through to link up with the drovers’ road through Brenchoille near Auchindrain.

Clearing the area around this brought another discovery – a secret pond protected by a wrought iron gate, fed by an uphill well channelled into it. This pond prison once housed a single trout. The fish seems to have had a ritual totemic status, with the flourishing of the area thought to depend upon it.

Climate change will bring associated changes to Crarae – as it will to other west coast and Scotland-wide gardens.

Part of the far forest garden here is likely to host reserve collections for gardens in the south of England facing persistent drought and unable to perpetuate their signature plants.

It’s all change – adaptation, improvisation, opportunism, recovery, redirection – gardens have always been a metaphor for life.

They may look confident, fixed. But it’s all go – evolution by the day.

Crarae garden is open daily, even when, in early and late parts of the season, its visitor centre and shop are not. At the moment, all visitors are asked to step into a disinfectant tray on the garden side of the visitor centre, as they enter and leave it. This helps to limit the two-way transmission of the plant diseases that can wreck havoc in a place like this.

An innovative and culturally fascinating new project is on the move on the Isle of Islay. This summer, 2012, Comunn na Gàidhlig are coordinating a project involving five high schools in the Highlands and Islands where, for the first time ever, pupils can gain a John Muir Award in Gaelic.

The John Muir Trust has been offering these Awards since 1997. They’re designed to involve fun and adventure, using creative ways of exploring, understanding and conserving our environment, encouraging teamwork and sharing. They draw folk into the outdoors, challenge them to be creative and demand teamwork. Im doing this they build confidence in the self and in the team.

Four Islay High School pupils – Lauren MacGregor, Caitlin Marrion, Heather Hope and Mairi McGillivray – have been working on this since the beginning of the year, with staff at the RSPB reserve at Gruinart and with Morvern McPhee of Islay High School as mentor and providing language support

In line with the John Muir Trust’s long standing interest in wild places, the four adventurers are focusing on Loch Gruinart as their ‘wild place’ – an area known both for its abundant wildlife and its fascinating history.

Each of the four pupils is working towards preparing and giving a guided tour  of Loch Gruinart for Gaelic medium families on Islay. After that, they will meet up in June with students from high schools in Portree, Inverness, Mallaig and Ardnamurchan at a 3-day residential at Tulloch near Roy Bridge.

The focus of the conservation project is the corncrake. The school team has been looking at the best conditions for nesting and the ecosystem as a whole: fields, trees, plants, animals, farming – and bats. (You can imagine how popular that investigation is.)

They are also underlining the importance of reporting any hearing the distinctive call of the corncrake for monitoring numbers in different areas.

As well as being a beautiful nature reserve with abundant bird and wildlife, Gruinart’s history is significant for Islay as it’s the site of the famous clan battle fought between the MacDonalds and the MacLeans. The story of the battle is the stuff of local myth and legend, inspiring the admired William Livingstone poem. It’s an opportunity for young people to develop their use of Gaelic at a site that’s significant both in Islay’s history and vital in developing today’s environment.

The Battle of Traigh Ghruinneart

This was a pretty bloody affair – and began with a family feud over land.

Sir Lachlan Mor Maclean of Duart on Mull laid claim to the Isle of Islay which was Clan Donald territory, held by his nephew Sir James MacDonald.

Lachlan Mor landed at Loch Gruinart with a force of around 1,000 men. The more reasonable James offered his uncle a deal – that he could have half of the island for his own lifetime.

This wasn’t enough.

The battle lines were drawn up, Allies of Clan Donald came from the Clan MacAlister in Arran under Angus Mhic Mhuirich and from Kintyre.

MacDonald had fewer men than Lachlan Mor but they are said to have been better trained and took the day.

A twist to the story has a dwarf hidden up a tree who, when Lachlan Mor took his helmet off, took the opportunity to shoot him fatally in the eye. A cair marks today the spot where the Duart Maclean fell.

Lachlan Mor and around a third of his men were dead. The rest were mostly chased off Islay, escaping by boat, with some hiding in Kilnave Chapel. They were burned within it, with all but one dying there.

James MacDonald was badly wounded in the battle and seems also to have died in it.

The battle was fought on 5th August 1598 and while the death in it of both principals brought an end to the feud since both had paid the ultimate price, it was a short 14 years later when Clan Donald’s hold on Islay came to an end.

With the Scottish King having already given Clan Donald lands to Clan Campbell, in 1612 Angus MacDonald sold his ancestral inheritance to Sir John Campbell of Cawdor.

The Gaelic tours

As well as its role as a nature reserve, Loch Gruinart’s history will contribute to a rich source of material for the Gaelic language guided tour the four Islay High School girls are developing.

They will produce a single tour with each of them leading part of it in different places.

The John Muir Gaelic Award is for a one-off achievement but the Islay team vare hoping to find a way to use the skills and the work the girls will develop.

There are ongoing discussions on how Gaelic might continue to be used in Islay’s RSPB reserves. They certainly want to see this as the start of a longer term opportunity for young people to Gaelic around the Islay community.

They are grateful for all the help they have had so far, from Argyll and Bute Council, Comann nam Pàrant, Ionad Chaluim Chille Ìle and the team at RSPB.

The scheme is part of Iomairt Ghàidhlig Ìle ‘s Dhiùra (Islay and Jura Gaelic Initiative). It is managed by Comunn na Gàidhlig (CnaG); and is one of eight such schemes around Scotland bringing together Gaelic organisations in each area, developing Gaelic usage and the number of speakers of the language in the community.

Note: For more information on the John Muir Award in Gaelic and other activities supported by Iomairt Ghàidhlig Ìle `s Dhiùra contact local development officer Lynn MacDonald:

• by phone: on 810297
• by email: lynn@ile-diura.org

The photographs of Lauren MacGregor, Caitlin Marrion, Heather Hope and Mairi McGillivray at Loch Gruinart were supplied by Lynn Macdonald, with permission to use them; the corn crake is © Rachel Davies, reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence; and the photograph of the Cairn for Sir Lachlan Mor Maclean is © Mary and Angus Hogg, reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.

The Argyll First group of councillors – invited to address today’s hearing by the Scottish Parliament’s Petitions Committee of their Sign for the A83 petition,  are ‘extremely delighted’ at how things went.

Councillor Dougie Philand, who gave the main address, said that found ‘the strong  level of support by members of the committee’ very reassuring.

The petition will now move to the next stave where the committee will call upon Transport Secretary, Keith Brown, to answer the questions raised at the meeting.

Political support: Michael Russell MSP

Michael Russell, MSP for Argyll and Bute, attended the meeting in support and afterwards said: ‘This is a very important petition and I was very pleased to be able to attend the committee and speak in its support.

‘The three Argyll First councillors presented a strong  case on behalf of the entire Argyll community and they got  a sympathetic hearing.

‘There was clear cross party support for continued and increased  investment in the route and for learning the outcomes of the present study being undertaken by Transport Scotland.

‘I will continue to argue for the major work that is required , support the local campaign for that work and I hope today has marked a major step forward in that regard. ‘

Political support: Jamie McGrigor MSP

Jamie McGrigor, Highlands and Islands MSP, who was present at the hearing in support of Argyll First and spoke in defence of the petition, praised the Councillors who have co-ordinated the petition, noting that Public Petitions Committee members agreed to ask the Transport Minister to come before them and respond to the petition at a future meeting.

Speaking at the Committee in support of the petitioners, Jamie McGrigor MSP said in his address:

‘The A83 is as important to the people of Argyll & Bute as the M8 is to the people of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

‘Since the first major landslide closed the road at the Rest & Be Thankful in October 2007 I have been lobbying Ministers to recognise the damage that closures of this trunk road route could cause the economy  of Argyll & Bute due to Dunoon, Cowal and Campbeltown and Kintyre becoming cut off by road except via a lengthy and unacceptable detour. Everything possible must be done by government and its agencies to prevent landslides at the landslide-prone Rest & Be Thankful section of the road- this may well involve significant capital investment.

‘Further, the condition of the road, particularly on the de-trunked section of the A83 south of Kennacraig, is incredibly poor and this acts as a barrier to the investment the government and its agencies are trying to attract to Campbeltown and Kintyre.

‘I congratulate the petitioners today on bringing forward their petition and for securing so much popular and business support for it. I now look to the Committee members to take the petition forward and help maintain pressure on Ministers on this critically important subject.’

Back home…

When the group got back to Argyll, Councillor Donald Kelly said of the occasion:

‘We felt that our petition was very well received by the committee and that the cross party support displayed by Mike Russell, Jamie Mc Grigor  and Rhoda Grant helped to re-enforce our message.

‘The government are currently recognising three component parts of the petition namely:

• the Rest and Be Thankful
• the pinch points at Inverary and between Ardrishaig and Tarbert
• and the provision of safe crossing points at the villages of Ardrishaig and Tarbert.

‘The Fourth point we have raised as part of the petition is trunking of the road between  Kennacraig and Campbeltown.

‘At present no action has been taken regarding this issue.

‘This is  key to the future economic development of the Kintyre peninsula given that the First Minister has already stated that the Windtowers factory at Machrihanish will be a key player in the development of renewable energy.

‘It must also be considered that the current condition of the road is impacting on Tourism local business Hauliers and the emergency services.

‘It is our intention to continue with this campaign until there is a firm plan of action in place to address all four issues raised in the petition.’

The persistence of the Argyll First group on this matter has been both admirable and effective. The challenge now is to maintain attention and pressure to keep the addressing of this issue moving in to action.

With the incoming coalition administration proposing to appoint Councillor Donald Kelly of Argyll First, to the Roads brief, the situation of the A83 is unlikely to drop from view by default.

The photograph above shows Councillor Donald Kelly (left), with Councillor John McAlpine, outside the Scottish Parliament earlier today.

The hugely successful WWII event organised last week by the Russian Arctic Convoy Museum Project at Aultbea in Wester Ross, has given a major boost to the fundraising efforts for the ambitious Wester Ross Regeneration plans.

Having attracted over 1200 visitors from far and wide to their events – ranging from the focus on the code breaking breakthrough with Enigma, to 1940’s tea parties and Families Reunions – the Museum Group are thrilled with the support shown both from the local Highlands community and from visitors.

These had travelled to the area from as far afield as Canada, South Africa, the south of England, Wales and Cornwall.

The event was also graced by some very special VIPS – two Convoy Veterans who attended, travelling from Nottingham and from Aberdeen, and two Bletchley Park Wrens, one from Argyll and one from Wester Ross itself.

Museum Project Chairman, Francis Russell, says: ‘We are overwhelmed with the generosity of our supporters, and the distances that they were prepared to travel to be with us during this exciting week.

‘Many stayed for several nights, bringing a much needed boost to the tourism economy of the area, as well as adding considerable donations to our fundraising efforts. Most visitors completed a research survey form for us, which are all being analysed and will provide very important information to us to substantiate the value of the project to the area in economic terms.’

Adding to the success of the week, the Museum group were able to announce their first major sponsorship – from a Russian businessman.

This is being handed over in Glasgow at a ceremony this week – which will include the presence of several Russian Arctic Convoy veterans.

The Museum group are certain that this will lead to further generous sponsorship to enable to plans for the project to come to fruition within the next three years.

The team has already demonstrated in major measure focused and well organised it is. It even secured television coverage from Loch Ewe of the event’s focus on the sinking off the entrance to Loch Ewe of the Liberty ship, SS William H Welch, on 26th February, 1944.

Francis says: ‘We are confident of more sponsorship to follow, and with this hugely successful fundraising WWII Event, our ambitious plans are likely to become a reality more quickly than we anticipated.

‘With such a groundswell of support for the whole subject of the Arctic Convoys, we are also hoping that the petition for a medal for our wonderful Veterans will be finally agreed by the Government. Please, please go to our website now and add you name to the petition.’

Following the success of the 2011 event, the Museum group are planning ‘WWII and the Arctic Convoys event 2013’  – for the same week next year (6th-11th May 2013).

For further information on next years event and  – a last plea to do it now while there is time – to sign the petition for a medal for the remaining veterans, go to  the Russian Arctic Convoy Museum website here – now. Pease do it.

The past week or two, I’ve been working on my new Glasgow School of Art (GSA)  project – Stone Setting.

It’s been a great project so far, as we’ve all learnt the new technical skill of setting a stone, as well as designing and developing our own ideas and narrative.

Tie Pin

First we were taught how to make a tie pin. This is a good way to teach you how to set a stone, as a tie pin is basically setting a stone, plus soldering a pin onto the back of the setting, and voila! You have created a tie pin!

It’s great to learn a specific technical skill, as normally we are just taught different skills when they relate to our specific developments in each project.

For instance, I’ve been taught how to enamel, as it was relevant to my Chain Reaction project; and latterly my Exhibition project but other people haven’t been taught it yet, as they haven’t needed to use it in their own designs.

It was pretty difficult to begin with; I’m not the fastest of learners and sometimes need things shown to me a few times before I fully grasp what I’m supposed to be doing. But once I got my head around it I found stone setting to be a really great thing to do, and enjoyed the accomplished feeling of making something simply for the sake of learning the skill.

Ring

The next part of the project was to give yourself a narrative to work from, then design and make a ring which you would set a stone of your choice in.

I chose a moonstone, as I love the way in which light and dark alter the tone of the stone. It can look very cheap and plastic from one angle, but incredibly aesthetic and interesting from another.

I developed my ideas from the moonstone itself, looking at how light and dark interact and affect the stone.

I began looking at the unpredictability of light. From this, drew half of the stone as I saw it, then pressed the page into the opposing page, in order to create fluid marks. From these marks and prints I focused on 9 of the prints and created 9 sample rings in silver plated copper, to see how they worked with the stone I had chosen.

I then chose three of these rings to develop in silver, with the middle ring being the one in which I would set the stone.

Jonathon (my lecturer) helped me laser weld the stone setting I had made to the wire ring structure; and I then oxidised (turned black) the inside of the setting, so that it would bring out the darkest darks in the stone, and similarly contrast with the lightest lights of the stone.

The stone will then be set in the piece and the rings will be worn as a series on one hand. The ring with the stone will be between the two other rings, so that the wire can intersperse and interact with the stone, bouncing the light off the wires to manipulate the stone. The stone will also be on the bottom of the ring, worn on the palm of the hand, so that it is only visible when the palm is open.

The amount the palm is open will also affect the reflections on the stone itself.

The form of this ring is clumped at the base where the stone will be set and then it slowly spreads out linearly. This is my comment on the ideas of light leading into dark and vice versa; that the two are continuous and on-going; one always leads into the other. Is the ring leading from light into dark or dark into light, or perhaps both?

The project is nearing its end and I’m looking forward to seeing my finished pieces. I’ll make sure to share them here when they are done.

Ellis Cameron, Young in Argyll correspondent

Photographs accompanying this article are by Ellis Cameron

Island Moments is the headline title of Catherine Wilson’s latest book for Ailsapress. Its full title is: Island Moments. Taken by surprise in the Hebrides.

It is a title that subtly captures the impact of Cathy Wilson’s openness to the experience of new places in a genre of landscape that somehow touches her soul.

‘Taken’ means just that. She has been taken – possessed by and possessed of these places.

‘Taken by surprise’ – because it is the surprise (and the ability to be surprised) that is the possessing force. It is the gasp of the unutterable that cements a indestructible relationship.

In a way this book is a love poem in images as well as some telling words, not just to specific places but to love of place itself.

How many of us do not feel the prick of tears at the back of the eye in listening to an emigrant’s yearning for place, for home, for the one place, even if it is born in memory – where oneness, belonging, largeness, infinity even, felt within reach?

It doesn’t matter how banal that expression can be, the profundity, the authenticity of the emotion which we instinctively recognise, of a riven unity, is irreducible.

Names are important in this. Almost every such song of longing is redolent with names, an aural mapping, a way of keeping open the vital arterial connections with a place apart. And so, in Island Moments, it has been important for Cathy Wilson to record the names of the places whose presence is caught in her photographs.

This is ‘for auld lang syne’: Sanaig Cliffs, Toe Head, Lossit Bay, Loch an Duin, Beinn Raah, Killinallan. It is the repetition of the names that carries the power of the places themselves.

The photography is unforgettable – in tune with the ultimate unknowability of place – familiar and yet too immense quite to grasp.

The book speaks through a series of double page spreads, two juxtaposed images, each pair with a single set of words weaving the relationship between them.

Two limpets wait
The homing rush of ocean

- in a pool in a rock any ceramicist would fantasise about creating.

In another spread the low remains of a stone croft lie in a heather bog on a hill above a loch with mist covered hills in the distance.

Facing them is a close up of the fallen lintel, looking like the entrance to a chambered burial cairn. It is just that, of course – the door to lives gone.

Their only claim the stones
And peace of conscience

There are seaweeds effortlessly held in the tide and seen through impossibly pure water, showing yet another world in this complex place we inhabit for the time being.

If you never thought you could love a caterpillar, you will – but see it for yourself in the book.

The photographer’s eye drifts through a series of enticing curiosities, like a ‘rock map’, noting traces of people carved in stone, shocking with the sudden physical presence of real people – now, here.

There are one or two photographs that don’t seem to earn their place – like a shoreside landscape in the north west of Islay which, however mysterious, somehow does not arrest the eye.

But the right hand photograph of the last pair is so compelling you have to keep coming back to it.

Cause for wonder
We seek understanding

The left hand image is of friend and sometimes co-author, Ruth MacLean, facing away from the camera and pointing towards something with a just visible softening of the jawline that indicates pleasure.

On the right are three young people, late teens to early twenties, identified later only by their first names, Marco, Sasha and Nene.

They are caught in a moment of profound silence, just looking, taking in – what?

It doesn’t matter what.

This is a glimpse into a rare abdication of selfhood, an abandonment to the immensity of an unspoiled place.

To see this capacity in the young is testimony both to where they are – on Islay’s Sanaig cliffs and to a youth which need never be callow, given half a chance.

It is places like this that give people more than half a chance.

Island Moments is more than it claims.

Lynda Henderson

For Argyll’s feature on Ailsapress, here, was published yesterday – 11th May 2012.

All the images above are © Ailsapress

NOTE: Island Moments (ISBN: 9780955565649) – a book to own and to give, is available direct from Ailsapress (www.ailsapress.com) at £10.99. For Bookshops, the distributor is Bookspeed.

(Updated below on the hoof.) According to one of their major fans, Councillor Dougie Philand (who also took the photographs), ‘Lochgilphead Red Star’s performance was brilliant today’ in this afternboon’s final of the Scottish Amateur League’s Coronation Cup in Glasgow at Cambuslang Park.

With a crowd from the town of about 200 (supporters below)  ‘The Star’ went on to win the Cup 3-2.

Red Star were up 3-0 but in the last 10 minutes the opposition -  Whitehill FP – got 2 late goals.

Bit of a nail-biter but  Red Star were resolute to the end and won in front of an emotional crowd (every reason to be emotional on an occasion like this).

Alan Weir and his team are to be congratulated for winning the first cup for the Lochgilphead team. Next year the crowd will be even bigger.

The photograph at the top shows Captain Connor Crawford and Vice Chairman Duncan MacLean holding the prestigious Coronation Cup as the celebrations begin.

Talking of celebrations -  here they are, with some supporters, on the bus on the way home.

You could say they’re very happy.

And when they got back home, dismounting at The Stag Hotel was quite an event.

Perhaps, in this Diamond Jubilee year, the new council might host a civic reception for the team that brought the Coronation Cup to Argyll?

They can develop from almost anything – like a meeting of creative spirits, a camping trip to the Western Isles, two novel ponies, a cat with no tail, a spell (literally) on Taransay and the enduring witchery of Islay.

Islay’s Ailsapress sprang from such a base.

There was a Canadian woman with an individualist creativity, whose grandfather was an Ileach and who had come to Islay to connect with her roots, housekeeping for a hillfarmer.

There was a writer, painter and photographer with a long association with the island who came there regularly to sketch and paint.

There was a cat – Ailsa – who lost her tail but never her joie de vivre.

The two women met on Islay in 1985, in a friendship that was immediate and developed in the complementarity of their different creativity.

Ruth (left) seems instinctive, impulsive, creating on the instant; Cathy more reflective and considerative.

From the evidence of what they do – across two continents – both are highly responsive to circumstances.

Ruth Maclean lived in Islay between 1983/84 and 1989, keeping house for hillfarmer Alastair Ferguson at  Coultoon Farm.

When Mr Ferguson died in 1988, she was allowed to stay on at Coultoon until it was sold – which happened in 1989.

With Ruth then heading back to Canada, the friends went first on a camping holiday to the Western Isles, new to each of them. The trip ended with a visit to writer Iain Stephen and his young family at Newmarket on the Isle of Lewis.

Ruth, who adores and learned so much about sheep when she was at Coultoon, helping at the fanks – had also taught herself about wool, rolling the fleeces, washing the wool, carding it, then spinning it and dyeing it with natural plant dyes.

Using these skills, Ruth knitted two little ponies, one for herself and one for Cathy, to accompany them on their camping trip. Iain Stephen’s boys fell in love with the ponies, so Ruth made two more as a gift. These arrived in Newmarket by post with a story that Cathy had written and illustrated to show how the ponies had travelled from Islay.

When Ruth was back in Canada, Cathy (above) went out to stay with her and, around the turn of 1989/90, Ruth was given a kitten. This was Ailsa.

Given the liberty to live with Ruth’s own free spirit, Ailsa took full advantage of it.  The illustration below, Drinking Song – shows her singing, in Cathy’s accompanying ditty: ‘My fur is as black as coal, I love drinking from the toilet bowl!’

Something of a wild rover, Ailsa spent most of her nights outside, presumably hunting.

After a long night out in especially low temperatures, Ailsa was pretty poorly in the morning. Whatever the cause, her tail had been damaged and the vet pronounced it would have to be shortened.

Cathy was fascinated by Ruth’s relationship with the cat and by her astonishing production of narrative images made from cut paper – which she would sketch in advance but then simply cut into the paper freehand.

So from the seeds of one wintry night a book was born. Seventeen years later it was published

In between those goalposts in time was a creative process that challenged their friendship and taught them how to disagree on the way to a creative solution. This process went on between Canada and Islay. Each drove the other. – a new verse needed a picture to illustrate it, a new picture needed a verse to account for it.

Then it was into the twilight world of talking to publishers. Each time, appreciative noises would be followed by six months or so of silence and then a polite rejection – devouring time.

In 2004 Cathy decided to retire to Islay. She had been coming to Islay regularly since childhood. She knew folk there and they knew her, it was an easy fit since she was already part of the texture of the community.

Once established on Islay the way forward with the book was fuelled by Cathy’s professional experience of educational publishing. Savvy about digital technology, she became aware that in the years of working to create this book and to get it published, the world of publishing had been revolutionised by massive advances in digital production.

Self-publishing not only became a viable possibility but the means by which, in 2007, The Tail of Ailsa went public.

And the name of the publishing house Cathy established?

Well, its genesis had been the tale of the cat without a tail so she decided on ‘the honorable thing to do, to name it after the cat who had mothered the press’.

Ailsapress was born, after what Cathy describes as: ‘a creative collaboration necessarily interrupted by distance and limited by the times that we could work together.

‘Eventually, in the year of Ailsa’s passing – her ‘final leap’ – the book was printed, a distributor found, and copies began to sell.  Not a runaway success but not a failure either – the National Gallery in Edinburgh bought as did the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.’

This was no mean achievement.

One down. What then?  Well ‘…then there was a question mark, to go on with another book or leave it at that?’

The basis for another book was already in existence, building on the genre and the market the Ailsa book had begun.

In 2009 Ailsapress published the story of the two ponies – Bramble and Coultoon  – which diverged from the original in not ending up at Newmarket in Lewis. Ruth produced her confident cutouts based on Cathy’s original pen and ink drawings while Cathy revised and developed the text.

She says: ‘Again not a runaway success, but a good review in the Herald and steady sales has led to a reprint in 2011.’

A reprint is a respectable success in, literally, anybody’s book.

‘Once you have two books, you become addicted’.  (An admission.) A second Bramble and Coultoon story appeared in 2011.

Interestingly this year Cathy has been approached to have the two pony books translated into Gaelic. This promises to be a very interesting joint project which could lead to the translated books becoming used as an educational resource in the Gaelic medium, on Islay and even across Scotland.

Cathy has always roamed the hills, in Islay or elsewhere whenever the moment allows, sketch book or camera in hand. Her latest book is photographic.

It is a collection of photographs - Island Moments – taken on Islay and the island of Taransay off Harris over a period of some six years.

These photographs reflect her love and respect for nature, especially that of the Hebrides, where as she puts it in her introduction to the book and which has been remarked upon by reviewers: ‘In these places you are on an edge, between land and ocean, rock and sky, desolation and abundance, intimacy and awe.’

As for the friendship – forged in shared creativity and love of the natural world, this is an enduring one. Ruth comes to Islay when she can and the balance of what seems to be her irrepressible engagement with the world around her sits constructively with Cathy’s more measured observation and interpretation.

Now that she has made her home on Islay and has founded Ailsapress, Cathy is interested in helping to foster other people’s talent on the island – ‘maybe by using the fund of stories that inevitably exist in island lore, drawing them out of people and helping to give them form’.

This is an organic process that interests her greatly. Most people don’t value their own experience, knowledge, memory, insights and understanding, simply because they are so familiar to them. Building confidence in such personal resources is not to be rushed – but island time marries with that. Who knows what may emerge from this – or when?.

Lynda Henderson

Our review of Catherine Wilson’s Island Moments has been published – on Sunday 13th May 2012.

All the images above are © Ailsapress

 NOTE: Books mentioned are available direct from Ailsapress (www.ailsapress.com). For bookshops, the distributor is Bookspeed.

This Sunday – 13th May 2012, between 10.00 and 17.00 – Inveraray Castle, seat of the Chief of Clan Campbell, the Dukes of Argyll -  is hosting an Open Day for locals.

Admission will be free and there will also be a 20% discount in the Castle Tearoom and in the Castle Gift Shop.

The opportunity will let resident locals familiarise themselves with the experience the Castle offers to its visitors, form the spaces, to the artefacts to the narratives of the guides, to the ‘Bluebell Teas’ in the tearoom and the merchandise stocked in the Gift Shop.

Of course this will be a fun experience and an interesting one; and of course it sustains the good relationships existing between the Argyll Estates and the local population.

Beyond that though, this is sound business.

Tourism – including activity tourism -  is THE most important industry in and for Argyll. We have history and heritage of profound significance and interest. We have almost unparallelled scenic and activity resources in land, water and air. We have a bedazzling spectrum of wildlife in each of those environments. We are growing the specialist foods, distilling and brewing legendary potions and developing genuinely first class hotels and eating places. And we have plenty of room.

This is a massive mainland and island territory and there’s not an ugly corner in it.

But do those of us who live here all the time actually know enough about what we are offering our visitors?

Yes, online information is utterly crucial,. Yes, brochures help. But talking to someone who has first hand knowledge, who can enthuse, inspire and recommend – from genuine personal knowledge and experience? There is nothing more effective in interesting people in what they might do and in helping to build Argyll’s key industry and one which, broadly speaking, does not damage our environment but benefits from it.

So remember what you learn of Inveraray Castle, what you think of the food, the coffee and the service in the Tearoom and of the quality of the stock in the Gift Shop.

Then, if you are involved in a B&B, or a restaurant, or an activity centre or someone stops you in the street to ask a question, pass on the fruits of your own experience and help others to appreciate what you have enjoyed yourself.

Do you qualify as a ‘local’?

You do, if you live in one of the following postcode areas:

• PA27
• PA32
• PA33
• PA35

If you have any queries, visit the Inveraray Castle website or phone 01499 302203.

Flying the flag high for Argyll, the cast of Wild Biscuit’s MOVE dazzled an audience of over 1,000 international & UK delegates at VisitScotland Tourism Expo, at the Royal Highland Centre in Edinburgh on April 24th.

By special invitation MOVE opened the Inspiring Creative Connections networking event, staged by VisitScotland and Marketing Edinburgh in collaboration with Creative Scotland.

The Cast of pipers and drummers from Argyll, a core band of some of Scotland’s top professional musicians and Hip Hop B-Boy crew, Random Aspekts, took the audience totally by surprise with a slice of this unique show. The organisers wre delighted and MOVE did the business in putting Argyll bang on Scotland’s creative map.

The twenty minute set was a high energy showcase of the production that has already been a hit at the 2012 Celtic Connections festival and the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards.

Later this year it will also open the BLAS Festival in Inverness at Eden Court Theatre on 8th September.

VisitScotland Expo is Scotland’s premier tourism trade event with all sectors of the industry in Scotland represented to all corners of the globe. The Inspiring Creative Connections event was held to promote traditional Scottish food, drink and entertainment with a modern creative twist and to celebrate the Year of Creative Scotland on the international stage.

Chair of Creative Scotland, Sir Sandy Crombie and VisitScotland Chair, Dr Mike Cantlay, met the Argyll cast after the performance and were expressly delighted with the way MOVE galvanised the event.

You can keep up to date with the MOVEment on Facebook page : MOVE – Wild Biscuit;  or via Wild Biscuit’s website.

This event, in this place, with this weather and these sort of images say a shedload about what Argyll and the Isles has to offer in activity tourism.

Show us anywhere else that could deliver on a par with this? It’s got the lot – the scenic impact, the machismo, the machines, the grunt, the fun, the banter, the images, the places to go – and the place at the heart of it, the sheltered harbour in the unique little slate island with the Puffer bar and the WOW factor of the unique Easdale Island Hall with its astonishing programme of music…

Then there’s the access from the great pivotal point of Easdale to so many great places to RIB off to – for adventure, scenery, food, pubs…

The 2012 Easdale RIB Rendezvous weekend – organised by local marine wildlife operator Seafari Adventures – attracted over 40 RIBs to Easdale’s community owned harbour. They were RIBs from Huddersfield, Birmingham, Reading, Aberdeen, Ayrshire, Glasgow, Northern Ireland and of course local boats from Oban.

Sunshine and calm seas played their part in ensuring all visitors went home with many tales to tell of the excellent cruising grounds, facilities and hospitality of the area.

Easdale is the only tourism orientated destination which is actually located within the European Special Area of Conservation – the Firth of Lorne.

Saturday’s destinations included the new pontoon facility at Salen Jetty on Loch Sunart. As the air temperature was cold in the morning many RIBs pulled into Tobermory for a warming coffee before heading up to Salen (above left).

At the Tobermory pontoons, above, the big black RIB on the right is The Beast, over from RedBay boats in Cushendall on the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland; the RIB on the left is the well known Sula.

RIBS are exactly the job for Loch Sunart. That mysterious and long sea loch jabbing its way into the heart of the wonderfully massy Morvern is navigable for yachts right up to Strontian – but RIBS are quicker.

On Saturday, another side of RIBS, as anticipated, recognised that this was an excellent opportunity for extended cruising and headed around Mull.

This cruise took in a stop off at Fingal’s Cave on the Isle of Staffa and on Iona. It was a splendid day. The photograph above, of one of the RIBs on the way in to the cave, catches all of the magic you yearn to share.

The Puffer Bar and Restaurant hosted the event social with a ‘Best of the West’ BBQ highlighting the quality of locally sourced food. String Driven played at The Easdale Hall throughout the evening.

Sunday was even calmer and warmer on the water. RIBs headed to destinations various including Iona, The Garvellachs and Craighouse.

Camaraderie developed over the weekend between people from widely differing backgrounds. Friendships were renewed or formed. All will have left Easdale with a weekend to remember.

It is hoped the event will spread the word that Easdale has some excellent boating facilities right on the edge of some of Seafari’s Easdale RIB Rendezvouse best cruising grounds in the world.

This was a community effort with all local tourism businesses contributing to the standard of hospitality that today’s tourist has come to expect. The hope  is that many will return for a longer period and bring their friends.With memories of experiences like those from this weekend, it should be a good bet.

With Tony Hill

Note: Photographs supplied by Tony Hill. Chat and more photos here.

When we were at Glensanda superquarry on 26th April for the official Welcome Home to Yeoman Bontrup, the born again fire ship from two years ago, we were fascinated by the processes evolved for dealing with mass volumes of aggregates in an enterprise on this scale.

This is the epic nature, the excitement of industry and something with which we need to reconnect. An application, not long after the millennium, for a superquarry at Lingara Bay in Harris was called in and rejected by the Scottish Government. The decision was scenically correct. The photograph below shows ‘the golden road’ from Rodel to Tarbert in South Harris, serving the ‘Bays area’ where the Lingara Bay superquarry would have been.

However, the Western Isles suffers a basket-case economy, with few jobs to keep and attract a working-age population with families; and watches a progressive decline in numbers of residents through emigration and death. With this scenario in mind, it remains a moot point as to whether this decision was the best one.

Glensanda means 200 jobs and an overall lifespan of not much short of half a century. Lingara Bay would have had the advantage of being in The Minch and even more accessible to the sea routes to the markets for aggregates. But it would certainly have been in your face where, for an operation of its dimensions, Glensanda is pretty discreet.

Shifting mountains at Glensanda

The quarry was an innovative one from the outset, using the ‘glory hole and conveyor’ system of moving the quarried stone around through the various processes it goes through on its way to the jetty below for loading – on to the giant Yeoman Bontrup and its sister, Yeoman Bridge, the only two self discharging ships of their kind.

Obviously you start quarrying from the top and build the ledges, or terraces – or ‘benches’, as they call them in the trade – as you go deeper down. This structure protects the stability of the hill.

Your first drop means that the quarried stone has to be trucked to the ‘primary crusher’ (below) – which reduces it to pieces of up to 9″ in diameter.  From here this material is dumped down into ‘the glory hole’ – a deep vertical shaft that is full of stone at all times – presumably to protect the structural integrity of the shaft.

At the foot of the shaft, the stone delivers on to a conveyor belt that carries it down to the ‘secondary crusher’ which reduces it to what can be sorted into selling dimensions like 0-4mm, type 3 etc.

Then it is conveyored down to the sorting plant and the wash plant (above) – at the 60 metre level, below which it takes another conveyor trip across to the jetty.

This delivers through another system, as part of the preparation for loading on to the ships at the adjacent jetty

A horizontal conveyor, supported above ground, and with discharging nozzles set at intervals, carries and dumps the crushed stone into three piles to be loaded.

Below these piles are controllable gates which, when opened, allow their contents to drop on to a buried conveyor which delivers it to the next conveyor system that carries it diagonally up to the ship.

At the ship’s deck, the ground conveyors (below) meet the boom conveyor mounted on the ship, which is swung 0ut to collect it.

When we were there, to accommodate visitors to the ship, the conveyor boom was swung out of the way on the starboard side over Loch Linnhe – as can be seen above in the top photograph.

In operation, the boom conveyor deliver the crushed stone to each of the five polycarbonate-sided (non-stick) cargo holds (below). The ship, when it comes in to its destination port, discharges itself through an onboard system similar to the one used for loading at Glensanda jetty.

The remotely controllable gates at the bottom of each cargo hold deliver the crushed stone on to a conveyor running below from stem to stern, from where a vertical lift conveyor  carries it up to the ship’s boom conveyor which delivers it to the shore based system – at which point it’s ‘job done’.

The use of the ‘glory hole and conveyor’ system also means that the heavy machinery and trucks working between the quarry faces and the primary crusher largely stay up at the main quarry – 10-15 minutes inland and uphill from the jetty on Loch Linnhe. This has led to the building of ‘the mobile plant’ – a great two level maintenance shed up at the main quarry itself, to service and repair these giant machines that make it all possible.

One joker tried to tell us that this was called the ‘mobile plant’ because it was actually mobile. While digesting the fact that this proposition defied the evidence of one’s eyes, Ian Lindsay, the quarry’s former Chief of Engineering Operations,  interrupted the comedian with a stern denial and the correct explanation.

You have to grin. A former colleague in academia – Irish, of course – took some American guests of his to the Gaeltacht, the Gaelic speaking area of County Donegal, for a few days. They asked him to teach them how to say ‘Good Morning’ in Irish. Not a Gaelic speaker himself, he quickly gave them ‘Bord na mona’ – which sounded utterly plausible. Next morning they emerged on to the streets of Donegal town and Bord na Mona‘ed like crazy – to universal bewilderment. ‘Bord na Mona’ is the corporate name of the Irish Peat Board. So, culturally, we were up for the joke of ‘the mobile plant’.

Costs and developments

Using gravity, means starting higher up.

From the start of quarrying, the operation is unavoidably engaged in ‘uphill running’ – trucking the large volumes of rough quarried stone up to the primary crusher which, because it has to be there from the start, is up top.

The deeper down the quarry benches get, the longer and more fuel-hungry is the ‘uphill running’.

Glensanda uses something over 40 million litres of fuel a year so the sort of oil price hikes we’ve been experiencing and will continue to confront, hit production costs hard.

With the existing quarry now well developed, Glensanda is to address the matter of ‘uphill running’ costs by moving into ‘Project Highlander’.

This will extract from the reserves still within their planning permission and which amount to an estimated 800 million tonnes – enough to keep the quarry in operation for another 15-20 years.

A second primary crusher and a new glory hole are to be created at a lower level than the current one, which will be taken down once its replacement is built. The rock on which that first primary crusher stood will then be quarried away.

The position of the new primary crushes will involve less ‘uphill running’ by the indescribably massive trucks that do this job, reducing costs and facilitating the processing of the stone to come in the development of Project Highlander.

Grace notes

Let no one tell you that heavy industry does not do cute.

Down at the 60 metre level, beside the sorting plant and the wash plan, was parked a  little JCB that looked like an ultra ‘man’ golf cart with aspirations to be a mini off roader. But this is no boys’ toy indulgence.

Even in a quarry of this scale, wasted material is wasted revenue, so this little chap scrapes up the spillage from the washing and sorting plants and makes sure they get added to the piles for shipping out.

Then, above the 60 metre level is a compellingly beautiful symmetrical heap of silver crushed stone, below the maw of the conveyor belt that deposits it from the primary crusher.

This is known as the ‘primary stock pile’, It holds half a million tonnes, enough to keep the processing plant busy for a month. This ensures continuing production during the times when equipment further back in the food chain needs to be taken offline for servicing and, of course, any glitches that can crop up.

Just to set the scale of the shoreside systems we’ve described, below is a photograph of some of the Glensanda team we met on the 26th April, down at the jetty, well below the conveyors on the hill side above them.

And so…

It’s not just the logic, the means, the scale and the flow of the mechanisation that’s interesting. It’s the marriage of free propulsion – like gravity with power-driven systems. In its own unexpected way, nature plays a central part in this process.

Being in a place like Glensanda teaches you about the very specific beauty that is part of industry and leaves you with constructive adjustments to make to the way you look at the variety of the world you live in.

Note: Our enduring gratitude goes to David Lamb, the member of management staff who was our particular minder during the day at Glensanda and who was endlessly interesting in accounting for the processes we were looking at. Any errors above (which will be corrected as necessary) are not his but will be born of our misunderstanding.

The only photograph above which is not our own is the one of the Golden Road in South Harris, which is by copyright holder Zenit and reproduced here under the GNU Free Documentation licence.