I was in Fort William and Arisaig today.
Arisaig’s a lovely wee village just short of Mallaig and on the beautiful railway line where they shoot the Hogwarts Express scenes in the Harry Potter films.
It was gloriously sunny in Arisaig. But it rained in Fort William. There’s a surprise.
Tomorrow I am off to Skye. No other news to report except a handful of photos from Arisaig.
I was catching up with various friends in the Harlequin last night, perhaps my favourite pub in Inverness, and one of the few with a nice beer garden.
Only it’s no longer the Harlequin - it’s under new management and is now called the Castle Tavern.
I don’t like people tinkering with things that you’re used to (newspapers always seem worse after a change of font, don’t you think?), but thankfully the Harlequin is no worse. In fact, it’s perhaps slightly better.
The new owners are apparently the folk behind the lovely Clachnaharry Inn, which is famed for its lovely food and extensive range of real ales, so it’s reassuring that both of those have transferred over to the Harlequin.
I was there til closing (the joy of being on holiday!), but please observe the steady-handedness of my photos from the walk home.
It was great to be back at my old church, Hilton, last night. It was so lovely to see lots of familiar faces and catch up with old friends. Some Hiltonites have been reading my blog, though, because the minister asked the techies to do a “St Silas” and welcome me by name via the intimation screen! If I keep getting embarassed by churches like this, I think I’ll have to change religion.
There were plenty new faces too, though, and the church continues to grow and change and do exciting things. Last night, for example, was “Impact Cafe”, Hilton’s monthly “alternative” service. It was a a laid back affair, involved a variety of media and activities and was thought-provoking and well-put together. It was clearly the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of people.
I suppose it would be the equivalent of St Silas’s “Deeper” services, and is one of the many ways in which I find the two churches to be very similar in approaches, styles, talents and outlook - probably why I found St Silas so easy to settle in.
Another innovation is Hilton’s new blog - they already have a website, but have recently decided to set up a blog which more or less anyone can use to post thoughts on the areas of Hilton they are involved in. It’s fascinating to see an “official” church publication being done so democratically. Some churches would dread such a “free for all”, but Hilton seems to think it’s a really exciting opportunity. I agree.
I gather St Silasites have been a bit of an inspiration to Hilton in terms of using blogging as a tool for the church, and it will be fascinating to see how Hilton’s “open” blog evolves.
Greetings from Inverness. I got here this afternoon after an absolutely lovely weekend.
The castle was an enthralling place - a beautiful old place with statues, vast portraits on the wall, and more nooks and crannies than you could shake a turret at.
The weekend was spent going for walks, exploring the vast building (yours truly was a master hider at “Sardines“), eating copious amounts of food, drinking some very nice whisky, and catching up with friends.
It helped, too, that the weather was glorious - perhaps the best weather there’s been this year so far.
As promised, there’s some photos on my Flickr site.
Over the past while, I’ve been feeling a bit nervous and apprehensive about chucking it all in and going travelling - is the mission really worth it?
But then just yesterday I was idly browsing through Flickr. The online photo community, where I store my photos, is an amazing site with so much to explore and so many ways to explore it.
I noticed someone had put a photo in the Inverness group and also had a set of pictures of Albania (his name’s Mark Walley, incidentally, and he has a website too). Albania is a country I know and love, and so I began leafing through Mark’s pictures, recognising various landmarks from Tirana and reminiscing on my three trips there in 1999, 2001 and 2003.
Then I stumbled upon the picture above. Oh boy, as Sam Beckett would say. The final mullet I intend to visit - and the one I accidentally didn’t visit in 2003.
Thanks to Mark I’ve seen proof of the finishing line. Surely I can’t have any doubts about the mission now.
It’s a sign.
Literally.
I head away on Friday for a week or so’s travels back north to see friends and family.
This weekend will be spent with a group of friends from Inverness in Carbisdale Castle, a beautiful place run as a youth hostel.
It’s about an hour’s drive north of Inverness, in a stunning spot in the Sutherland hills. I’ve not been there before but have seen it from the train (incidentally, the far north line is a slow but picturesque journey that takes in the dramatic coastline, mountains, villages and castles of the north-eastern highlands - highly recommended for any tour of Scotland).
After that I’ll spend a couple of days catching up with friends in Inverness before heading to Fort Augustus and Skye to see family.
It will all be a welcome break from Weegieland, and nice little earner for Citylink.
I will hopefully blog as I go, so stand by for photos.
My former place of work, UHI, uses video-conferencing a lot in teaching and learning due to the geographical distance between campuses.
When working there, I always thought that - much in the vein of the cheeky cliche “lawyers make it stand up in court” - an amusing t-shirt slogan for the student population could have been “UHI students do it on-screen”.
However according to the front page of the Daily Record today, at least two students actually have done.
With the readership of Scotland’s best-selling newspaper now fully aware of UHI’s innovative, blended learning experience, there’s surely no such thing as bad publicity.
Niall emailed me to say that following his recent trip to Ireland for tax reasons, he’s now on 31 countries visited. I’m on 30, and while our competition has generally been close, I think it’s the first time he’s nosed in front. So naturally I am upset.
I do have the Faroes in June and then of course I’m still hoping to hit the mullet trail in the autumn, so that should give me at least six new countries that I can think of (I wonder if the Falklands count? They have their own stamps, after all…).
However, Niall is part of the Faroes trip too, and I fear that he will maintain his advantage due to his continuing travels for work: he was in Mauritania recently (and wrote an engaging account of the trip), is off to Malaysia soon, and will no doubt have clocked up more new countries before I even manage to set foot in my first mullet in September.
The LOTR marathon was great fun - indeed, quite a revelation because I’d not seen all the extended versions, so a few scenes were new to me. Having seen them all back to back, I’d say it’s probably the best film trilogy ever. The script, the special effects, the storyline, the acting, all blended together to make a magnificent film.
Sunday’s evening service was a revelation too - because it was on Revelation. As David reports, the theme of coping with the cacophany of the real world was illustrated by the opening of a large, loud market in church, where we were asked to browse around and check out stalls where people were asking us to buy their products, vote for them, and believe their promises of happiness and improvement through material things.
We were asked to suspend our disbelief and throw ourselves into the experience of the market stall, and play along with the idea. I was sorely tempted to do this by going on a rampage and throwing all the stall tables over, but I restrained myself.
On Saturday I am going to engage in one of the toughest days I will have gone through for a while. It will involve an early start (never good on a Saturday), late finish, some concentrated physical stress, and over 12 hours of focus.
No, I’ve not taken up extreme sport, I’m instead going to be watching all three Lord of the Rings films with a couple of friends. The extended editions.
I’ve seen each of the films a number of times, but only seen an extended edition once, and that was quite a while back.
So It will be a long, long day. And it will be strange seeing Charlie from Lost as a hobbit again.
Which reminds me of my top Lord of the Rings joke:
Q: What’s Sauron’s favourite football team?
A: Wraith Rovers.
