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Monthly Archives: September 2018

The obliteration of the pagan past

Pagan Britain, by Ronald Hutton. Yale University Press, 2013. 480 pages. If you plucked this book down off a bookstore shelf to have a closer book, you probably would assume from the cover and the title that the book is a romanticized effort to find magic in Britain’s past. That assumption would be wrong. If […]

Quorn

Kung Pao Quorn. Click here for high-resolution version. In Scotland, I made a very nice new food discovery: Quorn. Quorn is a meat substitute made from a fungus. It started in Europe, but Quorn is now sold in the United States. Somehow, I was never aware of Quorn, even though I discovered after returning from […]

Hiking Scotland’s haunted islands

From JaneAnne’s bothy on the isle of Gometra, looking toward the isle of Ulva. Click here for high-resolution version. Mull, Ulva, and Gometra, September 2018 To the regular readers of this blog: Blog posts often have a long life, as people Google for the terms and tags included in the post. Lots of people hike […]

A photo a day, #8

Click here for high-resolution version. Tourism is the cornerstone of the Scottish economy and accounts for something like 10 percent of Scotland’s jobs. Without tourism, rural areas of Scotland would surely be poor. The tourism industry in Scotland seems well aware of the importance of food in making tourists happy. Odds are that, as long […]

A photo a day, #7

Click here for high-resolution version. I now have Ken’s photos — almost 4 gigabytes’ worth. So I can now start to put together a proper photo essay on exploring the Scottish isles. Above: On the slopes of Ben Buie on the isle of Mull.

A photo a day, #6

Click here for high-resolution version. The Scottish isles are a land of water, rock, and sky. Though, if you look down at your feet, you’ll probably find that you’re standing in moor, or bog. To explore the Scottish isles, plan on getting your feet wet. This photo was taken from the ferry landing on Ulva, […]

A photo a day, #5

Click here for high-resolution version. Rural areas in the United Kingdom seem to have kept most of their old phone booths. Many of them appear to still work, and some have signs offering Internet connections. This one is near Lochbuie on the isle of Mull.

A photo a day, #4

Click here for high-resolution version. I’m saving my better photos for a long mega-post. But here’s another daily photo until I can pull the mega-post together. Much of this trip was spent hiking, hiking, and more hiking, across moor, moor, and more moor.

A photo a day, #3

Click here for high-resolution version. The abbey on Iona is a heavily visited tourist destination. It was, easily, the least interesting place on the four Scottish islands that Ken and I visited — Mull, Ulva, Gometra, and Iona. The isle of Iona itself, though small, is fertile and beautiful. But, to me, the abbey is […]

A photo a day, #2

Click here for high-resolution version Of the cities I have seen in the world, I’d nominate Edinburgh as the most beautiful. Paris would be second, I think. And San Francisco would be third. To properly see Edinburgh, one must do a lot of walking — and some hill-climbing.