Into the Woods

I’m off to Scotland with my camera and walking stick. I’ll return to blogging the last week of August.

The destination this year will be the Outer Hebrides — the islands of Lewis and Harris. I’ll also have a couple of days in Edinburgh and a day in Oxford. On the way to the west coast of the Outer Hebrides, I’ll pass through Inverness, Ullapool, and Stornaway.

Deciding what to read on this trip was difficult. I wanted fiction set in Scotland. I finally settled on a historical novel by Nigel Tranter, Sword of State. It’s set in the 13th Century and has to do with Patrick (a future earl of Dunbar), and King Alexander II of Scotland. Tranter, I believe, is well known in Scotland. He wrote something like 90 historical novels, which is a lot of novels to crank out.

These are interesting times in Scotland and the United Kingdom. The U.K. has a new prime minister, and Brexit is looming. The Scottish people are very worried about Brexit and are rethinking the 2014 referendum in which Scotland voted against becoming an independent country. It is possible that, if the referendum were held today, Scotland would vote to break with the United Kingdom.

Summer here in the American South has been brutally hot. I’m looking forward to some cold, blowing rain off the North Atlantic and a bit of moor and bog.