91热爆

"Daddy went that way"...well maybe he did. Chatting with my six year old son last Sunday he asked which way is the Sahara ? South wee man...Oh! thats were the Swallows from Tiree go for the winter...(I told him this when he was 5, he's 6 and a big half now.

Well they are not quite Swallows...House Martins I think ? but these little fellows spent this morning perched on our HF radio antenna.



I was here in early March when they went North...the swallows usually follow soon. Thats how it has always been, so I am told by the olde wizen Toureg cook.
Anyhow...subtle changes in the wind direction, the height of the sun at mid-day, the passage of the migrating birds...and the abscence of my son's, all 3 of them since our recent addition ... one way of counting the seasons off.



Time for a shared dinner now...hope they washed their hands ?...



Off Shore view

I find myself in an Erg...Poets, Philosophers, Madmen & a "Dream of White Horses"An erg (also sand sea or dune sea) is a large, relatively flat area of desert covered with wind-swept sand with little to no vegetation cover.[1] The term takes its name from the Arabic word erg ( 毓乇賯), meaning "dune field". Strictly speaking, an erg is defined to be a desert area that contains more than 125 square kilometers of eolian sand and where sand covers more than 20% of the surface. Smaller areas are known as dune fields. The largest hot desert in the world, the Sahara, is 9,000,000km虏 and contains several ergs



Well I find myself in an Erg...but not to worry because my sturdy landrover provides me with shelter (yes all that epitomises British style ? is placed firmly under my rear), a GPS (Global Positioning System) and if I choose somewhere to eat out of the heat. It wasn't that long ago when we relied on compass or a sunshot to find our way from A to B...but those days are gone. There are those that worry about GPS getting turned off or errors been falsely added, well rest assured my technophobs, a sextant out here with heat shimmer was always 5 to 15% out. As for a compass local anomalies are not meantioned on any map. And in the last 8 years this has never happened.....yet ?



Above is my home for the next 29 days 4 hrs and 22 minutes...yes I am counting, one can only take so much sand without the sound of the sea, the smell of the spray and the tang of the salt on my lips. (not to mention a dram as this place is dry in a number of ways). They say of the desert that any body who spends too much time out here on their own becomes either "poet, a philosopher or a mad man"...hopefully this time limit is beyond my 6 week rotation. But this place does make you think...take today for instance. While scouting a route to an old water well I came across these....


Oyster shells...millions af them, I questioned the the crew geologist who explained in simple poetry (he has been here 4 weeks) that 800,000 years or so ago in the Eocene period this place was an inland sea...The plot thickens methinks, so here once upon a time there was the smell of salt, the tang of the sea breeze and the soft ripples of a shallow sea. Being a smarty pants I said 'so this is where the oil comes from'...NO (with postical retort), the oil deposits are 12000' down and in were formed in another shallow sea that was once part of Pangea ? seems "this place was a supercontinent that included all the landmasses of the earth before the Triassic Period and that broke up into Laurasia and Gondwana". He also added that at the time this ancient landmass was somewhere near the south pole. I went to the canteen for a strong cup of tea and left the Rock Doctor to his philsophising...



I am counting the days...29 days 3 hrs and 8 minutes...

I am counting the days because: when I sleep I hear the ocean and I dream of white horses...when I am awake...I walk on ancient sea beds...and the madness creeps closer, the madness that makes me pack my bags a day early, do anything not to get stopped or delayed on the way home...the madness that drives me through terminal 1 at Heathrow and on up to Glasgow...the madness that drives me down onto the rocks to watch an Atlantic storm within 20 minutes of stepping off the plane on Tiree


And then I get home & I stop, I hold my family close, I take my watch off...light the fire...and pour myself a dram...I then put my warmest coat on and walk down to the Beach at Balevullin or Cornaigmore & I sit, and watch...I watch the sand on the beach shifting, the muscles and limpets on the rocks, the waves pounding in from the west...



I look across to Coll, Eigg, Muck, Rum, Canna, Skye the Outer Isles...and decide where to sail tomorrow...



Maybe Gondwana...?

72 degrees North. Ursus Maritimus revisited...a case of "Reticent Mass Murder"

The recent media coverage of the plight of the Polar Bear takes me away from my current hot location, the Libyan Sahara...to revisit an experience from April 3 2004.

Global warming is not such a difficult concept to grasp when the heat outside of my office is 40c+, and the palm trees & tamarisx bushes of the Sahara are dying due to subtle changes in the climate, causing extensive desertification.



The temperature difference between boiling water and hot water (taking altitude out of the maths) is what ? The temperature difference between freeze and thaw is what ? The jury is out ?, but we all know that we are contributing to the "straw that broke the camels back".

And I collect the $ in the wilderness for finding the Oil and Gas that made this screen...run's the airconditioner, powers my "pentium chip" & flys me home to my children...one day in the future I hope my boy's get to see a ;

Polar bear (plural polar bears)



A very large bear found in the Arctic Circle, white in appearance and very furry.

Otherwise known as; Ursus maritimus
a taxonomic species within the genus Ursus; the polar bear, a species of bear that is native to the Arctic and the apex predator within its range. The arths largest land carnivore...

Enjoy ! (while you still can)



The location April 3rd 2004 was at a proposed LPG export terminal, I took the photograph from within my Lada Niva 4X4. He had come in search of a tasty morsel or two, neither of which I intended to become. He, I say he because thats what the driver told me was very skinny (he was also quite a muddy chap as the thaw had again come early, two months early.

My brief was to support a land survey team plotting and scouting a route for a planned 22" pipeline from Dudinka some 600miles south in the taiga, Siberia. This involved testing the load bearing capacity of the permafrost.The change from from open ocean to tundra plateau to coniferous wonderland is startling...All the more so when you fly daily from base to base.



91热爆 on the Ice shared with other contractor groups.



91热爆 amongst the Spruce...



Each spring the point at which the tundra and the Taigra meet is moving, meters, 100 of meters north...as the permafrost thaws the trees spread, stunted at first...but gradually rising in hight over a kilometer or so.

Transition between warm and cold, Tigra meets Tundra:



The palm trees and tamarisx are dying in the Sahara, the conifers spread north as the ice retreats...It is true I have seen it.
maybe we are just caught up in the cycle of earthly change and have little to do with it. We live finite lives, have finite resources and live on a planet with a finite existance...

We live on the Western fringe out in the islands, we if anyone can lead by example...I understand that the asthetics of a windturbine and the impact of tidal generators are not to eveybodies taste...but it is time for change, time for everybody to play their part in the bigger picture. I for one would much rather have a thousand turbines than no Polar Bears.

It maybe is to late to stop this "Reticent Mass Murder", But my Boys haven't yet seen a wild Polar bear, Ursus Maritimus....

An Off Shore View.........................................................................................



And to finish on an upbeat picture I just had to include the below photograph.
The USSR had hundreds of Mink farms in Siberia, when the Soviet state broke down the farms unsupported by the state fell int disrepair, hundreds of thousands of mink were let free in the wilds...the local people in this village put the ones they trap to good use...and the Capercaille are coming back , slowly...things sometimes can be fixed...

Oasis (plural oases)

A well surrounded by vegetation in a desert.

A quiet, peaceful place surrounded by busy or noisy places, or
The park was an oasis in the middle of the busy city


One could say a 'place of water within a sea of sand'.

One could say a 'place of sand within an ocean of water'.

Synonym
(quiet place surrounded by busy places): island


Um Al Ma (place of water)



Vaul



Gaberoun



Scarinish



Um Al Ma



Traigh Cornaig, looking towards the green.



If I had a choice, to finally reside, in a special place my mind has set aside,
I would have little doubt of it's name, Traigh Cornaig for my ashes I would explain.
But as for the Eden, I have already seen; 鈥楿m al Ma鈥� is the philosophers dream.





And as the moon pulls away from the shore and our boat sinks slowly in the west, I bid you fair winds....

Offshore View





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaberoun

My Wee man



Oh' My Wee Man.
my pride and joy,
Across the Machair you take your toy,
It must seem a hell of a distance down to the beach,
To build that sand castle out of tides reach.

How distance shrinks as we get older,
Shrunk by knowledge as we get bolder,
I鈥檝e told you twice to hurry up,
is this just part of growing up?

What鈥檚 the rush? Take your time,
You get on with your wee sand mine.

And when we walk back up the track,
I鈥檒l do a fathers best to cast my mind back,
My Dad seemed so tall, always a mile ahead,
there always seemed such a rush to get me tucked up in bed

For the joy of Winnie and laughing at Poo!
鈥淵es my wee man I love you too鈥濃��
To the lessons I did learn on a very similar track,
Thoughts of my own toy tractor, sisal string always taut,
the lessons I have learnt and the rational behind thought.
These are the things that you are teaching me now,

Wait a minute lets climb a tree鈥�!
A difficult task when you live on Tiree鈥�..

Off the cuff poem........Off shore View, Miss you Finn, Miss you Aedan, Miss you Jack & yes I miss you too.

"High above Rannoch Moor, in that ethereal blue space that only the mountains offer鈥�

A dear old mate of mine, this week kind enough to send me 3 photographs of a past (formulative) period of my life. To me these were the 'Halcyon' days, or daze as I prefer to call them. I only seem to remember the sun drenched rock, the scenery vivid...I presume the damp days were spent in the pub ? But summer did seem longer then.

From around 1982 through to 1996 my entire life revolved around the mountains and rock climbing. To a lesser degree now I still seek the feeling of that 'Space beneath my feet', and even as I put finger to key my palms dampen at the thought of moments we shared. Winter for me in Scotland is a time for winter walking and a bit of solo ice climbing in the easier gullies and on the classic buttresses of the Ben.

Finally making the move to Scotland from North Wales in 1996 seemed to curtail my upwardly mobile antics...and then a move to Tiree some 8 years ago further curtailed life in the vertical realm. (But opened up a world of sailing)



Sweating on the "Axe" 1992.



Britomatis, Gogarth.1994(seem to remember I lost a shoe on this)

We still keep in regular touch, and every year we meet to climb at more modest grades...family, and age seem taken away much of the craving for adrenaline fueled weekends living life in the vertical...but our youthful antics have forged a bond that has stood the test of time and we are hatching the plan to meet in the late autumn and have a go at the everlasting 'last great problem'. The bond forged between to people climbing on a rock face can never be broken. It's referred to as the Brotherhood of the rope...and whether we were in the UK, the Alps or the Himalaya the one thing remained, two people trusting their lives to each other.



Pink Panther, Kilt Rock, Skye

Due to the terrain I suppose my real ambitions or the drive finally dissipated in my move to Tiree some 8 years ago now. And I am all the more cautious having 3 son鈥檚 in my life. But I will have to keep my hand in as if they ever decide to climb I would want them to learn as I did from my father.

So Flat? Tiree my destiny what have you to offer me...one last great problem when my brother visits...you bet.



Crag 'X'

I am told that way down south in the realms of clotted cream the palms have begun to sweat, and what a name for one last climb if we manage to drag our carcasses up the obvious natural line 'Halcyon Daze & the Space Beneath My Feet"鈥�

Watch this space鈥�

(Cheers Dave & Cheers Belay Bunny...last ones for you)



yep me looking Gormenghast in my silly hat !!!

ROY 'The Good'



Roy was a border Collie...I bought him as a young dog from Portadown NI. He worked my farm on the North Shores of Ardnamurchan...for the two years I lived there. On his own he managed 450 Blackies, and 20 or so Highland cattle.
The purchase of ROY in itself was a hilarious event, involving ferries, being searched by the British Military, the total destruction of the rear seats of a hire car...a monumental hangover brought about by the luck penny, and one of the best nights out in Belfast that any brit with a dog should expect?

After a stormy few years Roy and I were blown onto the lee shores of Tiree in September 1999.
And we bought a cottage by the sea.

Fun followed fun, and I met my soul mate, and we now have two beautiful sons.

We all love each other equally, though there will always be an empty space in my heart that was occupied by 'Roy'...he was; ~Fidelity~ He worked the green swards of Northern Ireland, and then worked the hills of Ardnamurchan. He was admired and loved by all who knew him. He never snapped at lamb or child, but stood his ground with ewe, ram and Highland cattle. He was a master hole digger of biblical proportions and shared his love and understanding of the hills and the sea with me.

I miss him so very much...

He left me at the rip old age of 16 and is buried (in a hole he would have been proud of) on a hill looking west over the Atlantic and on onwards toward every mystical sunset that the beautiful Isle of Tiree has to offer.

.

Fidelity

A BARKING sound the Shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts--and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks:
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
And instantly a dog is seen,
Glancing through that covert green.

The Dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;

With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in hollow or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
What is the creature doing here?

It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps, till June, December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below!

Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land;
From trace of human foot or hand.

There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere;
Thither the rainbow comes--the cloud--
And mists that spread the flying shroud;

And sunbeams; and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past;
But that enormous barrier holds it fast.

Not free from boding thoughts, a while
The Shepherd stood; then makes his way
O'er rocks and stones, following the Dog
As quickly as he may;
Nor far had gone before he found
A human skeleton on the ground;
The appalled Discoverer with a sigh

Looks round, to learn the history.
From those abrupt and perilous rocks
The Man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the Shepherd's mind
It breaks, and all is clear:
He instantly recalled the name,
And who he was, and whence he came;
Remembered, too, the very day
On which the Traveller passed this way.

But hear a wonder, for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell!
A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.
The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,
This Dog, had been through three months' space
A dweller in that savage place.

Yes, proof was plain that, since the day
When this ill-fated Traveller died,
The Dog had watched about the spot,

Or by his master's side:
How nourished here through such long time
He knows, who gave that love sublime;
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate!

William Wordsworth


Had this poem been written directly about the old rascal he would probably have done one of two things...dug a big hole to bury the victim in, or gnawed on my bones. Either would have been fine by me...so Roy I know you are out there, always beyond the next brae, save me a patch of warm heather and a view of the Highlands and sea...and one day my most faithful friend we shall share some bilberries again...



Miss you.

Corvus Corax 鈥淢uninn' the High Plains Drifter鈥濃��



Bla Bheinn

Tired I sit to ponder the wonder of the
Hammered copper forest far below,
I watch the feather flutter and settle on the snow
Ethereal blue air brittle with chill,
A rising delight that such a simple thing should thrill.



from the summit of Bla Bheinn towards the Cullin.

Swooping low against the foreboding sky,
Jet black Raven tumbles by
Stark silhouette against the winter sky,
What wonders do you see upon the wing?
The crags of winter,
The cliffs of spring.
The ice finite through winter鈥檚 blast,
The summer鈥檚 heat that never lasts.

Speak to me raven of what you know,
Of the meadow and the valley far below.
The battles that were fought within that glen,
The climbers to be lost upon this Bheinn
For through your black eyes you have witnessed it all
From valiant loss, the death of a ewe unshorn.



Stob Dearg looking down Glen Etive

How can one know of the valleys below if we have not
Lived in the eternal realm of rock and snow.
Talk to me raven.
With a wink of that dark eye settle the deed,
For there is a blizzard coming and I need to be on my way,
The sun is setting an end to my day,

Black velvet, green upon blue I feel cold鈥�
Is this a time to wish I was you?
And lying here I ponder the lack of view.

鈥淵ou are close now鈥�, come whispers in my ear,
A breath separates us鈥�.
What secrets do you hold to allay my fear?
This all consuming blizzard drowns out what you say,
Aghast at a reply;
鈥淪leep without fear鈥� 鈥渞est without want鈥�

A rising delight that such a simple thing should thrill,
I close my eyes and fading, ignore the chill.



Baosbheinn (Torridon)

And finally for now...the mighty Slioch

Some things make me sad, others make me mad...



WW2 barbed wire nr Tobruk


91热爆 headlines read; The head of the British Army says he is becoming increasingly concerned about "the growing gulf between the Army and the nation".
Gen Sir Richard Dannatt said soldiers were sometimes greeted with indifference on returning from service. A "willingness to serve in such an atmosphere again" could be sapped, he said in a speech in London. (Remember it was public opinion that stopped Vietnam)
"When a young soldier has been fighting in Basra or Helmand, he wants to know that the people in their local pub know and understand what he has been doing and why."



A lonely place to lie, Bir Hakiem. (Bir Hakiem is the epitomy of heroism)

In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent 鈥榮urge鈥� is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed since the invasion took place in 2003.

Previous estimates, noticeably the one published in the Lancet in October 2006, suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths).
These findings come from a poll released recently by ORB, the British polling agency that has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005.



Knightsbridge Cemetery nr Tobruk

The reason there is such indifference and ever increasing anti-war sentiment, well you don鈥檛 have to be a rocket scientist the figures speak for themselves

A You Gov poll published last weekend found, 53 per cent of British voters believe that UK troops are failing in Iraq. Three quarters want them brought home immediately or within the next year

Our British armed forces are not separate from our elected politicians, elected鈥� yep we put them there, roll on democracy. So when does this lunacy finish? Hey what ever happened to Tony?



Mine and munitions removal on the Iranian side of the Iran Iraq border (1999) me smiling ?



Not smiling ? the penny drops...

An age ago a large group of people in opposition against the Iraq war stood on a windy day in Crossapol united in their disgust at the Iraq conflict.
You can find many of these very same people yearly at the war memorial near the pier in Scarinish at the 11th hour of the 11 day of the 11th month remembering the sacrifice made by so many soldiers from Tiree in other wars.

Lest we forget? Surely some already have.

Personally I deeply respect all the people who serve to protect the British Isles.However, I see it as an act of gross disrespect to place these men and wome into an arena of warfare for "All" the wrong reasons.