I am back home after 8 weeks travelling around the periphery of Alba (Scotland): from Ardrossan near Glasgow, to the Isle of Arran, across Kintyre (where Ziggy “took off” his rucksack and left it behind!) then through some of the Inner Hebrides, including Iona and Coll, a foray onto Ardnamurchan, across most of the inhabited Outer Hebrides, and finally overland to Moray, east of Inverness, and back to Glasgow (to buy the kilt, above: Stewart Hunting, but very like Cornish Hunting…).
I have been visiting and finding out about the peoples of Alba: Gaels, the Dal Riathans, the Vikings, the Scots, and then the Picts – who I first came across on South Uist, through Kilpheder Kate, – and the “Britons” of Strathclyde. And the rulers: the kings of Dal Riatha, the Lords of the Isles, the lairds of various of the islands (especially the Campbells of Shawfield in Islay, who built model towns, and didn’t resort to the clearances that bedevilled most of the rest of the the Isles) the Kings of Pictland; and finally the Community Trusts that now own places like Ulva (an island on the edge of Mull) and the Trusts of West and North Harris (oh, and the Tarbart Discovery Centre in Portmahomack, another community trust).
Maybe I will use the blog to record some of my experiences…I didn’t take many pictures, but no doubt I can find many illustrative references…although here is a Pictish cross-slab, in its own bus shelter overlooking the Moray Firth at Shandwick, finally being sheltered after 1,200 years of facing the East Coast weather…
