Filed under: movies, Scotland, Travel | Tags: Aberdeen, blogging, Burghead, Clava Cairns, Communion of Dreams, Culloden, Ferness, Findhorn, jim downey, Local Hero, My Dinner with Andre, neolithic, Pennan, Picts, The Ship Inn, travel, Wikipedia
Being a photo-heavy travelog of our 2018 trip to Scotland.
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Friday, May 11.
We left Tain, headed south and through Inverness. On the east side of the city we stopped at the Battlefield of Culloden, the site where the Jacobite Rising ended. But since neither Martha nor I are particularly knowledgeable of or interested in this episode of history, we decided to just look around a bit and then move on.
But not far from the Battlefield, there was something we did particularly want to see: the Clava Cairns. This is a group of burial cairns and standing stone circles dating about 4,000 years ago, during the bronze age. It is a wonderful, magical, site:
From the Culloden area we decided to drive east, taking the A96 more or less parallel to the coast. Our eventual goal was Aberdeen, but the idea was to enjoy getting there.
It was, as you can see form the image above, a grey and cloudy day. It was also windy. Crazy windy. So much so that where farmers had plowed their fields, the wind kicked up clouds of dust so heavy that it was impossible to see through. Some of these clouds obscured the roads at time, making driving even more fun that usual.
We decided to leave the A96 and take local roads out to the coast through the town of Kinloss and out to Findhorn.
Findhorn. Ring any bells?
Perhaps you remember it from the classic arthouse movie My Dinner with Andre (one of my favorites), where Andre discusses the remarkable spiritual community founded there in the 1960s, renown for the exceptional harvest of oversize vegetables, which was attributed to help from spiritual entities known as devas (catch the reference in Communion of Dreams?). I remember reading about Findhorn back in the 70s as a New Age settlement, and friends and family had visited there to experience the alternative cultural movement themselves. Having a chance to drop in for just a taste of the place was something I couldn’t pass up. So we did, and spent some time walking through the community, checking out the Original Garden, which still has a special place in my imagination. And unlike many things you see after so many years of anticipation, this one wasn’t diminished by reality. See for yourself:

That’s the founder’s caravan — what the Brits call a mobile home — which was the first shelter at Findhorn, adjacent to the garden.
Leaving Findhorn, we kept close to the coast, to the small village of Burghead. Why? For the Pictish Fort which is there on the point of the peninsula, which is still quite evident:
We headed further east. Got back on the A96 briefly, but then were again on local roads heading for the coast. To the small town of Banff. Why Banff? Because of another arthouse film from the early 80s which I love: Local Hero. The small town bar in that movie is actually a *really* small local pub called ‘The Ship Inn‘ in Banff. Where we stopped in for a bite of lunch and a pint. And were greeted by two local dogs, three patrons sitting on stools sipping their beer, and the landlady. There wasn’t room for much more.
Then it was further up the coast for another film location from Local Hero: the tiny seaside village of Pennan, which played the part of Ferness in the movie. Here ’tis, red phone box and everything:
From there we made our way to Aberdeen, where we had hotel reservations. In the oddest Hilton (Doubletree) I’ve ever stayed in. We were in what was ostensibly a “handicapped accessible” room, and which did indeed have the appropriate safety bars and call buttons fitted out in the bathroom for someone in a wheelchair. But which literally required us to go up two flights of stairs and down one to get to — there was no other way to get to the room. Seriously — there’s no way someone in a wheelchair could have gotten to the room without being carried there. Crazy.
But we had dinner in the hotel, and crashed early.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Reproduction, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Travel, Wales | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Castell Henllys, Craig Rhosyfelin, Gors Fawr, Hywel Dda, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Llandysul, neolithic, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, travel, Wales, Wikipedia
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7.
We spent the bulk of Sunday driving to Llandysul in SW Wales. There we’d made arrangements to stay with an online friend of Martha’s.
Monday we spent mostly in prehistoric Britain, starting with Castell Henllys. This is an iron age hillfort which has been partially reconstructed, using solid archeological research done on the site. Since the roundhouses have been rebuilt right on the original foundations, you get a real sense of what life in the village must have been like. You can see it, feel it, smell it. They’ve done a remarkable job in building the structures and constructing the everyday items which would have been inside them.
We decided to have lunch at a local pub, then I wanted to make another stop at Craig Rhosyfelin (from Part 3), to take some additional images for my own reference in working on St Cybi’s Well:
And from there we went exploring — driving off into an area we hadn’t been before, just looking to see what we might find on the map. And we wound up at Gors Fawr, a wonderful remote neolithic stone circle. With the clouds hanging low and covering the nearby mountain tops, you couldn’t ask for a more atmospheric scene:
Lastly, on our way back to Llandysul, we stopped by the Hywel Dda Centre in Whitland. We had been to the Centre previously, but only when it wasn’t open. This time we had a chance to chat with a charming docent, who shared his enthusiasm for Welsh history. And of professional interest, we got to see the excellent facsimile copy of ‘Boston Manuscript of the Laws of Hywel Dda‘:
It was a delightful day.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Gardening, Travel, Wales | Tags: Anglesey, Betws-y-Coed, blogging, Bodnant Garden, CADW, Conwy, Din Lligwy Hut Group, jim downey, Laburnum Arch, Lligwy Burial Chamber, neolithic, Penmon, St. Seiriol’s Well, Swallow Falls, Wales, Wikipedia, Ynys Môn
That’s the famous Laburnum Arch at Bodnant Garden in North Wales. Calling it an ‘arch’ is somewhat misleading, since it’s actually 55 meters long. Here’s a better image of it from Wikipedia:
We decided to kick off our week in North Wales with a trip to Bodnant Garden, particularly since Martha knew that the Arch would be in bloom. She’s wanted to see it in it’s full glory since we first went there almost 20 years ago.
And much of the rest of the garden was in bloom, as well:
If you plan a trip to Wales, particularly anywhere in the north, you really should include Bodnant in your itinerary.
After enjoying the garden, we decided to pop into Conwy for a bit of lunch, enjoying the old town, and seeing the amazing City Walls:
(Not my images, found on Google.)
From there, we decided to drive back to our cottage in Dolgellau via Betws-y-Coed, so we could check out Swallow Falls:
And here’s some video of it:
The next morning we headed to Ynys Môn, more commonly known in English as Anglesey. The first stop was St Seiriol’s Well, Penmon. We visited the well:
Then checked out the medieval dovecot, and went out to the beach for a nice stroll. We drove further inland to check out a site I had again *thought* that I had visited previously, but that turned out to be only in my fiction: the Lligwy Burial Chamber, a neolithic burial site. And nearby is the Lligwy hut group, a Roman-era defensive village which is really quite delightful, even if it is only foundations:
After the Hut Group, we stopped at a roadside pub for some lunch, then went exploring Anglesey, taking in the views, hopping fences to get up close to some wind mills, and enjoying the many scattered Standing Stones.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Architecture, Augmented Reality, Wales, YouTube | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, CADW, Darnell Sidwell, jim downey, menhir, neolithic, Pentre Ifan, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, video, Wales, www youtube
I’ve mentioned Pentre Ifan, a wonderful neolithic site (which is also the title of a chapter in St Cybi’s Well) before. It really is an amazing site, see for yourself:
And here’s the passage where Darnell sees it in SCW:
He continued on. Along a tumble-down wall separating fields, partially overgrown with hedge and briar. Past cattle in the field, grazing and occasionally lowing to one another, who took little interest in him as he walked along. Through another kissing gate, and almost suddenly he was standing there before the structure, bare to the sky. One great slab of stone several meters long and a couple wide, supported by three menhir, high enough that he would have to stretch a bit to touch the underside of the capstone. There were a couple of additional uprights at the south end, and several largish stones which had tumbled over. He just stood there for a moment, taking it all in.
Well, CADW has just released a new ‘digital restoration’ that’s very cool:
Neolithic Burial Chamber digitally restored
An ancient structure synonymous with the Pembrokeshire countryside has been recreated using the latest CGI technology.
Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service, has digitally restored the Pentre Ifan burial chamber in the latest of a series of videos available on its YouTube channel.
Fun to see that interpretation of it.
Jim Downey