A Week On Skye - Getting There and Fiskavaig

Sunset Over Loch Bracadale, Skye

I'm sitting writing this in a cottage on the Isle of Skye, watching the sun going down over Macleod's Tables through a pair of enormous patio doors. Yes, we're on holiday up north yet again and, as usual, we left it to the last minute to organise things.

It was just last Monday that I was given the go-ahead to search for a holiday cottage instead of us trying to book somewhere abroad. I'm quite happy with that as I don't like flying very much and I simply hate all the hastle involved in getting there and back. Airports and I just don't get on - you queue to check in, you queue to pick up your luggage (assuming it's taken the same plane) and then you could have a couple of hours on a bus to look forward to before you reach wherever it is you're staying.

And the travel agents can't understand why they get a hard stare when they try and sell you a holiday flying out from Manchester. No, we live in Glasgow, why on earth would we want to fly from Manchester or the other favourites, Newcastle or Edinburgh. Oh yes, we'd love to spend five hours getting to the airport and then another five coming home again…NOT! But I'm wandering off topic…

So anyway, I fancied Skye as we've never been there before so a root around on the internet found four or five promising looking holiday rentals that were available this week. I noted them all down in a new, public Google Notebook and passed that to Lorna for a final selection. Then a couple of e-mails back and forward, a cheque in the mail and we were all set by Thursday and looking forward to getting away on Saturday to Allt Ribhein in Fiskavaig.

So this morning, with the car all packed, we headed for Fort William, which is about half way so it was a good place for a break and some lunch. Suitably fed and off again, we were soon heading for Kyle of Lochalsh and the Skye Bridge. Did I mention that I hate touring caravans and campers? Our roads simply aren't designed with these mind and it doesn't take long for traffic to start building up behind some slow caravan or camper, wending and weaving its merry way onward and oblivious to the fuming queue of cars behind them. If I had my way I'd ban them off the roads during the hours of daylight!

There was an amusing interlude on the Loch Lomond road, just north of Tarbet, when a huge foreign truck travelling south completely blocked the road. It simply couldn't negotiate the narrow, twisty turny road without using both lanes and then some serious use of the forward and reverse gears. Bet the driver won't ever try using that route again!

Anyway, other than the usual ordeal of caravans and campers and one complete pillock who braked suddenly, causing the enormous truck on his tail to swerve over into our path for a heart-stopping moment, the rest of the journey was uneventful and we started to see signs for places we'd only ever seen before in walking and climbing guides. We were heading for Fiskavaig in the Minginish area, which isn't far from The Cuillin, almost certainly the most challenging hills to climb in the UK.

Eventually, we reached our destination and, once settled in, we had a walk along the road a bit further into Fiskavaig before dinner and then scuttled back fairly rapidly as the dreaded midgies discovered us. Once safely back indoors and after some dinner, we settled down to watch the Argentina vs. Mexico football match in the World Cup.

The tale continues tomorrow…

My Life: Gone Fishin' - Beginnings, Mad Scotsman, Wet Feet and Worms

Fishing, or angling as it is more properly known by posher folk than I, was one of my main pastimes as a boy and young man. I've already mentioned how my mum bought me my first fishing rod and reel up in Keith and I pretty much caught the bug after that.

The Equipment

Armed with my new bamboo rod, wee bakelite reel, some hooks and a tin of worms, I'd be off for most of the day wandering up and down the Brandy Burn trying to catch a few trout.

It wasn't too long after that the dad got me a much better, solid fibreglass rod and a decent Daiwa fixed-spool reel and those did me good service for many years. The rod is probably still in use as I'd left it at mum and dad's some years ago and dad used it until only a few years ago when he gave it away to a friend for their son's first rod.

I really got going when my aunt and uncle gave me an ABU Suecia 352 spinning rod as a present. Now that was a serious step up in quality - hollow fibreglass, light as a feather, a lovely yellow gold colour and super sensitive. ABU, a Swedish fishing tackle maker, were one of the best rod and reel manufacturers of the time and I accumulated a few more of their products over the years. They're still on the go, after some mergers and acquisitions, and are now known as ABU Garcia but they're nowhere near as good as they once were.

Anyway, I still that ABU Suecia 352! It's three inches shorter than it should be, courtesy of a van door, but I moved all the rings to suit the new length and it's still an excellent rod for creeping around small burns.

The Quarry

Brown Trout were the main target at first as, being Scottish, we absolutely never fished for what are commonly termed "coarse" fish such as roach, perch, carp or the like. Those were seen as pretty useless since no-one ate them and only mad Englishmen seemed to bother fishing for them. Of course, being allergic to fish myself, I'd have to be categorized as a mad Scotsman since I loved going fishing and couldn't actually eat anything I brought home. Still, the fun was in getting out into the country or to the sea for the day, regardless of the weather, and I didn't much care if I came back with a bag full of fish or just an empty piece box.

What was guaranteed were a pair of sore feet, possibly wet too if I'd gone in over the top of my wellies. It was quite common to be squelching around in water-logged boots for hours and when you got them off later that night, the steam would be rising off of my poor wee wrinkled toes. I'd also have to wring the water out my big boot socks before s

The Bait

For trout bait, we'd go digging for worms the night before and we'd make up a little batch of dough as an alternative. If worms were hard to find, and that wasn't unusual, we have to buy a tub of maggots and we have to hide all of this from mum. I remember once forgetting about a tub of maggots in my bag and later getting some stick from her when we were plagued by a stream of bluebottles emanating from the end cupboard. Serious anglers kept them in the fridge to stop them pupating but we'd never have gotten away with that.

Anyway, earthworms were much better option and there are basically three kinds commonly found in the UK…

• Lobworms - these are the most commonly found worms in ordinary soil and can be up to six or seven inches long - great for big mouthed fish like salmon but a bit on the large side for trout fishing.
• Brandlings - these are the elite of worms, the little red and yellow banded variety found mostly in rotted manure and compost heaps. As you might guess finding either a compost heap or manure dump in Glasgow was a pretty rare occurance so brandlings were very rare indeed.
• Redworms - now these are my favourite trout bait. They're smaller than lobworms and usually have a flat tail but they wriggle very nicely and almost always do the job. Again, they're a bit harder to find than lobworms but when you do, they're treasured.

The Locations

Aside from the Brandy Burn in Keith, most of my early fishing was done around and about Glasgow but I'll get into that later, it's getting late and bed is calling…

La Lanterna, 35 Hope Street, Glasgow

It was another one of those "couldn't be bothered to cook" nights so we headed for an Italian that's literally just around the corner from work - La Lanterna.

The restaurant frontage is a bit dull and dingy looking as the body of the place is downstairs so we'd been passing it by. This time though, we had a look at the menu posted by the door and it looked not bad so down we went for a look at the place. Once downstairs things are much more like what you'd expect an italian restaurant to look like - fairly rustic decor and reasonably busy too. With four waiters on, it must get pretty busy later on and it looked like they were set up for a large party too.

Service was friendly and fast so we were soon drinking Italian wine and beer and scoffing bits of crunchy bread while waiting on the starters coming. The menu is pretty traditional fare of anti-pasti, pasta, carni and pesce dishes (no pizzas here). For those starters, we split a Pate Maison (Smooth chicken liver pate served with toast & oatcakes.) and a Carpaccio con Rucola e Parmigiano (Finely sliced smoked beef fillet with parmesan shavings olive oil & lemon juice). It was early and we didn't fancy the full pasta and carni thing so for main courses we had Penne alla Salsiccia (penne with spicy Italian sausage in a tomato & basil sauce) and Risotto Pancetta Funghi E Piselli (Risotto with smoked ham, mushrooms & peas with fresh parmesan & cream).

The food was excellent and we were too full for a sweet, even though they sounded gorgeous. The restaurant has been succesfully run by the same family for over 30 years so it's obvious that the loss has been ours for never venturing down there before now.

Cuisine: Italian
My Rating: 8/10

X-Men: The Last Stand

We've been trying to get to see this for ages but given the recent good weather, it's been difficult to justify sitting in a warm and stuffy movie hall and not lying in the sun. Still we got there in the end…

Humans and mutants are getting along a little better, there's even a Department of Mutant Affairs headed up by Dr. Hank McCoy, better known as Beast (Kelsey Grammer). But things start to go bad again when a pharmaceutical company claims it's found a cure for the mutant gene. This may be a spark of hope for some mutants but for the majority it only brings terror.

Magneto (Ian McKellen) and his Brotherhood see this as the perfect chance to raise an army of mutants and to launch a war against a humanity who would force their "cure" on them. On top of all this, Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) returns from the dead but she's most certainly not the same person that Professor Charles Xavier's (Patrick Stewart) school for gifted children knew.

At the end of X2, it was assumed that Dr. Jane Grey had perished in the flood at Alkali Lake but there was a hint right at the end of the film that she or something had survived under the lake surface. Now we find out that she's actually a class five mutant, the strongest ever recorded, and was being mentally held in check by Prof. Xavier as she couldn't control her awsome powers once activated. This isn't really a spoiler as you'll find all this out fairly quickly but it does seem an unlikely plot given the first two installments.

There's a bit of character stability as the main cast from the previous two movies re-appear. Apart from those already mentioned, we get Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Ororo Munroe/Storm (Halle Berry), Marie/Rogue (Anna Paquin), Raven Darkholme/Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), Scott Summers/Cyclops (James Marsden), Bobby Drake/Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), John Allerdyce/Pyro (Aaron Stanford) and Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page). New faces this time round are Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast (Kelsey Grammer), Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones), Callisto (Dania Ramirez), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), Multiple Man (Eric Dane), Jubilee (Kea Wong) and Angel (Ben Foster). All of those are quite a lot to take in but it helps keep the action going and there's plenty of it.

I quite enjoyed this but it seems a bit lacking when compared to the two earlier movies. With so many characters, some of them seem little used and some of the scenes looked a bit rushed. Still the special effects are the best yet and there's no shortage of them. Best performance points go to Sir Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman.

Billed as the final episode in the trilogy, which is true as it's the third one, but I don't think the story is over yet…

Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Science-Fiction.
My Rating: 7/10

Iron Council - by China Miéville

Iron Council is yet another story set in the world of Bas-Lag. Like his earlier works, Perdido Street Station and The Scar, it's set in and around the city of New Crobuzon. Here's the gist of the story…

It is a time of war and revolution! New Crobuzon is at war with the shadowy state of Tesh, the city of crawling liquid, but it also has to contend with revolution and rebellion from within.

The attempt to build a trailine to Cobsea has ended in revolt, with the workers and enslaved Remade prisoners taking both train and line and forming the Iron Council. Meanwhile the revolutionary Jack Half-a-prayer is dead but a new hero of the downtrodden rises by the name of Toro and the struggle goes on.

While the New Crobuzon militia contests the war with Tesh and pursues the runaway Iron Council across the continent, Toro and his band plot to assassinate the mayor and overthrow the government.

There are three major threads to the story. Cutter and his band of followers leave New Crobuzon in search of the Iron Council, a wandering group of disgruntled ex-railroad workers and Remade prisoners, to warn them that the city intends to attack and destroy them. Judah's tale begins some 20 years earlier when New Crobuzon was trying to build a railroad link to Cobsea, the very railroad that spawned the Iron Council. Ori's story is that of the young rebel who joins up with the revolutionary leader Toro, who's main quest is to assassinate the mayor and bring down the government.

I found it a difficult book to read and it took me much longer than usual to get through. There's too much overt homosexuality in it for me. It detracts from the main plotlines and doesn't seem to add anything other than gratuitous detail. Maybe Miéville is just out to shock or to stretch his readership as there is some aberrant sexual activity in both his previous novels but it didn't work for me.

As for the story itself - I think it's getting too out-there with so many mutant species and ridiculous Remade variations. The basic story is okay and Miéville has a great imagination but I wouldn't have thought any government would waste their time pursuing a band of dissidents while waging a war and trying to control internal unrest. As for the characters, the only captivating one is Judah Low, the golemist. Cutter is unlikable and seems only interested in having sex with men while Ori is basically a terrorist.

I thought Perdido Street Station was a classic piece of work but this just didn't do it for me at all!

Genre: Fantasy, Science-Fiction
ISBN: 0-330-49252-7
My Rating: 6/10

I've Got Aristocratic Roots - Scots Wha Hae!

My cousin Jan's into genealogy and has been digging around her dad's side of the family and thinks she's discovered that his and my dad's side of the family has some aristocratic ancestry.

According to her delving around in old records, she thinks we're related to John Gordon of Glenbuchat, more commonly known as "The Old Glenbucket". Gordon was a famous Jacobite supporter who had fought at the Battle of Killiecrankie at age 16, the Battle of Sheriffmuir at 42 and at 72 he was still active in the 1745 rebellion right up to the final defeat at Culloden. This was a man well in with Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and reputedly present at the raising of the standard at Glenfinnan.

The ancestral "pile" was Glenbuchat Castle in Aberdeenshire, although it has fallen into a bit of disrepair these days but it's in the hands of Historic Scotland now so I assume it'll be well looked after and provide a good historical resource for the nation and visitors.

It's warming thought to be possibly related to such a staunch patriot and particulalry one who supposedly haunted the dreams of King George II.

Scots Wha Hae!

Plants, A Barbecue And An Almost Built Table

Today was almost just another Sunday. Got up late, watched the Moto GP on TV (Valentino Rossi rules) and then the weather got nice...

First thing we did was to go out to the Greenhead Nursery in Inchinnan as Lorna fancied a few more plants for the garden. Anyway, it was a useful foray and we returned with two nice azalias, a couple of pinks and about four alpines.

I'd bought a barbecue as we'd always fancied having our own one last week so this was a good opportunity to try it out. Luckily, I'd picked up a sack of charcoal and lighter fluid yesterday and we had some chicken breasts and ready made kebabs in the fridge so we were all systems go for a potentially burnt dinner. But first...

We had to build a table for us to eat it off. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't a spontaneous thought as we 'd bought all the wood and screws'n stuff a few weeks ago so now was as good a time as any to get it done. Lorna, being the brains of the outfit, does the design and measuring and I get to do the sawing and putting it all together stuff.

It was all going to plan at first - we had the four top sections cut and fastened together nicely when we came to the difficult bit, the legs. These legs had to be able to fold down flat so we could store the table away so Lorna's design required one pair to be inside the other when folded. It all was all a bit complicated to me and positioning the cross-spares was critical for a flat finish. we must've been getting hungry as it took us about three goes at getting the damn things built and then attached with hinges - there are more holes in the wood than are required and that's all I'm saying. Anyway, the design's not quite right and we'll need to brace the corners as it wobbles and tries to fall over a lot.

So, finished with the table for the day, we started the barbecue. It was a charcoal burning one, a portable Weber Go Anywhere. We thought having a portable one was a good idea as we could take it camping or on picnics. This is the first time either of us had tried to light a barbecue so that provided some amusement for a while and it took a few goes but we got it lit eventually.

So we had a nice dinner of charcoal cooked kebabs and chicken with pitta bread and lots of salad. Oh and a bottle of red wine as well to round off a decent Sunday even if we learned that we're not carpenters.