I MISS SCOTLAND

Here are a couple of photos that I’ve recently taken on backyard safaris. At least I’ve been able to get out into the yard, but I must tell you…

I really MISS SCOTLAND.  We didn’t have a fall trip to Scotland last year and this year’s spring trip had to be rescheduled because of the pandemic. We are now rebooked for the end of August. I give that trip, though, less than 10% chance to happen—we’re basically still closed, Scotland is closed, and the virus is expected to still be with us. So, I really MISS SCOTLAND. That’s the topic of this simple photo essay: What I miss about Scotland.

  I miss the friends we’ve made in 34 trips to Scotland since 2000.

Our Scottish family (John & Jacky Clifford), Yann & Sharri Gosweiller (neighbors), and in the back is Ollie (guest from Germany).

Jim Craig is a famous champion Scottish footballer.

Andrew Cuthbert, whisky shop owner and guru, and motorcycle mechanic extraordinaire.

I miss the breakfasts and special dinners in the B&Bs.

At Merlindale B&B the breakfasts are fantastic and the special dinners for friends and family are legendary.

I miss the sheep in the road--whenever I can.

I miss the special birthday celebrations in Scotland.

Jonathan, Jacky, and Ailsa Clifford celebrating Jon's and Jacky's birthday (a day apart) with a cake Anne made.

I miss the golf in Scotland—golf is good here, but better there.

The 18th at Old Moray is a great finishing hole.

Late afternoon light gives Ballatter GC a  special feel.

The challenging bunkers at Panmure GC near Carnoustie.

The wild Durness GC in the far northwest corner of Scotland.

I love the testing 9th at Durness GC where I have to hit over the Atlantic Ocean.

I miss the chance to meet fans of my writing in the B&Bs.

Holly and her daughter from Chicago booked into the B&B just for a chance to meet  Bob and Anne, the travel writers.

I miss the friends we’ve made on the golf courses in Scotland.

Grahame Linnie, golf professional at Crail GC

With Anne are Wendy and Roger Baily, golf club manager from Colvend GC, who came up to join us playing our course, St Fillans GC.

Gordon Hibbert is the Super Golf Manager of St Fillans GC (the club we belong to) and now a good friend.

I miss the call of the cuckoos in the spring.

A real cuckoo on Carrbridge GC. We hear them on most courses in the spring, but have only seen a couple.

I miss competitions at Scotland’s golf courses.

John celebrates his huge win while Anne stares on in disbelief--his prize,,,magnificent bragging rights.

Anne and I love playing in Scottish club competitions. We meet great people in the competitions, such as Leslie and John from Minto GC in the Borders. 

At our club, St Fillans GC, there is almost always an informal competition. Teams are drawn at random and the entry of £2 buys coffee after the round and gives a little to the winner--on a good day you can win enough for a bacon roll for lunch.

Even though we have spectacular scenery here, I miss the special scenery of Scotland we don’t get here. 

Dunnottar Castle on Scotland's east coast along the North Sea.

The mountains of Glen Coe

The view from Isle of Skye GC includes the ferry to Raasay, Loch Sligachan, and Ben Lee (Ben is Scottish for mountain).

Gorse or whine and the north Scottish coast from Royal Tarlair GC.

Interesting landscape in  the Orkney Islands.

The heather is lovely, but is hard to get golf balls out of.

Threave Castle on one of Scotland's five River Dees.

Most of all, I miss the adventure of travel. I hope you all keep safe and maybe soon we can travel together. Keep traveling even if they are small roads.

The main road of the Isle of Arran

Here’s a note of hope. After selling 60 or more books a month through the winter, we went to selling none—nobody was traveling or wanted travel books. But now we’ve started selling again. Not as many as before, but enough to show that some people are at least thinking about traveling again.

Our newest revision

May Travel Blog Update

Ardvreck Castle, Highlands

Anstruther Harbour Light, Fife Coast

The disappeared blog post. The last post to this blog is gone. After about a week and half I checked on the post and found that most of the photos from the blog were missing—they’d been posted, looked okay when I first put them up, but now they were just gone. I tried to get them back and when that didn’t work I tried to repost them. That was difficult as well. But through all of this nobody told me the pictures were gone. That led me to consider and question the future of the travel blog: for whom was I writing the blog? My analysis led me to the conclusion that although I hoped an audience of readers would be entertained and maybe informed by the photos and stories, the real reason I produce the blog is because I feel good writing it and sharing it. So, readers or no, on I go with a new post, and hopefully the photos will stay in place.

One of the (living) residents of the Muthill Graveyard

Falls of Dochart, Killin

But what to write about—I’m not traveling and I’m not taking significant pictures? What am I doing? The answer to that is the topic for this post.

The William Wallace (Braveheart) Monument--photo taken from Stirling Castle

Cottage in Shadow, Boat of Garten

 
   To keep busy and kill sheltered time I’ve started working on a new book. When I produced Scotland in Black and White: 90 Photos I really liked the results. The book, I think, is attractive, produced well, interesting, and is a bargain ($25 if bought from me, rather than from Amazon at $37.50). Scotland, though, is quite a colorful country, so why not produce a book of Colorful Scotland? That’s the project I’m working on now. This post is about that project; my process of putting it together along with some photo examples.

The White Church and River Earn, Comrie

A Close (Alley) in Edinburgh

The first step was to gather a stock of my Scotland photographs and cull those down to  a reasonable size for a book. I picked out approximately 500 photos from our Scotland trips since about 2012—photos before that tended to be not of a high enough quality because of my equipment and/or photo skills. With the mass of photos selected I went to step two; categorizing the photos into groups which fit telling the story of travel to Scotland and of the country itself. As I reviewed my stock I decided on nine categories which would help me tell my story:  Ancient Sites, Castles and Churches,

Burleigh Castle, Milnathort

Flora and Fauna, Golf,

Kellie Castle and Gardens, Fife

Pheasant on the Run

Bothy and Fifth Fairway at St Fillans GC

Harbors and Seascapes, Villages,

Crail Harbour, Fife

Pennan, a Clearance Village on the North Coast

Landscapes, Scottish Culture,

Glen Lyon Road, the Longest Glen in Scotland (34 miles)

Kilted Barbarian on the Streets of Edinburgh

and Something Different (whatever doesn’t fit in other categories). Step next was to cull the 500 photos down to about 200 which fit the various categories and group them together in files. With each group I then had to pick out the best 11 or so photos so that I’d have a total of about 100. That was harder than I thought—I had too many I wanted to share. I finally selected 110 as the number I could live with which made groups of between 8 and 15 photos per category. That process, from the decision to produce the book to the large group of 110 photos in nine categories, took about three weeks.

Liquid Gold

It has taken about two weeks  now to get the photos into condition to be printed in a book—cleaned up and enhanced from the raw images. With that done I have a stock of photos that almost made the cut list and those are the images I’m using in this post. You’ll have to wait for the book to be able to see the better photos. 

Sunset in Elie on Fife's North Coast

That’s where I am now with the book after five or six week's work at about an hour or two a day. The jobs still to come are to organize each section, decide on and write commentary on each individual photo, put everything into the book template, and proof a dozen times. I certainly hope we are NOT in shut down long enough for me finish the project. I’d love to be able to go work in my usual office, the local coffee shop, to finish the book. In the meantime, it keeps me off the street and out of trouble. I hope you too can find suitable endeavors, Stay safe.

NEXT: I am rereading the journals I write for each trip looking for stories worth sharing. Hopefully I will find a few.

A Travel Blog about No Travel

Anne and I had a trip planned to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas for the middle of March—it was one of the trips we postponed because Anne couldn’t fly for a while after her ear surgery (which went fine). The Canyon would be cold, but we’d get some golf in Vegas. Then, along comes the coronavirus COVID-19. And if what’s happening worldwide isn’t enough for concern, the cases in Kirkland, WA, and in Lake Oswego, OR, brought the disease much closer to home. At first we weren’t panicked, and we still aren’t, but being in the group that gets hit the hardest by this virus—over 70 with underlying health conditions—made us take a longer look at our two planned spring trips: Grand Canyon/Vegas in March and Scotland in late April and May. There’s nothing saying we have to cancel or change either trip, but we are firm in our resolve not to jeopardize the Scotland trip. Our final decision came down to how safe is was or wasn’t to be in Vegas with millions of other tourists from all over the world carrying who knows what bugs with them. 

We got all reservations for the Las Vegas trip cancelled without losing anything except what we paid for upgrade economy on Southwest Airlines. We know others who are wrestling with the same kinds of dilemmas. Deciding to cut our last fall southwest trip short because I was so sick was a no brainer. This current decision, though, was much more difficult. Were we giving in to media hysterics or would the planned trip be overly risking. From my position on the sled behind my sled dog team, I had great hindsight, but I doubt I’ll ever really know if we are making the correct choice of travel plans to not travel to Vegas.

With no trip to Grand Canyon, Red Rocks, Valley of Fire, and Vegas, that leaves me searching for a new post for the blog. I think I found one that has several benefits for me and will I hope be interesting to you. As a part of my photography workflow I store what I consider to be my best or most useful photos in categorized albums (castles, churches, landscapes, seascapes, street photos, etc.). This post will include two photos with comments not previously used for the blog from twelve different categories. For me this exercise first, gets me back in touch with some neglected photo gems. Second, it shows me how much improvement I’ve made from earlier photos. Third, it tells me how much improvement (a lot) I still need to be making in my images. And lastly, it is great fun looking back at photos from trips ten or more years ago. I hope you get some fun out of seeing these previously unseen images. Nothing here will be very significant, but I had fun putting it together—and after cancelling travel plans and worrying about health issues, fun is what I needed.

 Castles - lived in or ruins

Aughuanure Castle in Oughterard, Co. Galway, Ireland. The castle was owned by the  Chieftan of the O'Flahertys, but the guide, an O'Toole, kept referring to the castle as his castle.

Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands is the summer residence of the royal family. The castle  was a very special place for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It can be toured in the spring, when the Queen isn't in residence.

Domestic Animals

I have no idea why this Scottish sheep is this color, but there was a whole flock of them. I wouldn't mind a sweater of that color though.

This ewe and lamb look lost, but then we saw them when we were lost in the fog in Dartmoor National Park.

Signs

Poor advertising in the Scottish highlands. The next year this sign was replaced with one which read,  "Dull, Twinned with Boring, Oregon."

We're trying to live by this.

Buildings

The Bothy on our club, St Fillans Golf Course, voted the Best 9-Hole Course in Scotland 2019. A bothy is a basic shelter usually used by farmers and shepherds. In Scotland many bothies also served for making illicit whisky.

The village of Culross in central Scotland is a National Trust of Scotland village maintained as it was in the 1700s.

Bugs, Insects, Small Critters

I saw this vicious looking thing on my fence one day. I have no idea what it is, but I'm glad I had long range macro lens.

This mantis crawled or hopped up on my golf club bag one day at our course. He stayed with me for about two holes and then tired of my poor swing.

Arches National Park

At Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, are many interesting rock formations. I don't know if this one has a name, but "Balance Rock" sounds good.

This formation is called Courthouse Rock and it's particularly nice at sunset.

Lighthouses

Trwyn Du lighthouse or Penmon lighthouse is on black Point peninsula on Anglesey, Wales. At low tide you can often walk out to the lighthouse, but it's a tough walk over or through tidepools.

Anne got a picture of me putting on a hole at New Moray GC and Moray Firth in Scotland. It's one of our favorite places to play golf. I probably missed the putt.

Dogs, Cats

We had sled dogs (Siberian Huskies) for 15 years and raced them for about twelve. Gromyko of Kolema Creek (Myko) was our second dog and my favorite--always a hard worker, a lover, and a great backpacking companion.

Queenie was queen of the B&B we lived in Scotland until it was sold. She was known for wrapping up in our blankets, crawling into our suitcases, and her lady-like manners.

Churches, Cathedrals, Religious Sites

Clonmacnoise (Cluain Mhic Nois in Irish) is an ancient religious complex in Co. Offaly, Ireland on the Shannon River. The complex's stone structures are as old as the 9th century. Clonmacnoise is known for it Irish High Crosses and round towers.

I love this view of the cloisters at Fountains Abbey three miles from Ripon in North Yorkshire. Founded in 1132 this Cistercian abbey was used until dissolution by Henry VIII in 1539.

Meals, Food

On Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks, we visited the Myrtle Inn in Callander, Scotland, for a bite of lunch. There we met this nice lady having her one meal a day out. She was extremely concerned for us and kept asking if there was anything she could do for us. Little did she realize that her concern was one of the best things anyone could have done.

On the way to golf in Blairgowrie, Scotland, we stopped at a Scottish version of a drive-thru for a cup of coffee. We'd seen it at this farm before, but the next time we came by it was gone.

Shops, Shopping

This fishmonger set up at Nairn Harbour had some interesting items for sale. The real hit for dinner was brown crap claws with pasta. I guess the closest we have now to this kind of shopping is Swan's home delivery.

Here I am wishing and dreaming outside a watch shop in the Shambles area of York. Just think about having to change all those watches on Daylight Savings Day.

Street Photos

Street photos are grab shots which daily life in towns or villages. Here I had Anne pretend to focus on me, when I really wanted a shot of this interesting couple outside a tearoom in St Ives, southern England.

I thought I'd stick with the coffee shop/tearoom theme and show another grab of a couple in an English coffee shop. It seemed like an interesting first date where I got the feeling there wouldn't be a second.

CRASS COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: My third update of Golf in Scotland: The Hidden Gems has just been finished and is on sale on Amazon. I would show you a picture of the cover, but I haven't even received my copies yet. 

NEXT: We are taking a short hop to the coast for a couple of days and flowers should be nice soon, so maybe I'll have someone interesting for next time.