National Museum of Scotland

You will have noticed, dear reader (if any of you are still out there?) that regular blogging is not my forte. However, I have eventually returned with another offering.

Last week I took a trip to the National Museum of Scotland, recently reopened in my own fair city after a long refurbishment process. Anyone who visited the museum in the past will no doubt remember the fish pond? Alas, it has been removed. Perhaps all the fish were dying of copper poisoning... who knows.

But the refurbishment is great. I wish I'd had a better camera with me, although I still don't think it could capture the incredible space in the main gallery. It's a huge airy chamber with a glass roof, four floors high, with all of the display galleries branching off it. It's the kind of room I'd love to get married in - it feels like light and air, very uplifting. Like a cathedral but brighter.

So no pictures of that because I really couldn't do it justice, but one of the exhibits everyone's been talking about is the tyrannosaurus rex skeleton and indeed it's very impressive.

It's in the gallery which used to have (if I remember right) the skeleton of some enormous sea creature. But it's been so long since I went before the refurbishment that I don't really know for sure.



That gallery is also four stories high, but it's smaller, and the lighting is lower to preserve the taxidermies and things. And instead of that single massive creature that I only half remember, they now have a whole parade of watery creatures, including the ocean sunfish, with whom I made friends.


I also quite liked the painted stork - but you'll have to forgive the glassy reflections of my snazzy pink camera phone!


In the geology section, looking at how the Earth was formed and rocks from space and things, they had this enormous geode, full of purple crystals, which was formed by cooling lava. The bubble shapes cooled and solidified first, but the heat evaporated whatever solute was present, leaving these beauties to form on the inside of the shell. Incredible.


And the last thing that caught my eye was this slice of iron meteorite with "Widmanstätten patterns" on it. They're formed by the presence of nickel-iron alloys which cool over MILLIONS of years to form these big visible crystals, which you can only see when you slice and polish an iron meteorite. And because it takes so long to form, we can't produce them in a lab and they are proof of the extraterrestrial nature of an object - they're like as old as the Earth's core.

The museum also has lots of exhibits of foreign cultures which didn't interest me nearly so much as the natural history, and also some sculptures, including Greek and Roman ones, up at the top of the main gallery, on the top floor, which I enjoyed because I've studied Classics and I knew what they were about.

The Chambers Street section of museum has displays of British and Scottish historical artefacts which I didn't look at on this trip but which are definitely worth a look.

In fact the whole place is is worth a look - set aside an afternoon, or a whole day if you want to read through everything in the place. There's something for everyone, wherever your museum-based interests might lie, and this is really only the tip of the iceberg.

Love and hugs

Rosal Township - Highland Clearances

Today was my last day in Tongue - early bus home tomorrow as I have an important afternoon appointment. This afternoon, I went with mum and dad to the township of Rosal, which was left after the highland clearances. It was a big field with stones and signs in it, but if you like that sort of thing, it's pretty good. The information boards are frequent and very interesting, and told things from the point of view of the people who lived in the township and were eventually cleared out of them. Life there was by no means easy, but it was much better than living by the coast, which was where they had to go.



The clearances occurred because the people who owned the land, who were mostly rich enough to start with, didn't make enormous profits from their tenants, who were mostly crofters and worked enough to feed and clothe themselves but weren't interested in profits and property and such nonsense. However the landowners realised they could make a lot more money by grazing sheep on the land - not the wee highland sheep that the crofters looked after, but big, hardy ones. Demand for meat and wool were increasing as the country industrialised, and so the highlanders were cleared and moved to the coasts, to the cities, or emigrated to America or New Zealand mostly.



The sheep still graze on the land here - apparently descendants of the ones that were the reason for the clearances. They didn't seem as interested in the stones as we were.


On the whole I'd say it was a really good site. The walk from the car park through the forest was lovely, and it would be a great place to visit if you have kids studying the clearances, like I did when I was 14, or just an interest of your own.

Clambering upon Archaeological Artefacts

I still haven't stitched our panorama so today's post will be about the end of the day on Friday, rather than the main event.

After we'd come down of the mountain we drove a few minutes up the road to see the remains of another Iron Age structure - this time Dun Dornagil broch.


These were probably defensive/offensive places, with hollow outer walls that had staircases in them to take you up to various galleries with different rooms that people lived in. There was a space in the centre which went right up to the top, so that they could have a fire quite safely. The wikipedia article on brochs is quite informative so do direct your general enquiries in that direction.


The one that we saw was intact only as the outer structure, and it had been filled up with earth, perhaps to protect what remained of the structure from people like me who clambered all over it. The tall remaining wall had been reinforced as well, to stop it collapsing into the road, and to preserve it for interested people.


To be fair I only climbed up to see if I could see inside it. Which I could not. It was just too fun to come down right away. And the view was pretty!

A Teeny Weeny Tiny Underground Adventure

Today's adventure in real life was a "yomp" (Mum's favourite hill-walking related word) up a Munro, but I'm going to save that til later. I took a 360 panorama from the top which I'm working very hard on stitching, but it might be a day or so yet and I reeeeally want to show you.


So instead I'm going to tell you about something I missed out previously - the day Mum and I walked to the Iron Age wheel house, we also went along to see this thing called the souterrain.


Those of you with an elementary understanding of French may have worked out that this is an underground thing, and in fact, apart from its age, that's the only remarkable thing about it. It's also, I believe an iron age structure, and happens to be just off the road from Laid to Durness, so not a two hour round trip like the wheel house.


It's just a small structure - only one chamber, and only just underground, with a few steps down, which was likely used for storage rather than dwelling, I would have thought. I don't have a useful tourist leaflet beside me to confirm the details, but it was an interesting wee hole in the ground anyway. It had a few inches of water in it, as it floods in the rain, and since it's pretty low to start with and we weren't wearing wellies, we just took a few photos from the bottom of the steps and headed back out again. It was only about a metre across at the widest, and maybe a metre and a half high, and it was about 4 metres long (I'm guessing, size/quantity estimates are a massive failing point of mine).



My favourite part was the way the entrance was so hidden from the road, but really nearby, and even if you were going that way you might almost walk past it.

Wheel-y Tired!

Dear reader, I'm exhausted! Despite my youthfulness and lack of obese-ness, I'm really very unfit. My day has tired me out, so if I seem to doze off and lose track of myself in the middle of this post, you'll know to blame my mother...

Yesterday afternoon wasn't so tiring. We went down to Coldbackie Beach and had a wander around there. No shark wrestling, no picturesque welly boots. Just me and my mum being a bit silly. You can see the results of our silliness in yesterday's blog post if you're curious - today I'll be sharing some of the more sensible photos.


This is the view across the beach which you see walking down the hill from the road. The sand dunes before the beach are about 20ft high, which is very impressive, and there's a stream that comes all the way down to the beach in wetter weather, parts of which make a very good flume (water slide).


This stream at the north end of the beach was pretty, but probably less enjoyable to slide down...


The high water mark is an interesting feature of this beach. It's seems that there is a stream which runs along the edge of the beach - that is, a counter current that runs at right angles to the direction of the tide. The effect of this is to create a sandbank at the edge of the water, which moves up the beach as the tide comes in, and gets left behind, like this, as it goes out.


Some interesting geological features as well - for example, part of this rocky outcrop was shaped and coloured just like me... Kidding. I think we were actually interested by the stripe of quartz in the rock behind me. However, I know nothing about geology, we just thought it was pretty.


There was also a massive cliff at the south end of the beach, about 100ft high, with this wee cave at the bottom. It doesn't go very far back, but its full of reeds that get washed in by the highest tides, and if it wasn't soaking wet, I imagine it would be quite a cosy bed...


Today's expedition was much further away. It's Dad's day off, so he went to play golf over at Durness, and he dropped us off in a place called Laid to go for a walk.

We headed from the tea room there, up the side a very pretty burn (stream), following a path marked by little heaps of stones, called cairns, and big long upright stones balanced in the top of cairns, or stood up by themselves.


The view of Loch Eriboll on the way up was incredible - I just wish I had a better camera for panorama shots.


Anyway, the main reason for our walk up and along the ridge was to see an Iron Age Wheelhouse. Now, I know absolutely nothing about the Iron Age, so instead of trying to say something intelligent off my own bat, I'll quote from a guide leaflet instead (entitled "Laid Heritage Trail" produced by Durness Community Council).


"A Wheel House is a dry stone dwelling house used in the Iron Age. Circular in construction with slabs of rock forming the basis of a roof, these slabs also appear to mark interior divisions of a family habitation."


"Considering its age of some 2000 years it is in excellent condition, one of the best preserved in Scotland. It measures 5.5 metres NE-SW by 5 metres NW-SE within its dry built wall, 1.1 metres thick and 1.4 metres high, with the entrance in the east. In the interior a circle of 7 [uprights] set at a distance of about 1 metre from the wall, one of which is lintelled and another partially with roofing slabs lying close by."

This particular Wheel House is the only one of its kind in the area, the rest are in Shetland, the Hebrides and Caithness, for the most part. Also, most of those are much lower down, and seem to be associated with other buildings. This one is high and isolated. The leaflet suggests "one explanation which can never be proved is that it was built by strangers, possibly from Caithness, who were only allowed this spot to make their home." Caithness is east of this area.


Can you imagine how much it would suck if you'd just walked miles and miles from your own home ranges, only to be told by your grumpy new neighbours that you had to go build your house a mile out the way and 900 metres further up hill. I might be moving soon and I have to say, I hope our new neighbours are nicer than that!


Daily picture of Mum, taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of me taking a picture...


Love and hugs