The way we do it in the Western Isles
Feb. 18th, 2021 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustIt strikes me as so wrong, in so many ways, that there is an official folk albums chart: but there is, and Matthew Bannister of Folk on Foot broadcasts a monthly chart show about it, which I watch, griping throughout about how his tastes are not my tastes and why is this folk anyway? But it offers an introduction to music I wouldn't otherwise come across - which is a long-winded preamble to explain why we were watching a band called Peat and Diesel (good name!), specifically first video on this page on their website, singing a catchy song and cavorting about Stornoway.
I've been to Stornoway! I have even posted on the subject, although even that post, almost five years ago, was an oblique confession that I had not yet sorted out my photos and my thoughts of one wet May day in Stornoway. Well, if I'm taking hardly any photographs this year, at least I can enjoy looking through old ones. I've even found my notebook (though not all of it is legible). So here goes: welcome to Stornoway!
This is not the most picturesque view of the town, but I find it appealing, and not just because it illustrates why that video was so instantly recognisable, even down to the damp grey weather.
Much of the morning had been spent driving D. to the ferry at Tarbert: he had shared much of our holiday so far, but now we were on our own, and at large in Stornoway. The man in the Tourist Office was concerned that we had paid to park for three while hours - how would we occupy ourselves? It was too wet for us to be tempted by a boat trip to the Shiant islamds to see the puffins, though I did buy a little book about puffins as a consilation.
We started at the arts centre, for coffee in the café upstairs and a good nose around the Katie Morag: Books to Screen exhibition downstairs (including an actual Bafta for that "selfie moment"). I struggled to photograph the piece of wall art on the outside of the building, but here's a detail:
because I love the use of detail, with wading birds perching wherever they can; and here, for purposes of comparison, is an overall view of another piece, elsewhere in the town, by the same artist (Iain Brady):
D. had wondered why there wereno pubs in Harris and Lewis. Now we could have told him: they are all on Stornoway. The Crown Inn had a panel outside recounting its history, whose highlight seems to have been the occasion when Prince Charles, aged 14, once bought a cherry brandy, after giving his security detail the slip. Its website still boasts of this, though it also wants us to know that it has been completely transformed since then.
There were charity shops to explore, and a range of tweed shops, from the smartest to the most shambolic ("mind the step behind the shark chart...") crammed with offcuts and balls of wool (yes, those balls of wool) and lengths of cloth and jackets and...
...and a similarly alluring tangle outside the shop:
There's sculpture by the harbour:
This is a memorial to the "herring girld", the young women who followed the fleet during the herring boom, up and down the east coast, working their hands raw gutting and salting the fish at industrial speed and quantities.
Here's a more leisured personage:
This is the view across to Lews Castle:
It's Victorian, pretty obviously, and I think at the time was in local authority hands and served as a college. Now it seems to be a combination of museum and holiday appartments. We lunched at 'the Woodlands Centre' in the grounds: my notebook says we drove in between two giant chessmen, but I don't remember them at all: copies of the Lewis chessmen, presumably...
And that was Stornoway.
I've been to Stornoway! I have even posted on the subject, although even that post, almost five years ago, was an oblique confession that I had not yet sorted out my photos and my thoughts of one wet May day in Stornoway. Well, if I'm taking hardly any photographs this year, at least I can enjoy looking through old ones. I've even found my notebook (though not all of it is legible). So here goes: welcome to Stornoway!
This is not the most picturesque view of the town, but I find it appealing, and not just because it illustrates why that video was so instantly recognisable, even down to the damp grey weather.
Much of the morning had been spent driving D. to the ferry at Tarbert: he had shared much of our holiday so far, but now we were on our own, and at large in Stornoway. The man in the Tourist Office was concerned that we had paid to park for three while hours - how would we occupy ourselves? It was too wet for us to be tempted by a boat trip to the Shiant islamds to see the puffins, though I did buy a little book about puffins as a consilation.
We started at the arts centre, for coffee in the café upstairs and a good nose around the Katie Morag: Books to Screen exhibition downstairs (including an actual Bafta for that "selfie moment"). I struggled to photograph the piece of wall art on the outside of the building, but here's a detail:
because I love the use of detail, with wading birds perching wherever they can; and here, for purposes of comparison, is an overall view of another piece, elsewhere in the town, by the same artist (Iain Brady):
D. had wondered why there wereno pubs in Harris and Lewis. Now we could have told him: they are all on Stornoway. The Crown Inn had a panel outside recounting its history, whose highlight seems to have been the occasion when Prince Charles, aged 14, once bought a cherry brandy, after giving his security detail the slip. Its website still boasts of this, though it also wants us to know that it has been completely transformed since then.
There were charity shops to explore, and a range of tweed shops, from the smartest to the most shambolic ("mind the step behind the shark chart...") crammed with offcuts and balls of wool (yes, those balls of wool) and lengths of cloth and jackets and...
...and a similarly alluring tangle outside the shop:
There's sculpture by the harbour:
This is a memorial to the "herring girld", the young women who followed the fleet during the herring boom, up and down the east coast, working their hands raw gutting and salting the fish at industrial speed and quantities.
Here's a more leisured personage:
This is the view across to Lews Castle:
It's Victorian, pretty obviously, and I think at the time was in local authority hands and served as a college. Now it seems to be a combination of museum and holiday appartments. We lunched at 'the Woodlands Centre' in the grounds: my notebook says we drove in between two giant chessmen, but I don't remember them at all: copies of the Lewis chessmen, presumably...
And that was Stornoway.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-20 10:28 pm (UTC)We miss you both. Very much.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 11:06 am (UTC)Thanks for the positive message - I post for my own pleasure, but I'm afraid I bore other people.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-23 02:26 am (UTC)