When I said yesterday that I was close by friends, I meant Pegs and Dan, who live in the highly attractive place that is Aberdour, and which we last visited in May, when the views were just as good as they were today. That’s Edinburgh over there — see Arthur’s Seat to the left, the castle in the centre. A hard place to just walk away from, but I have to go home, and will be back some day.
It’s been a little while (three weeks) since my football habit directly made an appearance on the blog but I like this shot. The blues, Burntisland Shipyard, on the attack here, scored a last-minute goal to win 3-2. Why did I come to this game? I just like the name. Burntisland Shipyard. (And I have friends who live down the road.)
Another shot taken out of the windows of a moving train — grubby windows too. But I think the dirt is disguished well enough on this shot, taken from near Attadale station on the rather pretty Dingwall to Kyle of Lochalsh line. The sort of train journey that it’s slightly pointless to take for any reason other than just to do the journey…. but there are good enough reasons for that.
This is Clachnaharry sea lock, the northern end of the Caledonian Canal, completed in 1822 after a mammoth building project that finished years later than planned and way over budget, and so late that one main reason for building it — to protect shipping against Napoleon — had become obsolete years before thanks to Waterloo. Sounds like some modern infrastructure projects we could all name.
I did get another half-decent picture of the Old Town in Edinburgh this morning but having done that yesterday, let’s choose one from further north on the day’s journey. Taken through the window of the train as it left Inverness (which is my excuse for the grainy quality); but that was the way I saw most of the day.
I’m travelling again. Like with my trip to Sussex and London two weeks ago (but hopefully this time without the day ill in the middle of it), this is a writing retreat — I have things to get down on paper, and sitting on my arse at home for days on end is not conducive for this. Hence, Scotland, today and for the next four days as well.
This clock is inaccurate, by the way. I promise.
It’s that 3pm Saturday feeling again. OK, I admit it, this is actually my second game of the 2018-19 season — you don’t think I went to Rhyl on the 12th just to take the air, now, did you? — but the first to be depicted on here. The balmy weather broke definitively, particularly over Gretna, which is just over the border in Scotland and was whipped all day by a very chilly wind coming straight off the Irish Sea. Under this grey blanket Gretna FC, in white, and Edinburgh University FC trot out for their first game of their seasons, in the Lowland League, all full of optimism and hope, something that 90 minutes later the students probably maintained better than their hosts, seeing as they deservedly won 3-0.
A glorious — and three-day — weekend continues with the chance to spend a Monday relaxing with our friends in Aberdour and exploring its stellar beaches: this one, known (erroneously) as Black Sands is particularly fine. This weekend has reminded me why I should come to Scotland more often.
We didn’t just visit Scotland for a melancholy afternoon at Raith Rovers. On the second day of three, we drove both ways across this fine transportation architecture. The new Forth Bridge was built after the old one started pinging apart a few years ago. Like the other two monumental bridges — now, one rail, two road, and one from each of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries — it is an elegant structure, worth crossing just for the hell of it.
The football season comes to its many and diverse ends, each club finishing in different ways with different emotions. Raith Rovers of Scottish League One have managed to blow their hopes out in the last three games, promotion hopes have disappeared and at the final whistle today all was over. It was a very melancholy place all round — club, and town (Kirkcaldy in Fife). Maybe this picture captures something of that.
Another stop for Joe and I in our efforts to see lots of different football competitions in one season — today was our 13th, the Scottish Premier League. Hamilton Academical have a great name and I like their red-and-white hoops. I can identify the player on the left as their captain Xavier Tomas; not sure about the other two however, but let me off — we were not even supposed to be here today, having headed for a different game entirely which was postponed as we arrived in Glasgow, hence this emergency replacement, which made all my prior research irrelevant. Accies should have won, but their failure to put the ball in the net when given clear chances to do so meant they lost 1-0 to visiting St Johnstone.
Being 42 