By Sharon Blackie:

We are told by the older residents of our local crofting townships that this autumn and winter have been the worst in living memory here in the Outer Hebrides. Wetter and windier. It’s true that we seem to have been battling gales since October, and the already boggy ground has been sodden for months. In November, on our personal blog, I wrote a post, The Gods of Days, in which I talked about wind and suggested that there was little point in living in a place where the dominant weather was wind and rain, and then sitting indoors and complaining about it when it was windy and raining. Of course, a lot of wind and rain has happened to us since November … and a couple of normally hardy friends are now jumping up and down and demanding that I recant and admit that wind and rain is a terrible thing and that I wish it were mild and sunny like everyone else does.

At one level there’s no question about it – I’m tired of battling the wind and sloshing about in the mud when it’s time to feed the animals and walk the dogs twice a day, because this has to be done whatever the weather. I’d be ecstatic if a few mild and sunny days happened along, and I’m eagerly anticipating spring like everyone else … but the truth about weather, about our relationship with weather, is very much more complicated than that. Continue reading →

Andy Short on a winter paddle off the coast of Anglesey:

The Isle of Anglesey, off the North coast of Wales, is renowned within the sea kayaking community. Its location may be a mystery to many in the UK, but sea kayakers from Scandinavia to the States wax lyrical about classic trips the island offers, and ‘the Stacks’ and ‘the Skerries’ are foremost among them. These are trips which conjure among the initiated visions of epic tide races and awesome overfalls.

Anglesey – Ynys Mon in Welsh – is a large squarish lump of rock 25 miles from end to end, protruding impudently into the Irish Sea. Its very existence is like a challenge to the sea, whose tides sweep past on their daily lunar rituals, filling the Irish Sea with waters from the Atlantic and then returning them to whence they came. On stormy days it seems the Island is about to be washed away but the rock here is made of stern stuff. The exposed north and west coasts bear the brunt of the sea’s ravages, and include some of the oldest rocks in the UK. Psammites and Pelites formed some 550 million years ago with pre-cambrian limestone thrown into the mix provide for the robust cliffs that give sea kayaking trips here such a dramatic backdrop. Continue reading →

“Probably there is no real Paris, except if you have always lived there. For those of us who arrive only to go away, the place teems with ghosts.” – Clive James, A Postcard from Paris, 1980.

This trip to Paris was the first time I visited the French capital. It seems amazing that it took so long to get there. After all, it was always the cheapest flight from England, or a simple train ride from Berlin. We passed through it on our way to Versailles on a French exchange trip but I remember only the traffic beneath my window, the rain on the streets, and the fact that we were not allowed out of the bus. So that doesn’t count.

I always thought that I did not make it to Paris because it was so close. It wasn’t going anywhere and it was always going to be easy to get to so why not try something else? But now I think there was something else at work, namely those ghosts that Clive James was talking about in his article written over thirty years ago, who lived in the pages of some of my favourite books and that had painted a picture of the city that I was convinced the real thing could never live up to. Of the places represented on my bookshelves only New York can probably compete with Paris, and I have never made it there either, and it was this realisation that has made me sure that it was the fear of disillusionment and disappointment that kept me away from these cities for such a long time. Continue reading →

(South Stack Lighthouse in the 1910s, reproduced with permission from www.oldukphotos.com)

There are countless special places along the coastline of Wales, let alone the British Isles, but the cliffs around South Stack seem to stir the imagination of a great number of people. Bird-lovers head for nearby Ellins Tower and the RSPB centre, and the chance to aim their binoculars and telescopes at the guillemots, razorbills and puffins, not to mention seeking out the incredibly rare choughs, of which the nine pairs on the reserve make up 2% of the entire UK population. Continue reading →