29 June 2008
Scotland, Part 2: Shetland, Foula, Orkney
On Day 2 we landed at Sumburgh on Shetland.
Our first bird that day was the Terrible and Infamous Thrush Nightingale.
really, a retiring little thing, rarely seen and content to sing in the lower branches of whatever undergrowth is at hand. the fact that this one posed for me was quite out of character.
Then we saw Shetland ponies with foal. Everybody say aaaawww...
And finally, on to the ruins! Layer upon layer of ancient dwellings were to be found at Jarlshof.
After crawling through as many of the wheelhouses and broch's as one could stand, there was more birdwatching. mmm.. oystercatcher. and for me, sheepwatching.
In the aftenoon, we headed over to remote Foula, where basking seals ignored us in the harbor.
Foula is a small island that supports about 10 crofting (subsistence farming) families. I was offered a lift to the other side of the island by a guy on his way, so I piled in.
This sea-stack is what was awaiting me at the other end. along with some cute sheep, fields of peat, and cranky bonxies.
bonxies, better known as Skuas or Jaegers, are fairly large, very mean birds. they fly right at your head when you're on their turf or nearing their nest.. needless to say i didn't stick around that part of the island long.
Next I saw a pretty skylark singing on a fencepost. i didn't know exactly what it was, so it was temporarily named the Foula Fencepost bird. There were quite a number of them.
Foula was fun, because it was sort of like a petting zoo. I got to pet the sheep, there were dogs, bright frogs, and the shetland ponies were on the march.
just don't try calling home from here.
Day 3 - Orkney
I think Orkney was one of my favorite places on the trip. I got a little cagey from being hustled place to place and on-and-off of buses, but there really was a lot of serious cool shit to see. Maes Howe, an ancient Pictish burial mound was really exciting. You know, in the way that only ancient astronomical chambers built around standing stones and graffiti'd with viking runes can be exciting.
We only have a few outside pictures, because the National Trust doesn't allow photography. I will say, though, "Extremely cool." The megalithic stones were brought to this place from miles away. The 4 cornerstones strongly resemble standing stones, and aren't loadbearing, so they were probably there long before the mound was built, long, long ago.. This is one of those ancient works that lights up special on the sunset of the winter solstice.
The viking graffiti from many years later said things like, "I am a viking, and I'm writing high up" over the main door.
Then it was off to the Ring of Brodgar, a massive circle of standing stones about a mile from Maes Howe. It was large in diameter, so I couldn't really catch all the stones at once. suffice it to say, it looked like a ring of broken teeth. it was on a small strip of land between two lakes.
i really like how the ring was inside of a channel, which separated it from the surroundings. rumor has it that cutting through the solid rock to dig the channel would have been more difficult than mining and setting the stones.
just a piece down the road were the Stones of Stenness, another standing stone circle. this one smaller, and with fewer stones remaining. it was built at a later date, and the stones were a lot larger.
i found it very interesting that two of the smaller stones within the circle seemed to "sight" on Maes Howe. (that lump in the middle).
by midday we were toddling around skara brae, which seemed much like jarlshof in that it was a bunch of old dwellings on top of each other. fun for the "flintstone" aspect of the architecture, but that was about it.
oh, not entirely true. they had a good gift shop where i picked up a book on runes and The Orkneyinga Saga, a hilarious account of the earls of Orkney. How can you not just love stories about guys named "Thorfinn Skullsplitter" and "Einar Buttered-Bread" I very much recommend this one, i find it a bit more readable than Beowulf.
In the afternoon we trekked past the Italian church, but not being big on either WWII history, or churches, i went out with the birders and skipped stones on a lake.
We spent a few afternoon hours exploring kirkwall (where i bought some yarn of north ronaldsey wool), and then headed back to our boat in Stromness (a very cute little town, where M&P and I stocked up on beverages and had a dinner of fresh fish and chips, fried right on the pier).
As the boat pulled out, we sailed past the island of Hoy. The sun was low, and I think it lit up the red sandstone beautifully.
And then we saw the Old Man of Hoy, a sea stack standing out on his own.
oooh.
stay tuned for more tales of islands and isolation as our travels take us to the Outer Hebrides and beyond!
Our first bird that day was the Terrible and Infamous Thrush Nightingale.
really, a retiring little thing, rarely seen and content to sing in the lower branches of whatever undergrowth is at hand. the fact that this one posed for me was quite out of character.
Then we saw Shetland ponies with foal. Everybody say aaaawww...
And finally, on to the ruins! Layer upon layer of ancient dwellings were to be found at Jarlshof.
After crawling through as many of the wheelhouses and broch's as one could stand, there was more birdwatching. mmm.. oystercatcher. and for me, sheepwatching.
In the aftenoon, we headed over to remote Foula, where basking seals ignored us in the harbor.
Foula is a small island that supports about 10 crofting (subsistence farming) families. I was offered a lift to the other side of the island by a guy on his way, so I piled in.
This sea-stack is what was awaiting me at the other end. along with some cute sheep, fields of peat, and cranky bonxies.
bonxies, better known as Skuas or Jaegers, are fairly large, very mean birds. they fly right at your head when you're on their turf or nearing their nest.. needless to say i didn't stick around that part of the island long.
Next I saw a pretty skylark singing on a fencepost. i didn't know exactly what it was, so it was temporarily named the Foula Fencepost bird. There were quite a number of them.
Foula was fun, because it was sort of like a petting zoo. I got to pet the sheep, there were dogs, bright frogs, and the shetland ponies were on the march.
just don't try calling home from here.
Day 3 - Orkney
I think Orkney was one of my favorite places on the trip. I got a little cagey from being hustled place to place and on-and-off of buses, but there really was a lot of serious cool shit to see. Maes Howe, an ancient Pictish burial mound was really exciting. You know, in the way that only ancient astronomical chambers built around standing stones and graffiti'd with viking runes can be exciting.
We only have a few outside pictures, because the National Trust doesn't allow photography. I will say, though, "Extremely cool." The megalithic stones were brought to this place from miles away. The 4 cornerstones strongly resemble standing stones, and aren't loadbearing, so they were probably there long before the mound was built, long, long ago.. This is one of those ancient works that lights up special on the sunset of the winter solstice.
The viking graffiti from many years later said things like, "I am a viking, and I'm writing high up" over the main door.
Then it was off to the Ring of Brodgar, a massive circle of standing stones about a mile from Maes Howe. It was large in diameter, so I couldn't really catch all the stones at once. suffice it to say, it looked like a ring of broken teeth. it was on a small strip of land between two lakes.
i really like how the ring was inside of a channel, which separated it from the surroundings. rumor has it that cutting through the solid rock to dig the channel would have been more difficult than mining and setting the stones.
just a piece down the road were the Stones of Stenness, another standing stone circle. this one smaller, and with fewer stones remaining. it was built at a later date, and the stones were a lot larger.
i found it very interesting that two of the smaller stones within the circle seemed to "sight" on Maes Howe. (that lump in the middle).
by midday we were toddling around skara brae, which seemed much like jarlshof in that it was a bunch of old dwellings on top of each other. fun for the "flintstone" aspect of the architecture, but that was about it.
oh, not entirely true. they had a good gift shop where i picked up a book on runes and The Orkneyinga Saga, a hilarious account of the earls of Orkney. How can you not just love stories about guys named "Thorfinn Skullsplitter" and "Einar Buttered-Bread" I very much recommend this one, i find it a bit more readable than Beowulf.
In the afternoon we trekked past the Italian church, but not being big on either WWII history, or churches, i went out with the birders and skipped stones on a lake.
We spent a few afternoon hours exploring kirkwall (where i bought some yarn of north ronaldsey wool), and then headed back to our boat in Stromness (a very cute little town, where M&P and I stocked up on beverages and had a dinner of fresh fish and chips, fried right on the pier).
As the boat pulled out, we sailed past the island of Hoy. The sun was low, and I think it lit up the red sandstone beautifully.
And then we saw the Old Man of Hoy, a sea stack standing out on his own.
oooh.
stay tuned for more tales of islands and isolation as our travels take us to the Outer Hebrides and beyond!
Labels: adventures, birds, scotland, travel, wildlife
17 June 2008
Robot Quickie
just a quick one inbetween, here.
am i the only one that finds Discovery News hilarious? Now we have robots that feel pain, and monitor when they've been inappropriately touched. I just imagine hearing the pink-sweatered asian girl-bot programmed with HAL's voice say, "Bad touch. Bad touch, Daaave."
then, there are the lovebots that'll purr in your ear when you molest them..
i love that we're going both ways at once.
on a completely unrelated note, I'm not moving to Sweden, but I get to fly back and forth staying a couple weeks here, a couple weeks there. so i'm pretty excited about that. plus, i think it just increased the gypsy-factor of my lifestyle by like 10 points. woo!
Labels: persnickety, sweden
16 June 2008
Scotland, Part 1 in which we arrive and depart
it is a little-known fact that i was raised by birdwatchers. serious birdwatchers, one at least second-generation. now that i'm out of the closet about that one, it shouldn't be too surprising that when i asked my parents to come visit me after I moved to Europe, they suggested a birding cruise. always up for nature-y and new, and wanting to see things like standing stones and chambered cairns, i was all for it.
understand that when we started talking about it in October 2006, the May 2007 cruise was booked. so we had to wait for May 2008.
In the meantime, I had time to read about the monuments we'd probably see, and catch up on some of the fiction written about these locales (Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate). I scoured my copy of Lonely Planet Scotland, because that's just what I do, and I took my new DSLR camera to a photo course (in german) so i could capture images that would be more than tourist snaps. specifically, i wanted to be able to photograph some of the remotest islands of the UK, and the wildlife that considers only these nearly inapproachable bits of rock to be suitable habitat. I'm pretty well thrilled with the results. it was too many photos for one post, so i'm breaking it up over the course of our itinerary.
first, we arrived in aberdeen. I got there first, got the lay of the land, saw an english film (with english sound! not dubbed in german!) and generally tried not to buy too many books.
I picked mom and dad up from the airport - lookin a little rough from their transatlantic journey. after some strategic napping, and with regular feeding and watering they were on their feet, and we were off!
our big mission in aberdeen was to find ourselves some wellies. before we could even start shopping, though, we saw kilty men in the cemetery! (and had our picture taken in front of them)
there were bagpipes, and a bunch of guys with big gold chains - mayors, maybe? - and they all went on a little parade. we were very happy to find that the stereotypes are true!
and then we ate haggis.
right after haggis we all scored wellies at an outdoors store, for about 10 quid apiece.
In some of our between-times, we ate things like rock cakes and treacle. we are all big harry potter fans, and we just had to find out about Rock Cakes and Treacle! treacle is just a weird britword for molasses. so now we know. but treacle toffee is definitely yum. The Rock cakes we had were really just raisin cookies. Not bad raisin cookies, just raisin cookies.
We had an extra day, so we visited the Castles Balmoral and Crathes in Royal Deeside. Balmoral is the summer cottage for the queen of england and her pals. It was nice for its facade and gardens, but mostly for its Royal famousness.
I also caught the not-at-all-elusive european robin on film ..er.. electrons.
Crathes was not so impressive from the outside, but inside there was much more to see. It was all still furnished in antiques. The ceilings had been painted in the 1700's, and was still visible. Crathes castle also had a very Lewis Carroll Queen of Hearts Topiary garden.
Then it was time for our Cruise to start!
We tried to board the boat in Aberdeen. We were sure we were supposed to be on the boat BEFORE 4pm. so we tried around 2pm with all our bags and gear. ha. we were supposed to be there AT 4pm, so we spent the between time chilling out at the pub in the train station. there was ale, and we chatted about the Stanley Cup games with some very nice Canadians.
When we did go back to the Quay AT 4pm, we found there was a bit of a waiting line. the harbor security was practically undressing everybody before we could get on the boat. i could only shake my head, and be glad that the tour leaders were walking up and down the line chatting with their new charges.
After an hour wait, and watching my parents get strip searched (weird!), we got on the boat and settled in. As we left the Harbor, we came right out on what they were calling "lumpy seas". that means the boat does a whole pitch, rock and yaw dance that put 90% of the group at the altar of the porcelain goddess.
the next morning, i will call it the morning of Day 1, we were supposed to land on Fair Isle. the rough seas kept us from arriving.. kept me from getting a genuine fair isle sweater. verdammnt nochmal! i was ready to swim to shore, but was advised not to, even though wool stays warm when wet. now i'll just have to go back on my own. the other thing i was looking forward to on Fair Isle was walking amongst the nesting puffins. they burrow, so we wouldn't see the young or the eggs, but puffins are so darned cute, i wouldn't mind just hugging the adults a bit. ..see this photog's website for some good puffin pix.
We kept cruising, and by evening the seas had calmed. our first shore excursion was to visit the Iron Age Broch (tower) on the small, uninhabited island of Mousa.
To get there, we duded up in our lifejackets and got to ride in a little rubber Cousteau boat!
we have it on good authority that the Mousa Broch is the tallest remaining example of this kind of architecture, popular in the northwest isles about 2000 years ago. it's constructed from an inner and an outer skin, with a stairwell in between. wonder of wonders, we were allowed to climb to the top (this would never happen in the US, had we such relics). I submit for your enjoyment, some of the pictures from Mousa.
stay tuned for the next episode of our scotland trip (we're a serialized photonovella!), in which the intrepid vacationers climb into an ancient burial chamber graffiti'd with runic script! Do they survive to tell the tale?!
understand that when we started talking about it in October 2006, the May 2007 cruise was booked. so we had to wait for May 2008.
In the meantime, I had time to read about the monuments we'd probably see, and catch up on some of the fiction written about these locales (Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate). I scoured my copy of Lonely Planet Scotland, because that's just what I do, and I took my new DSLR camera to a photo course (in german) so i could capture images that would be more than tourist snaps. specifically, i wanted to be able to photograph some of the remotest islands of the UK, and the wildlife that considers only these nearly inapproachable bits of rock to be suitable habitat. I'm pretty well thrilled with the results. it was too many photos for one post, so i'm breaking it up over the course of our itinerary.
first, we arrived in aberdeen. I got there first, got the lay of the land, saw an english film (with english sound! not dubbed in german!) and generally tried not to buy too many books.
I picked mom and dad up from the airport - lookin a little rough from their transatlantic journey. after some strategic napping, and with regular feeding and watering they were on their feet, and we were off!
our big mission in aberdeen was to find ourselves some wellies. before we could even start shopping, though, we saw kilty men in the cemetery! (and had our picture taken in front of them)
there were bagpipes, and a bunch of guys with big gold chains - mayors, maybe? - and they all went on a little parade. we were very happy to find that the stereotypes are true!
and then we ate haggis.
right after haggis we all scored wellies at an outdoors store, for about 10 quid apiece.
In some of our between-times, we ate things like rock cakes and treacle. we are all big harry potter fans, and we just had to find out about Rock Cakes and Treacle! treacle is just a weird britword for molasses. so now we know. but treacle toffee is definitely yum. The Rock cakes we had were really just raisin cookies. Not bad raisin cookies, just raisin cookies.
We had an extra day, so we visited the Castles Balmoral and Crathes in Royal Deeside. Balmoral is the summer cottage for the queen of england and her pals. It was nice for its facade and gardens, but mostly for its Royal famousness.
I also caught the not-at-all-elusive european robin on film ..er.. electrons.
Crathes was not so impressive from the outside, but inside there was much more to see. It was all still furnished in antiques. The ceilings had been painted in the 1700's, and was still visible. Crathes castle also had a very Lewis Carroll Queen of Hearts Topiary garden.
Then it was time for our Cruise to start!
We tried to board the boat in Aberdeen. We were sure we were supposed to be on the boat BEFORE 4pm. so we tried around 2pm with all our bags and gear. ha. we were supposed to be there AT 4pm, so we spent the between time chilling out at the pub in the train station. there was ale, and we chatted about the Stanley Cup games with some very nice Canadians.
When we did go back to the Quay AT 4pm, we found there was a bit of a waiting line. the harbor security was practically undressing everybody before we could get on the boat. i could only shake my head, and be glad that the tour leaders were walking up and down the line chatting with their new charges.
After an hour wait, and watching my parents get strip searched (weird!), we got on the boat and settled in. As we left the Harbor, we came right out on what they were calling "lumpy seas". that means the boat does a whole pitch, rock and yaw dance that put 90% of the group at the altar of the porcelain goddess.
the next morning, i will call it the morning of Day 1, we were supposed to land on Fair Isle. the rough seas kept us from arriving.. kept me from getting a genuine fair isle sweater. verdammnt nochmal! i was ready to swim to shore, but was advised not to, even though wool stays warm when wet. now i'll just have to go back on my own. the other thing i was looking forward to on Fair Isle was walking amongst the nesting puffins. they burrow, so we wouldn't see the young or the eggs, but puffins are so darned cute, i wouldn't mind just hugging the adults a bit. ..see this photog's website for some good puffin pix.
We kept cruising, and by evening the seas had calmed. our first shore excursion was to visit the Iron Age Broch (tower) on the small, uninhabited island of Mousa.
To get there, we duded up in our lifejackets and got to ride in a little rubber Cousteau boat!
we have it on good authority that the Mousa Broch is the tallest remaining example of this kind of architecture, popular in the northwest isles about 2000 years ago. it's constructed from an inner and an outer skin, with a stairwell in between. wonder of wonders, we were allowed to climb to the top (this would never happen in the US, had we such relics). I submit for your enjoyment, some of the pictures from Mousa.
stay tuned for the next episode of our scotland trip (we're a serialized photonovella!), in which the intrepid vacationers climb into an ancient burial chamber graffiti'd with runic script! Do they survive to tell the tale?!
Labels: adventures, birds, scotland, travel, wildlife
