It's Friday night and Teresa Morris from Islay Wildscapes sent me another one of her highly interesting blogs, accompanied with great pictures, this time from the largest dune system on Islay at Killinallan:

Teresa Morris: There is nothing more enjoyable than taking a stroll along Killinallan Beach on these long hot midsummer days. Within the adjoining dunes there is a profusion of flowers bursting into bloom with the hot sunshine. The dramatic dune landscape provides a variety of habitats for numerous plants many of which flower in June and July.

Killinallan Dunes at Loch Gruinart

Adjoining the vast Killinallan beach a large range of sand dunes have developed from millions of grains of sand which have been blown landward off the beach at low tide. The sand dune vegetation varies depending upon the time elapsed since the sand was deposited, sand stability and localised hydrological conditions. Standing at Killinallan point there is a superb view of the dunes sweeping inland from the point. Continue reading....

So many different levels of Homecoming Scotland are represented in this summer’s festival which begins on Sunday July 5th with a piano recital given by Havilland Willshire in Ionad Chaluim Chille Ile and ends on Friday July 10th with the Mendelssohn Octet at Bruichladdich.

Monday’s concert is at the ICCI, featuring piano trios by Haydn and Mendelssohn and a welcome ‘homecoming’ to Islay by one of the original founders of the festival, the wonderful pianist and all round good guy, Scott Mitchell.

Tuesday finds the musicians, all ten of them, in the Malt Hall, Lagavulin, where Haydn’s contribution is one of his early string quartets (Opus 4), and Mendelssohn’s is his other concerto, the little one with just string accompaniment will be performed by Angus Ramsay. By now you are probably wondering why there is a continuing theme of music by these two great composers. A happy coincidence for any programme planner is the death of Haydn and the birth of Mendelssohn in the same year, 1809. Add to that Haydn’s strong interest in the work of Robert Burns - he wrote the music for over 200 of his songs - and Mendelssohn’s visits to Scotland from which the Overture ‘Fingal’s Cave’ as well as his Symphony No.3, the Scottish, emerged; here we have homecomings of a European dimension. Continue reading.....

Early June I wrote about the Woollen Mill and its tweeds being available on Savile Row in London. Tonight we revisit the Mill. If you wonder how the tweeds are made on Gordon's old machines in Bridgend I can recommend you to watch the video below. The woollen Mill is quite famous, they made tartans for the movie Braveheart, Rob Roy and many others. The machines are one of the oldest in the UK, if not THE oldest and they make a tremendous noise and great tartans too! In the video Gordon also shows many tweeds and their matching clans. You really should try to vist the Woollen Mill when you're on Islay. Gordon is quite keen to explain to you in person what happens at the Mill and how it works and afterwards you can visit the shop or have a walk in the beautiful neigbouring woods!

Tag: woollen mill video bridgend craft

When I published Mary Bavin's article a couple of days ago I was aware that it was an answer to a letter sent by George Rhind which I seem to have missed earlier. I received very positive comments about Mary Bavin's article on the Lords of the Isles being published on this blog and I also share the opinion that life wasn't a fairytale in medieval days, far from that. That's why I appreciate the fact that George Rhind contacted me and sent me the letter which is referred to in Mary's article. George gave me permission to publish it on the blog, thanks for that. The letter is titled 'Distance Lending Enchantment' and was originally sent to the Ileach editor. George Rhind:

While the Finlaggan Trust Committee are due the heartiest congratulations on the opening of their extended Information Centre and the new bridge to Eilean Mor, some of your recent correspondents seem to be trying to create the impression that life at Finlaggan during the time of the Lordship was akin to a medieval Camelot with bagpipes.

The lifestyle allegedly enjoyed by the Lord of the Isles and his "Retainers" (about 1% of the population) was of course entirely supported by the indigenous local population who, as little more than serfs, cut the peats, caught the fish, planted the crops, dug the cess pits and emptied their Lordship's chamber pots. Continue reading.....

Since the weather is warm, hot for some and too hot for others, I thought I'd make a matching video. In the years we have visited Islay we witnessed many stunning sunsets which resulted in hundreds of images. Often I show these images to friends and family and just as often they don't believe I took them in Scotland. Isn't it raining there all the time they ask? Yes it does I always say, making sure I don't bump into them when I'm on holiday :-)

Anyway, we all know that the weather is often much better than people think and the weather man says, and at the moment that is certainly true. Temperatures today reached a comfortable 23 Degr and tomorrow it will be even warmer although the weather forecast mentions light rain, sure..... In case it does rain I can recommend the video below. It's accompanied by music from my favourite Italian singer Paolo Conte and you can dream away with the summer tunes and lovely Islay sunsets. Enjoy!

Tag: sunsets video photography saligo bay machir bay loch indaal

I had planned to do the news roundup today because Jeremy was elsewhere, not being able to submit his nature report. He was cycling from London to Paris with on a bike with one gear and succeeded, which is quite an achievement. Because of the heat over here however, it's too hot to spend much time with a laptop on my knees, I changed plans and will instead write about...... the weather! Yesterday evening a friend from Islay sent me a beautiful sunset picture and he mentioned that it's quite warm on Islay and it will become much warmer later in the week. When I checked the weather forecast for Islay I saw that the expected temperature for Tuesday indeed will be around 24°C, which is quite high. It also got me thinking about maximum temperature records and I was wondering what the highest recorded max temp on Islay is? I assume it won't be much higher than 24°C given the fact that Islay is surrounded by cool(er) water.

Sunset at Loch Gruinart

To get an idea I did some research on the internet and found an interesting page from the Met Office with weather statistics for western Scotland. For obvious comparison reasons I was most interested in the nearest official weather station to Islay which is Tiree but first some general information about the annual highs and lows of the region. The mainland of western Scotland has quite high and low extreme temperatures, e.g. a large temperature range, varying between -24.8 °C and 32.9 °C while the annual mean temperatures are between 2 °C and 19 °C. The situation for the Hebridean Isles is quite different. Due to the influence of the gulf stream the temperature range is much smaller. According to the Tiree temperature range the lowest minimum temperature recorded is -7 °C and the highest maximum temperature recorded is 27 °C while the annual mean temperatures are in the range of 3 °C and 17 °C. A quote from the Met Office website: Continue reading......

Mary Bavin on the Lords of the Isles and their minions

George Rhind is, of course, quite correct to point out that the lifestyle of the Lords of the Isles is not typical of the experience of the majority in the Islands, or in the world, in the Medieval period. The reality was a life expectancy of perhaps thirty, 20% infant mortality in the first year of life and a further 20% in the next four years. Childbirth was the most common cause of death for women, fertility rates were low due to malnutrition and starvation was not uncommon. Disease and infection which we see as minor today killed and maimed. Medieval life was not easy or romantic. Continue reading.....

A nice Islay related article appeared on the Jog Scotland website. As some of you know Jim Lutomski, participant in the annual Islay half marathon, started a succesful jogging group in Port Ellen and in the process he and his group got national press attention when an article was published on the www.jogscotland.org.uk website. Regular readers and visitors of Islay have probably heard of Jim Lutomski, I have written about Jim one year ago, and I have met him and his wife in person a couple of months ago. Jim Lutomski is a gifted artist, he repairs bikes in Port Ellen at Columba Hall and now he is involved in a jogging group. Below a quote from the article on the JogScotland website:

The jogscotland group on the Isle of Islay in Port Ellen are bursting with energy and enthusiasm for jogscotland. Each week sees the group attract another brand new person with numbers sitting roughly around ten at the moment. At least three of the joggers are taking part in the ‘Run For Life’ event and a couple of the women, Clare and Caroline are building their confidence with a view to possibly entering the Islay Half Marathon. In due course it is hoped that the shy men of the Island might even get involved. Lastly, a big shout out for the three winners of the outstanding courage awards: Mairi for picking herself up after slightly over doing things, Frances for having a go at jogging for the first time in yonks and Clare for the most dramatic change in lifestyle. We here at jogscotland would also like to give a big round of applause to Jog Leader Jim, who has achieved so much in such a short amount of time, well done Jim!

As soon as the 'shy men' in Port Ellen change their minds they can contact Jim by sending him an email at enquiries@lutomskiart.co.uk

Tag: jogging port ellen

The Ileach newspaper is getting more active on the internet lately and they started a collection of Islay images a while back on Flickr, the popular photosharing website of Yahoo. When I had a look recently I found out that they currently have 1,478 items in their collection and I think this could well be the one of the largest collections of online Islay images. While most images are taken recently, you can find image sets of the Fly Fishing championships, the Islay Triathlon and Beach Rugby tournament, there is also a very interesting collection from the hand of Gilbert Carmichael. Click here for the Ileach collection.

Gilbert Carmichael, also known from the book Old Islay, is a gifted photographer and produced an almost endless series of postcards in the nineteen nineties, modern interpretations of the original images. The collection of Gilbert Carmichael at the Ileach Flickr page contains many images and postcards from Islay. Some coloured and some black and white but most of them showing scenes that have hardly changed through the years. One of the exceptions is the corner building at Bruichladdich Distillery which was destroyed by a fire many years ago. It's up to you to find the other differences! Continue reading.......

Several people on Islay mentioned the beautiful weather of the last days in their emails, even the word heatwave has been used. It looks like summer has started after the cool and misty days of last weekend. Paul Graham, owner of an Taigh-Osda, took his dogs out for a swim at Saligo Bay last night and took some beautiful images which you can find below:

Beautiful sunset at Saligo Bay

Continue to the other images