a lot of stuff and nonsense from eclectech

We ran away to the hills for a few days. In traditional Scottish fashion we had rain, sleet, wind and sunshine; not always at the same time.

It was great.

If you're in the area I recommend the Sea Life Sanctuary near Oban. In a beautiful setting on the shore of Loch Creran it has seals, otters and tons of interesting fish and sea creatures. They do great work helping sick seals back to health and releasing them into the wild and had the most fantastic japanese spider crab and serpulid worm reefs.

Not to mention the otters. Lovely lovely otters.

The creatures at the sea life centre could only be challenged in loveliness by the Highland Cattle in Glen Nevis. They really are spectacularly photogenic beasts and came up to talk to us just as the sun hit the mountainside behind which was nice.

The photo with the rainbow is definitely one of my favourites.


The two photos on the right are of the Commando Memorial at Spean Bridge. A stunning setting looking out over the great Glen it was the location of Commando training during world war two.

Last week I was talking to a man who trained there during the war (he pulled aside his big coat to show his regimental jacket and medals underneath). He looked across the valley and said "I can't look at it without shivering. It was hard." It was very moving, looking out at the statue and the view and listening to someone talk about it from first hand experience. I don't think I'll look at it in quite the same way again.

And on that I will leave, with the promise of videos to come sometime soon to supplement the photos.

Labels: blether, photos, scotland

I have been both busy and not-so-busy offline recently. The latter included a few days taking photos in Ardnamurchan, an utterly gorgeous place. It snowed, rained, hailed, tried to blow us into the sea and bathed us in sunshine, sometimes all within 10 minutes. It contains the best foghorn ever, cows with 1980s new romantic fringes, remote graffiti and galloping sheep. If that isn't nice, what is?


In other news, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the upcoming legislation to remove the need for pesky things like parliament for UK government decisions. There's now a nice succinct site with information about the act and what you can do; Save Parliament!

Labels: blether, photos, scotland

I've got some new gadgetry that means I can get my old video footage into my computer and I have been playing with it this week. It has involved a great deal of smiling at memories.

In some instances I've just patched the video together, such as this timelapse footage taken in the Highlands. On some pieces I've added some scribbles, such as this piece from the Pass of the Cattle, near Applecross. For some pieces I went 100% scribbles, as they seemed right. The lizard is an example of that; the original lived in Watson Bay, Sydney.

I have a feeling that my particular liking for the colour orange came out of the trip to Australia. We spent a week driving through the desert, ending at Uluru. Orange was dominant, and I don't remember being so partial to it before then.

Memories can be very fine things.

Labels: blether, scotland, video