The season of 2003
This page may take some time to download as the images are quite big – I hope you will find it worth the wait.
Once again my sincere thanks to everyone who came along with us to explore the Hebrides and see the wonderful wildlife during 2003. The sheer variety and numbers of the wildlife this year was staggering – from many, many dolphins to innumerable basking sharks (they are supposed to be scarce??), from fabulous sightings of sea eagles and wildcats to Sabine’s gulls and killer whales! The flowers were again superb, and the sunrises and sunsets awe inspiring!
We were fortunate in having Peter Green join us as mentor on a watercolour week which proved to be a splendid success.
But best of all was being able to take so many lovely people to the islands and share moments of real pleasure with them. We saw magnificent sights, ate some superb food, and explored some wonderful places. We saw fantastic wildlife, but as usual it was the company that proved to be most important to all our enjoyment of the trips.
I hope you will enjoy sharing just some of those special moments looking at the images and words that follow.
As usual I have tried to make this page download as quickly as possible, but there are a lot of images so please be patient
he worst and best job of the whole year is going through the thousands of images I took during the summer – this season even more than normal thanks to being a profligate digital user!! No more worries about film and processing costs.
The bad part is the time it takes. The good bit is enjoying seeing all the faces, places, animals and flowers once again – that takes me back in circular fashion to the bad part – yet more time spent simply wishing I was back at sea and hoping next season comes again quickly!!
The weather this year was OK – not as hot and sunny as down south, but still fine for our purpose. All the trips to St Kilda went well except for one! Still could have been worse – this is an image taken by Doug, one of the SERCO workers on Hirta, showing village bay and the pier in February – no thanks!!
The pier is about twenty five feet high!!
I try to find better weather when we go!
This image of Dun shows the sort of weather we were to find later in the summer at St Kilda!
Meanwhile on the slopes of Ruaival, at what was thought to be the site of St Brianan’s (St Brendan- a contemporary of St Columba) chapel, archaeological excavations are under way.
However, the latest work seems to indicate the remains are much older and possibly of more agricultural origins, perhaps an ancient shieling amongst the screes dating back to prehistoric times.
To our great surprise on one of our visits to Kilda, the “Discovery” an enormous cruise ship arrived in the bay intent on landing 600 passengers!! Low water at the pier prevented them landing and they settled for tours around village bay for which we were very thankful.