Category: scotland

edinburgh art

jc & gbm @ fruitmarket

Apologies for the long break in posting – a couple a big submissions at work combined with excessive watching of ‘The Wire’ have left me with limited time at the computer. Will be summarising quite a bit in the next few posts so don’t expect too much detail.

We missed most the Edinburgh festival season this year as we were away in France but did sneak over on the last weekend in August to catch a couple of art exhibitions still running.

Initially we got up close and personal with Tracey Emmin’s personal effects at her first retrospective at Modern Art Gallery, a lot of her stuff was quite moving, although the tapestries were a little difficult to interpret.

We then caught Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller‘s fantastic show at the Fruitmarket Gallery, beautifully whimsical, the animatronic, interactive, sensory, soundscapes were magical, and even if they are one trick ponies as cityofsound alludes is his review of their show in Sydney – it is a damn fine trick!

annoch eogoch ridge

looks like funEpisode 3 of my mountain goat adventures took us to the challenging north ridge of Glen Coe – one of the best ridge walks in Scotland and topped in difficulty by on the Cuillin Ridge in Skye.

Thankfully dDespite low cloud cover the weather stayed dry, as I think I might have been out of my comfort zone if it had rained. As it was there was some fairly hairy scrambles up and down craggy chutes of rock, but the views and sense of accomplishment at the end were properly exhilirating.

a sunny day in glasgow…never

a sunny day in glasgow t-shirta sunny day in glasgow t-shirt 2

On possibly the wettest night of an exceptionally wet summer we popped into Nice’n’Sleazy’s to catch friends of the Zebra’s Je Suis Animal, whom we had missed at indietracks. We were expecting twee scandinavian pop (and them to be headlining) but instead walked in toward the end of their interesting somewhat noisy set. They were followed by solid local boys Wake the President before the proper headline act: A Sunny Day in Glasgow hailing perhaps from one of the ten versions of our current home town in the US of A. They were quite delightful if sometimes a little erratic, however definitely not as rare a sound as their eponymous event in scotland.

little sparta

stones

On another quiet weekend this month we spent a pleasant Sunday investigating Ian Hamilton-Findlay’s Little Sparta garden. On a par with Charles Jencks Garden of Cosmic Speculation in terms of influence in the landscape art world it is on a much smaller more intimate scale and while it has intriging moments I found it less compelling.

On our way home we stopped in to our friends parent’s house in Leadhills (the 2nd highest village in Scotland) and had a fantastic foursies in their garden – which it turned out had almost as much to offer as Little Sparta.

cruising with mike

sillouette

A quiet Sunday afternnon drive on a rare sunny day took us into Ayrshire for a quick spin. We were heading for the Graffiti Project but baulked at the steep entrance charge (we’ll go back in winter when its free!) We then stopped at Fairlie (former home of Fyfe yachts) which has an interesting juxtaposition of beautiful bay and enormous wharf (above), and then down the coast through the tired but interesting Victorian seaside town of Largs, the 1960’s New Town experiment Irvine and the oh so posh Troon.

howe in glasgow

falkirk wheel

We are in the middle of a busy 6 weeks, and currently are broadbandless at home (not such a bad thing for a household that spends 8 hours a day in front of a screen anyway) so I’ve been a bit lax with the updating.

Reaching back into the end of June our friend Howe visited for a weekend from Copenhagen (via Saigon via Adelaide via Malaysia), unfortunately he lucked out with the weather so we ducked showers all weekend but still managed to catch a fair bit of stuff.

After a late night repast at favourite haunt Pintxos on the Friday night after he arrived we did our usual customised walking tour on the Saturday – including taking in the excellent Haptic exhibition at the Lighthouse, and dinner at Malaysian Chinese gem Rumours.

Sunday we made yet another attempt at getting to Pitlochry to visit Scotland’s smallest distillery, however a late start and some poor weather saw us turn back at Loch Tay. An overly long diversion took us to the Falkirk Wheel (above)for the first time – faintly disappointing in a typical Millenium Lottery Funding sort of way.

the mamores with the mountain goats

steep decent

Late in June Chhay & I spent a night camping with the mountain goats in the highlands at Kinlochleven near Ben Nevis. We managed three munroes in a fairly arduous 18 k walk up in the Mamores – some spectacular views towards Glencoe and Ben Nevis although the steepness of some of the decents (above) were a bit much for Chhay’s sense of vertigo. For a more details report see Niall Iain’s thoughts at the goat pen.

culloden

swoops

I enjoyed my first office outing with my new employers last weekend (not bad after 5 weeks given that we didn’t go anywhere in 18 months at my previous office!) to our newly completed visitors centre at Culloden. Not knowing anything about the battle it was interesting from a historical as well as architectural perspective (I later learned that the Henderson’s sneakily avoided it so I don’t have to take sides in all the stupid commentary 250 years later – scroll down for the comments!)

from the moor 1

The building itself sits well in the context and make some nice strong big moves, however up close reveals the evidence of the design + build contract in some of the detailing and final resolution. However, standing in the battlefield with the timber cladding just visible on the horizon (above) the mystery and spookiness of the site is retained, with the profile of the building following the surrounding hills.

I’m looking forward to out next trip in a few months – a little further afield this time to Venice for the opening of the Scottish gathering space.

glen etive

the whole route

Added a couple more to my measly total of Munros last weekend , with a walk with my new office’s climbing club. After a grey start it turned into a glorious day – making hillwalking seem almost fun.

ben starav ridge

We climbed Ben Starav via the spectacular ridge path (above), with a bit of a scramble up to great views at the summit over Loch Etive and the surrounding glen. After a brief rest we follwed the ridges across to the more gentle (but still over 3,000 ft) but much more difficult to pronounce Glas Bheinn Mor.

The decent was fairly jarring with the occasional stop to refill water bottles from mountain springs (below) decent from Glas Bheinn Mor (2)

We were rewarded at the end by dipping our toes & washing our faces in a delightful crystal clear rock pool, with a cloudless roof of sky.(below) In case you think Scotland is always like this it returned to grey & miserable today just in case anyone got too cocky and planned a bbq or something!
Glas Bheinn Mor