Showing posts with label Scotland. Show all posts
Bridge of Earn
is a small town in Perthshire, Scotland.
Often referred to simply as 'The Brig' (Scots for 'bridge') by its inhabitants.
The village grew up on the south bank of an important crossing of the River
Earn, whose sandstone bridge existed from at least the early 14th century, when
it is known to have been repaired by order of King Robert I of Scotland. Source
The Forth and Clyde
Canal is a canal opened in 1790, crossing central Scotland; it provided
a route for the seagoing vessels of the day between the Firth of Forth and the Firth
of Clyde at the narrowest part of the Scottish Lowlands. It is 35 miles long and it runs from the River Carron at Grangemouth
to the River Clyde at Bowling, and had an important basin at Port Dundas in
Glasgow. Source
Loch Ard is a body of fresh water in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park of the Stirling District in Scotland. The loch contains several small islands including Eilean Gorm, Briedach, St. Mallo, which is rumored to have an old chapel dedicated to that saint, and Dundochill, which is the site of Duke Murdoch's castle that may have been built by the Duke of Albany. Though one of Scotland's smaller lochs, it is one of the most picturesque and its sheltered location means it is ideal for kayaking and other water sports. Source
Portknockie is a coastal village on the Moray Firth within Moray, Scotland. The village's name is written as Portknockies in the Old Parish Registers. This would suggest that the port's name referred to not one, but two rocky hills at the hythe - the Port Hill and the Greencastle. Nearby towns include Banff, Buckie, Findochty and Cullen. The village was founded in 1677 and it became a significant herring fishing port during the nineteenth century, although today only a handful of commercial inshore boats remain. The town was on the railway network, until this closed in 1968. A popular site in Portknockie is Bow Fiddle Rock, a large rock about 50 feet high just off the coast. The quartzite structure has a large sea arch, which somewhat resembles the bow of a fiddle. Small numbers of seabirds nest on the coastal cliffs. These include Fulmar, Black-legged Kittiwake, Common Gull, Razorbill and Shag. Additionally Common Eider can be seen in and around the harbour and coves during the summer months. Source
Fingal's Cave is a sea cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, part of a National Nature Reserve owned by the National Trust for Scotland. It became known as Fingal's Cave after the eponymous hero of an epic poem by 18th-century Scots poet-historian James Macpherson. It is formed entirely from hexagonally jointed basalt columns within a Paleocene lava flow, similar in structure to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and those of nearby Ulva. In all these cases, cooling on the upper and lower surfaces of the solidified lava resulted in contraction and fracturing, starting in a blocky tetragonal pattern and transitioning to a regular hexagonal fracture pattern with fractures perpendicular to the cooling surfaces. As cooling continued these cracks gradually extended toward the centre of the flow, forming the long hexagonal columns we see in the wave-eroded cross-section today. Source
Eilean Donann is a small tidal island where three lochs meet, Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh, in the western Highlands of Scotland; since the castle's restoration in the early 20th Century, a footbridge has connected the island to the mainland. A picturesque castle that frequently appears in photographs, film and television dominates the island, which lies about 1 kilometre from the village of Dornie. Eilean Donan is part of the Kintail National Scenic Area, one of 40 in Scotland. In 2001, the island had a recorded population of just one person, but there were no "usual residents" at the time of the 2011 census. Eilean Donan, which means simply "island of Donnán", is named after Donnan of Eigg, a Celtic saint martyred in 617. Donnan is said to have established a church on the island, though no trace of this remains. The castle was founded in the thirteenth century, and became a stronghold of the Clan Mackenzie and their allies the Clan Macrae. In the early eighteenth century the Mackenzies' involvement in the Jacobite rebellions led in 1719 to the castle's destruction by government ships. Lieutenant-Colonel John Macrae-Gilstrap's twentieth-century reconstruction of the ruins produced the present buildings. Source
