Showing posts with label VIC 32. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VIC 32. Show all posts

Monday, November 17, 2008

Fantastic Sunday

Guess what is represented in the photo above.
Hiya again!
It's been a while since I last posted any photos. Just rather busy, I suppose, on all kinds of projects. I'm currently involved in Sustainable Oban, the Oban Plastic Bag Free initiative, one of the three Oban Book Groups (the one that meets once a month on a Tuesday evening at Waterstone's, now the only bookshop in town), and the Oban Bach Choir. I also manage a blog for the Lynnside Community Garden Project, which is part of the Glencruitten Residents and Tenants Association.
My circle of friends and acquaintances has been building up very nicely, indeed.
I may have said this before on one of these posts, but I'll say it again: in the six months that I've lived here I have come to feel more rooted and more integrated than I ever did in the thirty-or-so years that I lived in Bern. I suppose it's a chicken-and-egg thing: I held back, so everyone around me held back, too.
Nice to be in a different situation at last.

Sunday morning, 16 November, I woke to a blue sky. The sun cleared the top of what I call Soroba Hill at almost exactly 9:30AM. After pottering about for a bit, including breakfast with my back to the warm sunshine -- glorious!, I decided the day needed to be celebrated out of doors. So I cycled down/over/up (?) to Oban harbour to take some photos.
The tide was out, probably slack water just then. In the photo above, you can see the freshwater of the Lorne river feeding into the harbour through a culvert. Very peaceful, isn't it?I was delighted to find an old acquaintance moored at the North Pier.
The wheelhouse is a wonderful amalgam of old and new and the captain has installed a kind of organ that is worked with these pull-strings.
I was too shy to ask the engineer's mate to pull on one of those strings -- I think they're the captain's prerogative...

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Scotland, March 2008 - stormy weather

Hello again
In between work and mourning for my friend and worrying about the world (Tibet, Colombia, Africa, glaciers, overfishing, and and and), and noticing springflowers springing up (sorry, couldn't resist) and greenery greening, I took another quick trip to Oban to recharge batteries.
A great time, despite some travel mishaps and glitches, not least a pretty interesting approach into London-Heathrow last Monday evening. Three cheers for fantastic pilots who can manage the smoothest of touch-downs after a hair-raising approach.
Do you know that video of a Lufthansa Airbus 320 crosswind landing attempt in Hamburg on March 1st? Well, it was not unlike that episode... [for a heart-stopping few minutes, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z42fchrzhHY&NR=1 , where the commentary reads as follows: "The Lufthansa flight LH44 from Munich experienced {virtual} wingstrike while landing at Hamburg on 1 March 2008 during Emma storm. Nobody was injured; the plane landed using another runway."]
Anyway, I'm safely back in my Bern office, working hard on a driech Sunday afternoon and slowly but surely getting ready for some major changes, of which later.
Here are some photos from the Crinan canal last Sunday, a little over an hour's drive south of Oban:
The 'workhorses' of the canal, sitting proud on a Sunday afternoon.
Remember my post of some two years ago when I wrote about a sorry-looking hull of a Clyde puffer? Well, here she is, beautifully restored! Hat off! The have done a grand job!
Here are some more impressions from what would soon turn into a downpour of rough-grain hail: