Saturday 31 January 2015

Selling Scotland by the megawatt




I came upon this unusual obstruction while doing one of my 'fisul path inspections. It's our local contribution to the Beauly - Denny Interconnector.This is the upgraded transmission system designed to take the wind generated electricity from the Wild Land ( and some merely Slightly Annoyed Land) to where people use it, and ultimately onward to the barren wastes of Englandshire.




If you have travelled the A9 recently, you will have seen ample evidence of the relative size of the new pylons and the construction infrastructure.Locally, all strands of political opinion were united in requesting that the line be undergrounded ( a word, apparently) where it crosses the flat land of the carse, but apparently this would have been an unbearable burden on the dividends payable to the goatherds and flamenco dancers who own "Scottish" Power. To be fair, they did offer to paint the pylons in a more environmentally sensitive colour.



This used to be a pleasant, if boggy, little wood, with orchids and stuff. It will probably recover.
Now, I'm not against pylons per se ( little bit of French, there) . I would be lying if I said that a line of pylons looming out of the fog has never helped to correct a minor temporary locational anomaly, but this thing is just taking the piss.










 

Sunday 11 January 2015

Now you see it.......




Having worked out hat the problem with youtube clips was to do with Flash ( the iPad problem was the clue), I updated my version and lo (and behold) the devils music was displayed unto me in IE. Then it wasn't. Then it was again.
It's probably dirt in the carburettor 
No, I haven't been doing much walking - we've had lots of rain and I don't want to get my £400 jacket wet.
Any one got any ideas about the current title pic ? I know at least one of you has been there.








Monday 5 January 2015

A frosty carse




Well, you asked for it and here it is - an outdoor post with an outdoor pic ( atmospheric is, I think, the word you are looking for)
The Carse of Stirling from Drumbrae. About 400ft (ma hoose is about 40ft asl) so a quite pleasing "small step".
With luck, what will follow will be a series of familiar local "targets" as I run through what is, I think, the third attempt at this self-set rehab programme since I started blogging.




Thursday 1 January 2015

Situation normal.....



It appears that there has been a slight overrun on the essential engineering work currently being carried out on the blog.
I would like  personally to apologise to passen readers who have been inconvenienced and can assure them that I will be forgoing the large bonus to which I am fully entitled.
Over Christmas, I had hoped to get some assistance from the 7 year old, but although apparently a master of something called Minecraft, he found Blogger totally incomprehensible. And the 38 year old seemed totally preoccupied with some unusual activity on the Singapore stock exchange.
However. I can now give it some welly. Picture to crop and resize, some text colour changes, update information, add new people to bloglist etc.
Strangely, in the new template, all the existing video clips have vanished when viewed in IE, but are stll there in Firefox.
Heres a new one to see what happens.




Now, this, I hear you say, is all very well, but wasn't there supposed to be some outdoor content on this blog? My, what a good memory you have.
Well, thing is - over the years I seem to have laid waste to several key parts of my body which the medical “profession” keep attempting to patch up. The latest debacle involved being off my feet and confined to the house for a four week period prior to Christmas. Fret not. Back out street walking, so watch this space.