Undiscovered Scotland

Torphichen Preceptory near Linlithgow. This modern image looks across a grassy area with paths set out to represent cloisters to a range of buildings in bright sunlight, though with long shadows being cast by trees behind the photographer. A tall old stone church tower with transepts is on the left, with a later stone church nave attached to it on the right. The old tower and transepts would have been roofless in 1943, when the book is set. The sky is blue. The front cover of ‘Friend or Foe?’ is shown in the top right corner.

‘Friend or Foe?’ is a fast-paced new thriller set largely in south-west Scotland during World War Two. Torphichen Preceptory near Linlithgow is visited by the book’s two central characters.
Available as a paperback, Kindle, Kobo or Apple. Find out more:
www.arachnid.scot/book-fof/ind...

Autumn, Deeside style 🙂

Stirling's Medieval Salmon Wars Overexploitation of our fishery stock

My latest blog explores medieval fish traps and salmon over exploitation and the inevitable conflicts!

stirlingarchaeology.substack.com/p/stirlings-...

Aerial shot of mountain, river and road.

Early morning mist by the River Balgy.

The fragmentary remains of Turnberry Castle. The image shows a view down over rough grass to a shore with the blue sea beyond it. A narrow valley in the centre of the frame has traces of stonework either side of it and there’s part of a stone wall still standing on a short promontory in the upper left of the frame. The scene is in sunlight.

The fragmentary remains of Turnberry Castle in Ayrshire, where Robert the Bruce's mother, Marjorie, Countess of Carrick, is said to have held his kidnapped father; and where Robert the Bruce was probably born. More pics and info: www.undiscoveredscot...

#Scotland #Turnberry #Ayrshire

'The Tardis' - Royal Mile, Edinburgh.

#OTD in 1911, the new Mitchell Library building, on North Street, was opened by Lord Rosebery.

Pic: Partick Camera Club, 1955 (and, yes, bottom left, that is a neon sign for Glasgow's other 'Rogano' Bar).

The Linn Park Bridge looking spectacular today against the autumn leaves. Built around 1810, it's the oldest complete cast iron bridge in Glasgow.

Cont./

#glasgow #linnpark #ironwork #bridge #architecture #autumn #autumnphotography #reflection #architecturephotography #bridgephotography

The armoury hall at Inveraray Castle. The image is looking across a large square room whose ceiling is too high to be seen, though there is a balcony crossing the top of the frame. The walls are mainly a bright beige and are covered with large displays of weapons, arranged in circles on the two side walls and a semi-circle above a door on the far wall, with smaller displays on other parts of the walls. There are display cabinets in the centre of the room with a man looking down into one of them.

Inside the spectacular armoury hall at Inveraray Castle, the seat of the Dukes of Argyll. It rises 21m, the full height of the castle, to the ornate ceiling, and every wall is covered by displays of muskets, swords, pikes and bayonets. More pics and info: www.undiscoveredscot...

#Scotland #Argyll

This modern image shows a view over the harbour at Mgarr on the island of Gozo. There’s part of a roundabout at the foot of the frame with the water of the harbour beyond it, partly occupied by small boats moored at lines of pontoons. Mgarr itself is built on slopes that wrap around the far side of the harbour and has a range of building styles, from a church in the central skyline to modern apartments being built on the right. The sky is blue. The front cover of ‘The Eye of Horus’ is shown in the bottom right corner.

‘The Eye of Horus’ is an atmospheric World War Two thriller with settings that move from the Highlands of Scotland via Gibraltar to Malta. Mgarr on Gozo is visited by the central characters.
Available as a paperback, Kindle, Kobo or Apple. Find out more: www.kenlussey.com/eoh/index.html

Every sign has a story behind it, and I suspect this one in Bowling, just to the west of Glasgow, might be more interesting than most.

#glasgow #bowling #A82 #roadsigns #weirdsigns #ignoresatnav #strangesigns #satnav #sign #signofthetimes #satnav

A belter of an aerial shot of central Glasgow from around 1930. The most prominent feature is the vast glass roof canopy of Glasgow Central, one of the world's largest, featuring 48,000 panes making up 2.2 square miles of glazing

What else can you spot?

📷 Glasgow City Archives

#Glasgow

View over sea and mountains.

Standing by the appropriately named 'viewpoint'.

The Skye Bridge. The image shows a high-level view down a hillside in the bottom of the frame to a roadway leading in from the lower right that crosses a stretch of water at low level to an island and then passes a lighthouse to make a second crossing in a high arch on two supports to Skye, which is in the upper part of the frame. The land extends to the right where mountains are visible in the haze. The sky is light blue.

Happy birthday to the Skye Bridge, which opened thirty years ago today on 16 October 1995. It is seen here from the Am Ploc viewpoint above Kyle of Lochalsh, with the Isle of Skye in the background. More pics and info: www.undiscoveredscot...

#Scotland #SkyeBridge #IsleOfSkye #Skye #KyleOfLochalsh

A view from the top of a hillfort. A road can be seen leading into the distance, as well as clusters of trees and hills on the horizon.

This is the view from the top of Woden Law, an Iron Age hillfort in the Scottish Borders. Below it is a Roman road known as Dere Street and in the distance are the Eildon Hills. This was the start point for my journey that inspired my recent book 'The Road to Mons Graupius'. #HillfortsWednesday

Review: The Finch, a pub on Bath Road - Edinburgh Reviews The Finch has successfully transformed a challenging Leith location into a destination pub. With its focus on high-quality craft beer, a wonderfully bright and chic interior, and a stunning beer garden, it's a "hidden gem" that is rightly becoming one of the area's most popular spots.

Review: The Finch, a pub on Bath Road #leith

What an absolute pleasure to have the fantastic @hollysurplice.bsky.social visit us to paint this beautiful window for us! Plus we now have signed copies of her book #TheHorseDreamer along with special signed art prints! @chickenhousebooks.bsky.social @bouncemarketing.bsky.social

The village of Ellenabeich on the Isle of Seil. The image shows a flooded slate quarry in the left foreground bounded by sheer slate walls and grass on the right leading round to a cluster of long white cottages with slate roofs, then a glimpse of more water on the left with land beyond it. Beyond the cottages is a slope of scree leading to grey cliffs. The scene is in sunlight.

The village of Ellenabeich on the Isle of Seil south of Oban. Seil is connected to the mainland by "The Bridge Over the Atlantic" and is the most easily accessible of the Slate Islands, whose fortune was built on the quarrying of slate. More pics and info: www.undiscoveredscot...

#Scotland #Argyll

The image shows the rather spooky Clootie Well on the Black Isle. It is seen here – and visited in the book – after someone cleared away most of the offerings that had previously hung thickly from every branch and clustered around the outlet of the well, shown in the bottom left of the frame. We are looking up a wooded slope that climbs to the left and back into the frame. A set of six stone steps climbs in the centre of the frame. Strips of cloth hang from a tree on the right and sparsely from other trees and branches. The front cover of ‘A Tangled Web’ is shown in the bottom right corner.

You can’t ask a dead man who pulled the trigger. ‘A Tangled Web’ is a fast-paced contemporary thriller set in northern Scotland. The Clootie Well on the Black Isle has a central role in the book.
Available as a Kindle, Kobo or Apple. Find out more:
www.arachnid.scot/book-atw/ind...

A Rusty iron gate with metal flowers in the ironwork. In the background is a gravestone with the names of the James Clerk Maxwell family

Went on a little pilgrimage today to Parton, the resting place of 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotland’s very own Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell. Quite the pause when I realised he was only one year older than me (48) when he died. ⚛️🔭

Another productive day at Culloden. Very nice piece of lead grape shot recovered. @n-t-s.bsky.social @tonypollard.bsky.social

Autumn colours by a small loch.

The lochan with no name hidden in a secret place.

The Kildalton Cross. The image shows part of a ruined church on the left of the frame and a graveyard occupying much of the lower part of the frame with trees behind it. There are only a few scattered graves while, in the centre foreground and occupying the whole central strip of the frame is a large greenish-grey decorated stone cross with arcs connecting its arms to the upper and lower parts. The scene is in sunlight.

The magnificent Kildalton Cross in the south-eastern corner of Islay: Scotland's finest intact early Christian high cross. Beautifully preserved and standing 2.65m high by 1.32m wide, it was carved towards the end of the 700s. More pics and images: www.undiscoveredscot...

#Scotland #Islay

Cottage at Dean Village, Edinburgh.

Scotland’s last shoemaking shop to be restored decades after it closed Building said to have lain ‘completely undisturbed’ for decades after it ceased trading

Scotland’s last shoemaking shop to be restored decades after it closed
www.scotsman.com/news/scottis...

A photo showing both sides of an old BEA luggage tag with flight information written on it.

Time travel exists between the pages of a book.

This luggage tag fell out of a pile of old books, and everything about it looks like the past.

The New Bridge in Ayr. The image shows a five arch stone bridge coming into the frame at the bottom right and extending to the far side of a river in the middle left. The bridge is made of reddish stone and has grey stone decorative balustrades. There are grand pink buildings either side of its far end and a sipre behind the one on the left. The sky is blue.

The New Bridge in Ayr, which was built in 1878 to replace a previous “New Bridge” built across the River Ayr in 1788 after that was washed away by flooding. The first wooden bridge here was built to replace a ford in about 1250. More pics and info: www.undiscoveredscot...

#Scotland #Ayr #Ayrshire

This modern image shows the view north over Stranraer and Loch Ryan from the roof of the Castle of St John. Across the bottom of the frame is a street of white-painted two-storey shops with more buildings and roofs beyond them. In the background are the blue waters of the loch with piers extending into the picture from both sides. Land can be seen in the distance on both sides of the loch, with a gap where it opens into the sea. The scene is in sunlight. The front cover of ‘Friend or Foe?’ is shown in the bottom right corner.

‘Friend or Foe?’ is a fast-paced new thriller set largely in south-west Scotland during World War Two. Stranraer is visited by the central characters several times in the book.
Available as a paperback, Kindle, Kobo or Apple. Find out more:
www.kenlussey.com/fof/index.html

Iona stands at airport drop off with a red nord piano round her shoulder and red suitcase at hand with hair in a pony

What business does this Scottish folksinger have being awake at 4am? ⏰ She’s heading to the USA 🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Come see me on tour. And if you have any leads on how I can fill the 22nd - intimate house concert, workshop, talks, lectures? Get in touch!

www.ionafyfe.com/tour

On this day, 14 Oct 1857 - Queen Victoria passed through Oldmeldrum to visit the Earl of Aberdeen as British troops were fighting in India during the 'Siege & Relief of Lucknow', led by Gen Sir James Outram, whose grandfather Dr James Anderson married the heiress of Mounie Castle, outside Oldmeldrum