Category Archives: Highland Life

Random maunderings from life off the beaten track. Includes the joys and trials of living in the Highlands, its scenery, humans, animals and environment. Contains traces of environmental and climate pleading, plus some enthusiastically experimental cooking.

Balquhidder & The Pearl Fishery of Scotland

The Freshwater Pearl Mussel (Margaritifera margaritifera) is one of the UK’s most threatened species – with Scotland alone having almost half the global population. It is a fully protected invertebrate species and is a wildlife crime priority, as illegal pearl fishing is decimating the remaining population, and dredging, forestry (whose run-off increases turbidity in the waters) and water sports all impacting its survival.

Balquhidder, historically, is an important site for the Freshwater Pearl Mussel, made famous by the well-known illustrations by Clark Stanton, for the Illustrated London News, accompanying an article published on 17 September 1864. I’ve reproduced that below (with Apple Intelligence doing a remarkably decent job of extracting the text from the images of the paper’s pages).

A recent survey has shown that the Freshwater Pearl Mussels still maintain a presence here, but that their survival may be being adversely affected by both private and commercial kayak and paddle board launching from some parts of the river system – we’re working with NatureScot and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park to try to resolve that, but it’s a slow process. Anyway, on with the historical bit…

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Passing Places…

I’ve been planning for some time to write a piece on how to use the passing places on Scotland’s many single track roads. But I’m pleased to say that our friends at Noss Head have just done exactly that. So, rather than repeat their wise words (which I’ll henceforth refer to as the Noss Head Rules), I’ll simply link you to their excellent piece on the subject.

What I will add to that is some basic common sense for driving on narrow and (especially) single track roads, which (TL:DR;) boils down to: Slow the f**k down!

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Fourteen Years: A Reckoning

With a general election finally called for the UK, we now have a real chance to put the Tory Party out of our misery, and hopefully for a generation. Like most of us though, I look back on the last fourteen years and struggle to come up with a less than book length summary of the damage they’ve done. But I had to try…

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Cowboys on the High Range…

The saga continues. I’ve previously documented the behaviour of MMAXX Ltd, the numpties (UK coll.: complete fecking idiots) who installed our ground source heat pump. But more has emerged, for which read on…

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Heat Pumps and History

…or rather, historic houses: between 2009 and 2014 we embarked on a complete eco-renovation of our house – a Regency-era listed steading in Highland Perthshire. We took it back to the stonework, insulated it throughout and installed a ground-source heat pump (GSHP), biomass stove and solar thermal panels. It wasn’t cheap (our initial budget rapidly became a rounding error) but we now have a 270m2 (floor area of heated spaces), 200-year-old farmhouse that is both warm and comfortable – winning UK Renovation of the Year in 2014 was just a nice piece of validation for our hard work.

So, with now nearly a decade’s hindsight, what difference did it make?

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The Elizabethan Age – A View from the Glens

With the bowing out of the second Elizabethan Age, It probably won’t take much hindsight to see Elizabeth II as possibly the last unifying factor in the life of the rather nebulous entity we call the United Kingdom. Despite her accident of birth, she managed to embody a clear commitment to public service, to duty, decency and integrity, all carried out with unfailing good humour.

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Hordes of the Things…

We’ve just seen a weekend where, rather than reducing travel and staying at home, large numbers of people have flocked to the Highlands, treating it more like a Bank Holiday than a Global Pandemic.

So please, Protect us, Protect yourselves, and go home.


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The Sound of Crowing in the Dark

I’ve lived more than six decades cheerfully identifying as English (where I was born), Scottish (where I was brought up and where I now live), British (when I couldn’t make up my mind), European (where I’ve spent a deal of my working life and where my greatest cultural resonance lies) and Human, in all other circumstances. And, for the most part, that hasn’t mattered a damn. My passport says I’m a British citizen and – again, mostly – that’s been fine, despite significant differences of outlook with most governments of my lifetime.  Continue reading The Sound of Crowing in the Dark

Read. The. Memo.

So I did my democratic duty today and rocked up to the “Bollocks to Boris” demo in Glasgow’s George Square. There was a fairly decent turnout, with a diverse crowd pretty much filling the square, music at the east end and the speakers to the west. Lots of EU and Scottish flags at the musical end, whilst the speakers’ end was dominated by what I can only describe as the “Rent-a-Banner” contingent: The Communist and Socialist Workers’ Parties (bless their pointed little heads), assorted 1930s-style union showings and, in the midst, some white-bearded bloke mumbling away into a microphone. Now, I couldn’t actually hear what Corbyn was saying, but the cohort around was definitely pitching the same tired old mantras that we’re all familiar with, from any decade: Destroy the Tories; Resist Racism; Nationalise Everything; Soak The Rich (or whoever they consider “The Rich” to be at any given moment), not one of which is remotely germane to – and which in fact get in the way of – the issue facing us here and now. Didn’t they get the bloody memo?

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Brexit Local

Health of Government Warning: this is an intensely political post. But it is not a party political post. And, yes, it’s about Brexit, two years after the referendum. Mostly though, it’s about the integrity and principles of politicians, and of our local MP in particular.

Still here? I commend you…

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