April sipped her drink. “You really want to know? I don’t see how anyone could have built the yacht.” Max listened to the fire and watched April struggle with her thoughts. “I know how that sounds,” she said. “What exactly do you mean?” asked Max. “It’s beyond our technology. But I knew that before I … Continue reading Jack McDevitt: Ancient Shores & Thunderbird
Craig of Gowal (NO 232809, 927m)Cairn of Gowal (NO 226820, 991m)Creag an Dubh-Loch (NO 233822, 983m)Broad Cairn (NO 240815, 998m) 25 kilometres1100 metres of ascent Glen Clova. I parked at Braedownie, paid the parking charge (one of many things that has changed in Clova since I started coming here), and set off up the glen … Continue reading Glen Clova: Bachnagairn Circuit
Getting back to the Hebrides is always a joy. This was a short, two-centre Hebridean sampler—one Outer, one Inner. We drove up and stayed in Portree, Skye, overnight, before heading to the ferry port at Uig for a crossing to Tarbert, in Harris. There are lots of Tarberts in Scotland, and they all have some … Continue reading South Harris & Sleat
Our journey will begin, like so many great explorers before us, in the kitchen. Tristan Gooley is, according to his website, a “natural navigator”—by which he means that he navigates using nature, not that he’s just intrinsically good at navigating. He set out his stall with his first book, appropriately entitled The Natural Navigator, which … Continue reading Tristan Gooley: How To Read Water
Beinn Mheadhonach (NN 880758, 901m) 23 kilometres 950 metres ascent So, a bit of a change from the micro-level route-finding that’s been preoccupying me in the Sidlaws. This one’s a big, striding hill, tucked up the back of Blair Atholl, in that rather nebulous region referred to as “the Grampians”. The name of the hill … Continue reading Glen Tilt: Beinn Mheadhonach
Go to the first post in this series In my first two posts about the SI unit prefixes, I described how the system originated in the French Republican metric system of 1795. Part 1 dealt with those original fractional prefixes—deci-, centi- and milli-, designating a tenth, hundredth and thousandth part of the base unit. Part … Continue reading Système International Prefixes: Part 3
3 kilometres 70 metres of ascent I wouldn’t normally trouble you with such a piddling little pre-lunch stroll. But it’s a pretty place, part of a community project, and (situated as it is in the wilds of the Rhins Peninsula) I suspect it doesn’t get much passing trade. So if you’re in the vicinity of … Continue reading Rhins of Galloway: Aldouran Glen
An article by Tom Whipple in The Times today (May 12, 2016) reports on a set of powered trousers designed by Panizollo et al. and described in an article published today by the Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation: “A biologically-inspired multi-joint soft exosuit that can reduce the energy cost of loaded walking“. The authors conclude: … Continue reading Life Imitates Art
Clear skies here, chez Oikofuge, for Monday’s transit of Mercury, the first in almost ten years. Mercury and Venus are the two planets that orbit between Earth and the sun, so they are the only two planets that we can occasionally see passing in front of the sun. If you look at the orbits of … Continue reading Transit of Mercury
Berry Hillock (NO 372444, 282m [trig. point]) Carlunie Hill (NO 365432, 340m) Ark Hill (NO 357426, 340m) Unnamed Point 328 (NO 359408, 328m) Denoon Law (NO 355444, 210m) Crams Hill (NO 368450, 237m) 17 kilometres 580 metres ascent Denoon Glen is the next glen west from Glen Ogilvie, site of my snowy floundering last week. … Continue reading Sidlaws: Denoon Glen