In the following pages I shall try to trace the unpremeditated steps by which a few army officers, with no initial thirst for exploration, and no desire to do anything unusual except to see the country they were in came gradually to break away from this conventional city outlook towards things outside; and how, beginning … Continue reading Ralph Bagnold: Two Memoirs
Tag Archives: History
Patrick Baker: The Cairngorms—A Secret History
The view had a massive visual scale. It felt cinematic: an epic horizon like the opening credits of a David Lean film. A path scrolled out ahead of me, eventually fading into the middle distance. Across the plateau I could see other tors emerging from the mist: dark, maritime shapes, spectral galleons held up on … Continue reading Patrick Baker: The Cairngorms—A Secret History
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Scottish Hill Lists: The Classics
If you’ve spent any time at all reading The Oikofuge, you’ll have gathered that I’m quite interested in hills—climbing them, looking at other hills from their summits, understanding their names and their place in history, landscape and land-use. What you won’t have seen me mention very often is the plethora of classifications that have been … Continue reading Scottish Hill Lists: The Classics
Lockdown Walks: Three Brochs
An exploration of three lowland broch sites near Dundee
Old Lady-Day
Yesterday (as this post goes live) was Old Lady-Day, once a significant day in the English agricultural calendar. And today (April 6th), a new tax year begins in the UK. These dates are not unrelated to each other, and are also linked to the Christian Feast of the Annunciation, which commemorates the Biblical event depicted in the Leonardo painting at the head of this post—the arrival of the Angel Gabriel to inform the Virgin Mary that she was to conceive a miraculous child.
GPS Navigation With Historical Maps
A project to transfer an out-of-copyright georeferenced historical Ordnance Survey map from the National Library of Scotland website, to use with the GPS of an Android phone
Arthur Conan Doyle In The Arctic
It is bloody work dashing out the poor little beggars’ brains while they look up with their big dark eyes into your face. Arthur Conan Doyle, Arctic diary entry, 3 April 1880 In February 1880, a third-year medical student from Edinburgh abandoned his studies, temporarily, to sign on as the ship’s doctor of the S.S. … Continue reading Arthur Conan Doyle In The Arctic
Three Books About The Franklin Expedition
The riddle of the last Franklin expedition has all of the elements required to elicit and maintain widespread interest—struggle, shipwreck, murder, massacre, cannibalism and controversy. The story of the lost expedition has become a magnet for speculative historians, a mystery that far outstrips the contrived unfolding of fiction, and an inviting field for those who … Continue reading Three Books About The Franklin Expedition
Michael Palin: Erebus
They might have had monogrammed dinner plates and personalised silver cutlery, but the didn’t have very good maps. Michael Palin needs no introduction from me. He rose to fame with Monty Python in the 1970s, and then in 1989 began a career as a presenter of more-or-less gruelling travel documentaries, starting with Around The World … Continue reading Michael Palin: Erebus
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Ultima Thule: Part 1
ˈʌltɪmə ˈθjuːliː ultima Thule: a distant, unknown region at the extreme limit of travel Years ago I talked with Knud Rasmussen, the great Danish explorer, who in the early twenties had made a trip by dog team from Greenland around the Arctic rim to Nome, Alaska. In our library here at Bluie West Eight … Continue reading Ultima Thule: Part 1