Pub Crawl

[macausland]

http://www.nts.org.uk/NewsStory/2225/

And here's a link to the National Trust for Scotland.

[hvered]

Adam Henson, the Countryfile presenter, was in Shetland this week communing with a 'dancing' Shetland pony called Socks. I got distracted from the prancing by the background which featured what looked like a massive sandy strip and suspect it must have been St Ninian's Tombolo:



According to Wiki it's known locally as an 'ayre' meaning a gravel bank except it is the largest tombolo in Britain so clearly isn't 'a gravel bank'. The programme made a lot of the Shetland weather, how hardy animals and humans have to be etc., so how does this tombolo, which allows access to St Ninian's Island, known as a "tied island", at all but the highest tides, survive? St Ninian, described as "enigmatic" (Wiki), seems to be linked to the Culdee tradition, at any rate he turns up in strategic places especially islands.

There's a St Ninian chapel (and holy well) on Sanda, or Sandey, Island, just south of the tip of the Mull of Kintyre where he was reputedly buried though that honour generally goes to the Isle of Whithorn. Apart from the chapel and fort, the Isle of Whithorn also has a chalybeate spring and was seemingly a causewayed tidal island.

No longer a true island, John Ainslie's maps as late as 1782 and 1821 do show the Isle as an island. The main street was originally a causeway, with the harbour located on what was then the true Isle.

[hvered]

In the Travel section of Saturday's Guardian one of the beaches, Barafundle Bay, got a score of ten out of ten http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2013/j ... brokeshire



But more spectacular than its award-worthiness are Barafundle's caves and rock arches



As the first pic shows, this beautiful curved sandy bay is in the lee of Stackpole Head described as an 'Iron Age fort' despite plenty of Bronze Age evidence all around



The Stackpole headland is completely level. As a whole it looks completely unnatural.



The headland has a very different aspect seen from the east. Is it normal for cliffs to be so dramatically eroded on one side and not the other? One side is limestone, the other appears to be sandstone.

[hvered]

In line with other promontories, Stackpole has a sandy inlet on the western curve. Broadhaven Beach, as the name implies, looks like an excellent landing point ... Pinnacle Rock, at the centre of the bay, would make a good landmark

[macausland]

Is that a gigantic face in that photo or is it my imagination once again? The second to last if you want to know.

Anyway what do you make of my Angle theory? To be dismissed without a murmur. I don't know. I should have been shot down in flames by the guardians of the eternal torches.

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'Angles or Angles?'

The similarity suggests a surveying/navigational link yet angels, heavenly beings with protective powers (Hermes), seem out of place in Germanic culture.

Anyway on the Dwelly site http://www.dwelly.info/ they give the following for fire .. 'aingeal .... -il, pl -il, -gle, -glean, -glich, (AC) sm Angel. 2 Messenger. 3 Fire. 4 Light. 5 Sunshine.'

Fire has many attributes, beneficial and destructive, as ambivalent as angels in their way.

Historians are not very sure where the Angles came from and are just as unsure as to the origins of the Saxons.

Perhaps the Angles, like the various orders of the later Druids, were a tribe of specialists keeping watch in the east for what the sun was up to?

People in the Scottish borders in the middle ages referred to their language as 'Inglis' so they had no problem with the word or description.

Just a thought.

Didn't Angles colonise Friesland? Perhaps the Angles were English exiles who returned after the Romans withdrew. They didn't apparently settle (reappear) here in huge numbers yet seem to have instantly become a military and social elite with a fondness for jewellery and drinking.

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Is that a gigantic face in that photo or is it my imagination once again? The second to last if you want to know.

I hadn't noticed but you're spookily right. It reminds me of a figurehead on the prow of a ship (whose role was not unlike that of a guardian angel).

[macausland]

Sorry, I meant the third one before the last. The one with the arches. Perhaps if it is carved it is some kind of 'Janus' figure?

[hvered]

It's interesting to consider a 'face' with a bird's eye view. Makes me think of flying shamans and indeed wizards, magi and whathaveyou, their garb is strangely reminiscent of large slightly clumsy black birds, indeed shamen still have feather headdresses. Rather similar in fact to some cormorants or shags as may be that I saw the other day in Weymouth.

I don't know if this has been discussed already but shamen were high in all senses. Once the ninth level is reached they're fully fledged as it were. The original function of a shaman so the lore goes was to direct hunters, to find the quarry using a bird's eye-view. It sounds a bit like learning The Knowledge before graduating as a taxi-driver; the fierce rivalry between shamen may be reflected in taxi ranks for all I know.

[macausland]

Ah! Taxi drivers, and let's not forget ice cream vans. Very devilish enterprises.

http://indigenize.wordpress.com/about/s ... shamanism/

Here's an interesting take on the 'Celts', druids and shamans.

I once read a story about a Christian monk, I forget which one, who got into a fight with an Irish druid over whose magic was more powerful.

It finished up badly for the druid who leaped onto a stone slab and flew up into the air only to be followed by the monk who did the same. After an exchange of thunderbolts and the like the druid went into a tailspin and was soon an ex druid.

Just like taxi drivers come to think about it.