North Coast 500

The weekend saw my passion for landscapes re-invogorated after diving around the majority of Scotland's North Coast 500 route. The route begins and ends at Inverness Castle and offers more than 500 miles of the best views in the North Highlands. The route way runs to and from Inverness, venturing round the capital of the Highlands, up the West Coast and back via the rugged north coast. It covers Inverness-shire, The Black Isle, Easter Ross, Caithness, Sutherland and Wester Ross.

Scotland in the sunshine is quite simply majestic. I have travelled these areas all my life but I think this was one of the best trips of my life. It eclipsed Route One in California (LA to San Fran). The views of Stac Pollaidh, Suilaven and Ben Loyal to name but a few were simply stunning. The road weaves, climbs and descents around the coast mostly in single track roads with passing places.

Quite simply, if the weather is good, it has to be done when visiting Scotland. I have added a few shots below that were taken on the iPhone as I haven't had time to process the DSLR shots yet. 

In other news, Phase two of Samhchair got underway this weekend and the StrathyCam is back up and running, check it out!

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Glasgow University

It was an interesting wander around the University of Glasgow on Sunday. It dredged up a lot of old memories from my time at Glasgow (Caledonian) before I started at the University of St Andrews. I spent just over three months in what is quite possibly the worst place I have ever lived. I think the excitement of living on my own at 17 clouded the fact that the dampness was spreading throughout the flat. When I passed by it on Sunday it looks like it has been renovated. I will never forget the time that the bailiffs appeared at the door looking for the landlord. Fun times!

The walk around this area and the memories that came to me didn't dampen (ouch) my spirits though. It was a great day out, much better than the last trip to Glasgow, mainly because it was in an area that I knew a lot better. There was only three of us on the trip and it was great to meet someone new, Ash, she was a splendid guide for the day as well!

I've posted the photographs that I like below. 

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A little taste of Glasgow

A fantastic day and night out in Glasgow was had by @davidgulliver_photography, @archarlton1 and myself yesterday on a small Instameet. Time is pressing today to go through the photographs and create a Glasgow gallery but I thought I would put up a couple of my favourites. Click to enlarge...

P.S. The SSE Hydro image was taken just before I was tackled by security on "their" campus. Your welcome ;-) The other image is a Charring cross long exposure.

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Tranquility

“sàmhchair : quietness, silence”

— http://learngaelic.net

Another week and another launched website! The first phase of the rebuild of Sàmhchair has been finished and am happy to see it go live this afternoon. It is a much improved site over the old one (who built that?) and it looks great.

The site is about the quiet village of Strathy in the north of Scotland. It was commissioned by a client who lives there and wanted to show the world what a wonderful place this is to live. If it becomes too popular though it might not be be as tranquil as it currently is though :-)

The first phase involved a total rebuild and getting the copy into the site. The next phase involves getting their webcam and weather station online!

Check it out the site at Sàmhchair.

Like the site? Does you site need updating? Get in touch.

Brownies!

Just back from a mornings consulting on the Florence and George website. They have just launched an online shop selling brownies. Freshly baked and in many flavours to suit all tastes! Have a look over at Florence and George!

It was also good getting some more experience implementing an online shop into a website! Takes a lot of time testing and perfecting on phone and desktop, and then the fun of testing if the payment system works correctly! 

Needless to say I can't think of a better way to spend a Tuesday morning than working on making a website even better than it already is and taste testing brownies.

Update: I almost forgot! Happy Pi day! :-)