Blooming Great for Alness
A small Highland town recently picked up two awards in the prestigious Scotland in Bloom contest. Although Aberdeen took the top city award and won the rosebowl for being champion of champions, the Ross-shire town of Alness, themselves past champions, won the best small town award, as well as being the first winners of the David Welch Memorial Award. At a ceremony for the contest, held in the Averon Centre in Alness, the judges awarded the memorial award to the town. The award recognises the huge contribution made to the competition by David Welch the former Director of Royal Parks London, and the former head of parks in the City of Aberdeen, who died last year. Event compere, Walter Gilmour, paid particular tribute to Shillinghill, Alness. He said: "It continues to be quite an amazing place with it's community landscaping and inhouse maintenance. "Every year this community is pushing on with another major project."
Pink Gin gets a Rival
Whisky connoisseurs were tickled pink recently by the marketing of a new malt from Glenmorangie. Its Cote de Beaune Wood Finish malt has a pink hue through it - the result of spending its final two years maturing in casks that previously contained a premier cru Burgundy. The 10 year old whisky - aimed as a gift and special occasion product - has adopted the colour and sweetness of the wine. A limited number of bottles at £59.95, will be produced. Bill Lumsden, Glenmorangie's head of distilleries and maturation, said: "We have once again shown our flair for innovative wood finishing. "Our consumers will love this complex new malt, which retains all the traditional Glenmorangie characteristics, along with a stunning new breadth of flavour." The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, which has 15,000 members in the United Kingdom and several thousand worldwide, specialises in limited edition bottling of single casks. Managing director Richard Gordon said: "Glenmorangie has been experimenting with different styles of wood finishing for years. They have really shown drinkers what can be achieved. It's great news - well done, Glenmorangie."
Lucky Escape.
A Harris family may have avoided death - by visiting a neighbour's house. For, while a mother and son were in the home of a neighbour, their own house was struck by lightning, causing severe damage to the property. "It was as if a small bomb had gone off in the house," said student Gavin Williams, who occupies the house at Holmasaig, in Quidinish, with his mother, Margarita, a travelling art teacher. "When we arrived home from a neighbour's house and saw the state of our place, we were glad we had not been at home. We could have been killed," said Gavin. Both he and his mother had gone to a neighbour's house for half an hour. Lightning had struck their telephone line and ripped through the ceiling, causing a mess everywhere. The fuse box had blown, there were burn marks and the wood had been scorched, as well as plasterboard coming off the top of the wall. "Builders, electricians and the people from British Telecom said they had never seen anything like it," he said. Gavin said that other houses in the vicinity had also suffered the loss of items, including computers, due to the lightning strike. All the electrical appliances in his house that had been plugged in had been damaged. The Williams hope their property will be restored quickly.
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Prestigious Honour
The Isle of Skye Brewery has seen both of its current beers exported gaining major awards in the inaugural Montreal Interbeer competition. Up against beers from around the world which are imported into Canada, the Skye Brewery's Black Cuillin was awarded a gold medal and and its Red Cuillin a silver medal. As the competition has close links with Canada's liquor board of control the brewery now has great hopes of furthering its sales to Canada in the future. Dixie Taylor, the brewery's sales consultant said: "This is a tremendous boost to us, especially as we did not know that our Canadian agent had entered us in the competition. "We have been exporting relatively small quantities to Alberta and recently gained approval for exporting to Ontario. "These prestigious awards will put the name of the Isle of Skye Brewery firmly in the ranks of quality imported beers in Canada." The brewery's managing director, Angus MacRuary, said that the Skye brewery had decided some time ago to try to target certain export markets as a means of expanding the brewery. He said: "The home market is extremely tight just now, almost in a situation of over-supply. We have, therefore, been working very hard at finding markets abroad for our beers. "We have been making inroads into Canada and also supply Iceland. In the past year we have started exporting our Black Cuillin to Japan. We have, with the help of Pelican Design here on Skye, just produced a poster in Japanese."
In Song and Verse
A cassette audio tape telling the story of the building of the Caledonian Canal was launched recently. From Sea to Sea is a cassette about the construction of the canal between 1803 and 1822 and a journey from Clachnaharry to Corpach made possible by the vision engineer, Thomas Telford. The cassette, by Bob Pegg, takes in music, song, story and verse with voices from the Highlands of today creating a direct link with the communities who peopled the landscape in the far and more recent past. Pupils from Caol Primary School, who were involved in the project, were in attendance. The project was funded by Highland Council through the British Waterways EU TERRA Living Waterways Programme.
Return to the Wild
Almost two kilometres of old and little used snow fencing has been dismantled and air lifted away from the northern slopes of the Cairngorm mountains, removing a visual intrusion into a wild and scenic area. The fencing was erected in the 1980s on the ridge between the ski area in Coire Cas and Coire an t-Sneachda to capture snow and allow skiers easier access into the area. Unfortunately it was not particularly successful at trapping enough snow in such a windswept location, and was becoming dilapidated by the fierce weather conditions. The fences were flown out by helicopter. Taking them down needed planning permission from Highland Council, and the removal techniques, including the helicopter airlift, also required approval from Scottish Natural Heritage. A total of 1.8 kilometres of fencing has been removed. The effect on Coire an t-Sneachda is to return it to as near natural landscape as practical at present, although it will take sometime for the vegetation on the ridge to recover. Although the fences turned out to be of little use to skiers, they had become a convenient navigational aid for walkers and climbers, who used them as a guide between the ski area car park and Coire an t-Sneachda, especially in bad weather. During the summer months this traffic contributed to further erosion of the ground on this ridge.
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