The Scottish Hebrides

I've written a post on the Hebrides, or Western Isles, that beautiful landscape of legendary islands off the northwest coast of Scotland, so we're a very long way from the Beaver Valley today.  I wrote it primarily for my on-line distance education course, and you can find it under my 'Scotland' tab, but you might like to at least scroll through the pictures and read the captions.

What I've tried to capture is not only the beautiful landscape (this is the Isle of Skye), but the thousands of years of history that underlie what the tourist sees today in visiting the isles.

It's a landscape of medieval castles in part, like Castle Eilean Donan, said to be the most picturesque castle in Scotland.  The layers of history before the middle ages and the 30 or 40 castles you can see today (many in ruins) go all the way back to the standing stones of 5000 years ago, and include both the incredible story of St. Columba's abbey on Iona 1500 years ago, and the later Viking onslaught.

And more recently the isles have been a large part of the 18th Century Jacobite rebellions, and then were decimated by the 'Clearances', when almost the entire landscape was 'cleared' of clan members, who were shipped to North America and elsewhere to become 'sturdy pioneers'.  Today you just see wandering sheep and scattered foundations and stone walls like those of this church on Skye where once there were close-knit communities.

It's both one of the most fascinating landscape and amazing histories in the world 

in my humble opinion.