Caithness is the most northerly area of the Scottish mainland and has a long historical past with hundreds of Cairns as evidence of pre-historic peoples. Having recently decided to visit Caithness I visited for the first time The Grey Cairns of Camster and while the weather was cloudy I did manage to take a few pictures of this burial cairn.

These two Cairns were recently excavated by Historic Scotland to show more of the structures and allow visitors to fully appreciate the size and importance of these cairns that are over 5000 years old.

 

Caithness has never been high on my areas of Scotland that I like for holidays, probably due to the memory of a cold, windy and bleak trip when I was in my teens, many years ago. Yet within the last 9 months I have visited Caithness on two occassions, in the Autumn of 2007 and in the Spring of this year and I have changed my opinions of this area of Scotland. What I saw was interesting and while the scenery is not as dramatic and beautiful as the west coast of Scotland such as Wester Ross and Sutherland, it does have a lot of small interesting villages and areas of historical interest. It does also have beautiful scenery and on both occassions we had brilliant sunny and warm weather – and this always helped show off a place to it’s best.

I can now say that Caithness is on my list of places I would like to live in and in a few weeks time that is where we plan to move to. I have put in a few pictures of Caithness that I hope will show what a great destination it is for all of you who have old memories of this area, it is time you had a holiday in this area, I think you will be impressed.

 

We visited the area around Loch Tay recently and while the weather was less than perfect the scenery was brilliant and the view of Ben Lawers was still visible through the mist. This is a great location to visit and can easily be driven to from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth or Fife. 

Some of the roads are single track, especially up Glen Lyon so you need to take time and drive carefully.

Picture of Loch Tay taken from the Ben Lawers hotel.

Ben Lawers hotel serves food for tourist and hill walkers as well as providing accommodation.

Larger pictures of Loch Tay and Hotel photo

If you are a climber or hill walker you may find this munro map useful of the area around Ben Lawers

I love taking snapshots of anything, I especially enjoy taking photographs of scenery and Scotland. I recently came across a website that sells pictures commercially and the site has a section on Scotland.

Why mention this, simple really, one of the things I would like to be able to do is photograph skylines and clouds. I just think clouds make for a beautiful photographic subject and there is something magical about them. I am not very good at explaining what I mean, just that when you look into the sky you can see art in the sky that changes with every movement. Sorry I am not much of a poet, nor am I very good at photographing clouds.

Well Paul is very good at taking photographs of clouds, and many other pictures of Britain, so drop into pk4 images – landscape photography by Paul Gaythorpe and have a look at the Scotland pictures,

The Glasgow 3D Model is certainly worth having a look at. This is a 3D computer generated model made by SkylineGlobe for Glasgow City Council. You will need to will need to download the terra Explorer software (7.5MB) then go to the Glasgow Urban Model page and click on the 3D model link.

If you are using Windows Vista you will be prompted about accessing the software in Windows Browser protected mode – it does not work otherwise so I guess you just have to say yes to that one. It will take a few minutes to download the model depending on your broadband speed, if you are on dial-up then go visit a friend with broadband!

Glasgow a fantastic city and has a number of companies offering tours of the city.

We have been out and about with the great spring weather and I have added a few pictures I have taken of Dunkeld, hope you like them.