The New Look of Highland Park

I love Highland Park Whisky, and wrote about my tour of the distillery back in November of 2013. During my time in Scotland, I tried to make a point of sampling a lot of whiskies, particularly during several outings to The Grill. Partly because it was Orcadian, but largely because I liked the taste, I became a regular consumer of Highland Park's twelve-year-old whisky... Well, by "regular consumer," I mean that when I drink whisky, which is increasingly rare, that's the whisky that I usually drink.

Last week, I heard on Around Orkney that Highland Park is re-branding. For years, they've played up Orkney's Viking heritage. Rumor has it that the Asian market doesn't really know what to make of the Vikings, and the interview (with someone who clearly wasn't Orcadian) also mentioned efforts to market Highland Park to women. The result is some of the most uninspired packaging I've probably ever seen. You can check it out here. The claim is that the new look emphasizes "Orkney heather," but I'm hard-pressed to see how the new look relates to heather generally, or Orkney heather specifically. It looks like it could be any old alcohol bottle, and reminds me of the sort of thing you'd see in Mad Men, where the actual brand of whisky was rarely (never?) even mentioned.

This is a disappointment. In 2017, when leaving the East Coast to get married back on the West Coast, I had to bin many empty bottles of Highland Park that I'd saved up during the preceding three years. I've collected a few since moving home, and at this point, I'll have to make sure that I retain at least a couple for the duration.

Alex Salmond is Dead

Alex Salmond, former Scottish First Minister and champion of Scotland's secession movement, has died. All of the following news links are from the BBC.

Salmond family pay tribute to 'devoted and loving' man

'Time stopped' after Salmond collapsed at conference

Alex Salmond: Champion of independence leaves a fractured political legacy

Key moments of Alex Salmond's career... in 107 seconds

Alex Salmond obituary: A man and a politician of contradictions

Scotland's former First Minister Alex Salmond dies age 69

Tom Hunter pays for plane to bring Alex Salmond's body home

Salmond's body to be brought home on private flight

Alex Salmond's body arrives back in Scotland

It's vulgar to speak ill of the dead, but personally, I won't miss him. This is my favorite photo of him: dejected, after his asinine secession referendum lost by a solid margin.

Alex Salmond was dishonest, and fought tirelessly for a change of affairs that would have left Scotland politically, economically, and culturally weak. Oh, yeah, and he once got kicked off of a British Airways flight because he attempted to travel under the pseudonym "James Kirk" instead of his real name. I won't miss him, at all.

Tom's Top Five Tips for Visiting Scotland

Having spent more than a year of my life in Scotland, and having also seen much of the country in 2004, friends who are planning trips to Scotland occasionally ask for my advice. I decided that, since I'm trying to blog a bit more anyway, this was as good a place as any to offer some of my top tips for an optimal visit to Scotland.

5. Visiting Edinburgh is not the same as visiting Scotland.

When I speak to people from the United Kingdom, I commonly hear the same phrase, over and over again: "Oh, I've been to America loads of times! I've been to New York City and Disney World." I always think the same thing, though I rarely say it out loud: "Go to Wyoming, and then we'll talk." Can someone really claim that they've experienced what a country has to offer when they've only visited one city and a theme park?

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll acknowledge that from the first time I visited Edinburgh, it has never done much for me. I eventually treated it as a hub for travel to places I wanted to visit. I acknowledge that I'm in a minority in this regard, but my point stands: if your visit confines you to Edinburgh, you've been to Edinburgh, and missed the best parts of Scotland. Yes, you can get a taste for Scotland by visiting Edinburgh, but Scotland's political capital is a fairly cosmopolitan, upscale locale. Other cities - notably the working class environs of Glasgow - are more representative of Scottish society.

If you're landing in Edinburgh, enjoy its attractions for a day - two at the absolute most - and then, go somewhere else. Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Inverness are relatively short train rides away. Flights from Edinburgh can take you to Kirkwall or Lerwick in the north, or to Stornaway in the west. Choose a few things to enjoy, most of which you're likely to find within easy walking distance of one another, and then enjoy what the rest of Scotland has to offer.

4. In Scotland, the journey can be as memorable as the destination.

In September of 2004, I flew into Inverness, and marveled at the subsequent train ride to Aberdeen. Several days later, I found myself equally stunned by the beauty of the Highlands and Central Belt on my way from Thurso to Edinburgh. Two days later, I witnessed an eyeful of Scottish culture on a train from Glasgow to Stranraer. Years later, in November of 2012, my ferry voyage from Aberdeen to Kirkwall introduced me to a kind gentleman who educated me about the recently deceased folk singer Michael Marra, and the aromatic sperm whale byproduct known as ambergris, while making sure that more lager was available to me than I should have ever consumed on a winter voyage.

Moreso than anywhere else that I've traveled, I've enjoyed the process of moving between various Scottish locales nearly as much as I've enjoyed actually staying in those locales. While Scotland's cities offer a wealth of historic and cultural treasures, Scotland's landscape offers its own unique beauty. Focusing on quick transit from one city to another forfeits the opportunity to witness a great deal of Scotland's cultural and natural attractions.

Whether by ferry or by train, recognize a public transit journey of a few hours as an opportunity, rather than an obstacle. Even if you hire your own car, take a few breaks between your start and your finish. You'll be glad that you did.

3. Don't let Hollywood lead you astray.

American films and television programs occasionally focus on Scotland, with mixed results. The Highlander franchise developed a cult following around the world, the 1995 classic Braveheart is credited with reigniting the modern wave of Scottish nationalism, and every Harry Potter fan wants to ride the "Hogwarts Express" steam train across the Glenfinnan Viaduct.

Of course, Highlander is a fantasy series starring a Frenchman, Braveheart is scarcely more historically accurate than Highlander, and the Glenfinnan Viaduct is a single exterior shot in a film series that relied primarily upon footage shot in England. Even the 1995 Liam Neeson film, Rob Roy, took liberties with the history of Rob Roy MacGregor, though it was at least filmed in Scotland!

Scotland's landscapes are incomparable, and the nation's history - both political and cultural - tends to defy the sort of simple, tidy binaries of good and evil that make for attractive Hollywood narratives. If the opportunity to visit Scotland presents itself, treat any Hollywood depiction as motivation to experience the real Scotland, rather than focusing on Hollywood renditions that tend to fall short of the real thing. (Of course, if you find yourself driving through Glen Etive and recognize the location from the 2012 Bond film Skyfall, allowances must be made!)

2. Scotland's culture resides in the local pub.

Many of the world's cultures conceive of pubs as the equivalent of bars or taverns: places where people go to drink. While some Scots still attend religious services, observance - and the traditional role of churches as centers of the community - continues to wane. To some degree, pubs have assumed a greater share of that role in the intervening years.

Of course, Scotland's pubs are about more than just alcohol. Pubs serve food, ranging from "pub food" - fries, savory pies, chicken strips - to more varied fare, like full haggis dinners or Indian dishes. Scots visit the pub to celebrate family and cultural events, or to cheer their favorite football teams, or just for an evening out. While some pubs may cater to specific clientele - pensioners, students, farmers - all are welcome, and they're often the best places to really experience what makes Scotland unique.

Visiting a few pubs - even if you're not there to drink - should be considered a requirement for any visit to Scotland. Take something to read, find a pub that's running a sporting event of local interest, or maybe find an establishment that specializes in the wide variety of Scotch whiskies, but don't deprive yourself of this experience. A trip to Scotland without time spent in a few pubs is a trip wasted.

1. Get off of the beaten path.

When most people travel, they visit cities. In Scotland, that means places like Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, and Stirling. These destinations are well worth seeing, but they're the exceptions. Moreso than in the big cities, Scotland's spirit is most apparent in villages of a few dozen people, where the local accommodation may be a guest house or bed and breakfast, and a single pub provides the only food that doesn't require you to cook it yourself.

It's crofters and fishermen, and North Sea oil technicians working in far-flung facilities like Flotta and Sullom Voe. During the Victorian era, London recruited its fiercest troops from communities of Scots whose lives as soldiers were easy compared to the rural hardships that forged them. That spirit lives on throughout Scotland, but save for the working class neighborhoods of Glasgow, it's most apparent in Scotland's version of flyover country.

When a Canadian friend and I were shanghaied into a pub crawl by a busload of enthusiastic locals, it wasn't in Edinburgh or Glasgow; rather, it was in Stromness, an Orcadian village of only 2,500 souls. Some of my most serene memories of a year in Scotland took place at the Richmond Arms pub in Peterculter, an hour's bus ride away from my flat in Aberdeen. I'll never forget the locals in Thurso who sent a few text messages to arrange a room for me at the local inn when my plan to take the late ferry was disrupted by poor sea conditions. This is the Scotland that's so easy to miss, but so amazing to experience - if one has the presence of mind to seek it out.

The Extraordinary Life and Peculiar Death of Tim Boyd

It recently dawned on me that I never posted the story of some events that unfolded early in my tenure in Aberdeen.

The university that would eventually become my alma mater used to run a program called Saturday Academy, later re-named STEM Academy. The program, which usually ran on Saturdays, provided local middle and high school students the opportunity to learn about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from folks who were associated with the university. Over the years, I took a class about astronomy, another about bats, one about engineering, another about ham radio, one that toured a circuit board factory... Over the course of several years, I probably participated in eight or ten different classes.

Around 1999, as I was planning to pursue a career as a Navy submariner, one particular event grabbed my interest: a professor had participated in a scientific cruise aboard a U.S. Navy submarine, and would be discussing his experience as part of the program. Obviously, I signed up for the event.

Professor Tim Boyd deployed as part of the SCICEX program, a five-year-long research collaboration between the Navy and the academic community to study Arctic ice. While the Wikipedia listing omits it, I'm fairly confident that Dr. Boyd's expedition utilized USS Parche, the same boat that was famously modified to participate in Operation Ivy Bells, an extended mission to tap Soviet communications cables in the Sea of Okhotsk. That story was related in the 1998 book Blind Man's Bluff, and the True Spies podcast recently did an episode on the operation.

I never bothered to look Professor Boyd up while I was an undergrad. My designs on a Navy career eventually dissolved, and my actual career took a pretty abrupt detour that eventually took me to Scotland. Then, in early 2013, I was stunned to read that Professor Boyd had relocated to Scotland in 2007 to work at the Scottish Association for Marine Science. In January of 2013, he was apparently struck by lightning while walking his dog near Oban.

More than a decade later, it still feels unsettling that this man that I'd met so briefly would die in such a bizarre fashion, and that I would be so relatively close to him when it happened. I sent a note back to the States offering to represent the University at his funeral, but received no response. While our acquaintance was brief, I'll never forget the opportunity he provided for me to learn about his expedition aboard one of America's nuclear submarines.

Christmas 2021

Well, Christmas has come and gone once again. Among the many thoughtful gifts that I received during our Christmas celebration with my in-laws, my sister-in-law scored a pristine, antique copy of The Orkneyinga Saga. It's a 1981 facsimile of the 1873 edition by Edmonston and Douglas - the same one to which I've linked several times previously. About half of this edition is an extensive introduction that covers such topics as early Christianity in the Northern Isles, the various dynasties that ruled Orkney between 872 and 1469, and such. I told my sister-in-law that she'd hit a home run. Apparently that home run involved purchasing from an actual specialty book shop in the United Kingdom, and the customs slip on the packaging took my brother-in-law by surprise.

Christmas also involved two five hour road trips - normally, that would be a couple of three hour road trips, but road conditions significantly altered the normal experience (and route) of my round trip from our home to Lady Jaye's family compound. I like to fill these road trips with podcasts, and I wanted to share three selections from Dan Snow's History Hit that I enjoyed during my longer-than-usual drive:

The Origins of Scotland

The Sinking and Recovery of Germany's Battle Fleet in Scapa Flow with Ian Murray Taylor

From the Punjab to the Western Front

The first of the three is pretty self-explanatory. Longtime readers of this blog will know that Scapa Flow is Orkney's large natural anchorage, and they may also remember that in 1919, the German High Seas Fleet was scuttled in the Flow while diplomats were negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. I was aware that some of the ships had been salvaged, but the podcast linked above goes into really fascinating detail about the specifics of that effort. The third podcast doesn't deal specifically with Scotland, but I took some interest due to my ongoing research on the First World War. I've been a beneficiary of the wealth of documentation that's made its way into publicly accessible channels in recent years, so learning of the records that were (somewhat) recently discovered in a basement museum on Lahore brought a satisfied grin to my face.

FarNorth Podcast Episodes

I've been spending some time on the roads outside our town, largely to give the dog some enrichment. In my last post, I mentioned that I'd been listening to the FarNorth Podcast, and my recent drives have given me the opportunity to listen to three such episodes: Politics with Gail Ross MSP, Highlands Food with Andy Waugh, and Scots Language with Alistair Heather. Each of these are worth a listen, and having been absent from Scotland for nearly eight years now, it's refreshing to hear about locales that aren't so far away from my old stomping grounds.

The interview with Gail Ross was interesting, and I'll admit that it left me a bit conflicted. Ms. Ross is a member of the Scottish National Party, and I've been rather vocal in my disapproval of the party writ large, its leaders, and its secessionist agenda. I don't think that Ms. Ross laid it on too thick - in fact, for an SNP MSP, she was probably more balanced than one might expect - but it still left me feeling as if the whole thing was a bit unbalanced. It's a hard balance to strike, because the question of whether or not to secede remains the omnipresent question in Scottish politics. Conversely, the "once in a lifetime" referendum of 2014 resulted in a resounding defeat, so the SNP's insistence on continuing to posture for it continues to rankle me.

More to come.

Back in the Saddle? Here's Hoping

As I mentioned over at Beyond the Joshua Tree, I'd like to resume blogging. Will I be able to? Well, that depends upon my ability to consolidate some projects, and to complete some others. One project that offers a partial explanation for my absence, and which is difficult or impossible to consolidate into other projects, is our two-year-old Weimaraner, Tango. He's been amazing, probably added years to my life, and greatly adjusted my outlook on the world; but he consumes a lot - a lot - of time and effort.

Rather than just blathering about myself, I wanted to take a few minutes to bring a couple of podcasts to your attention. One of these is the Far North podcast, which focuses on topics involving the Scottish Highlands and Islands region. You can find it here... Or, if you're an Apple Podcasts person, you can find it here. Or, if you want to go directly to the feed, you can find that right here. Oh, and if you're like me, and you'd rather have the actual mp3 links for downloading, that would be right here.

I also wanted to share this podcast from The Guardian, and you can download it directly here. I spent several years blathering on about the Scottish National Party and their ill-advised policy of seeking to secede from the United Kingdom. I found the inside story of turmoil between the current and prior First Ministers to be entirely fascinating, though not surprising.

More to come, fingers crossed!

Nationalizing Northlink? Not So Fast!

When I was yet in Scotland (and even thereafter), I wrote extensively about Scottish ferries, particularly those serving Orkney and Shetland. This week, Around Orkney featured an interview with a representative from the Rail, Maritime, and Transport (RMT) union, which is advocating for the nationalization of the Northern Isles ferry services that serve Orkney and Shetland. I have to be honest: the idea that anyone would actually suggest this sort of boggles my mind.

To the members of my American audience who may be reading this (and who may not be familiar with the term), "nationalization" means that the government takes over a private enterprise and runs it. So, for example, Social Security is a nationalized pension program. It denotes the running of a service or production effort as a function of the government.

The Scottish Government, which has been held by the Scottish National Party (SNP) for many years (see also: prior discussion of the SNP), has come under frequent criticism by Orkney and Shetland for treating the Northern Isles as an afterthought. This sentiment mirrors that in other areas of Scotland. To vastly oversimplify matters: the bulk of the SNP's voters reside in the "Central Belt" between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and those areas get budgetary priority from the SNP. As I've noted previously, the SNP has consolidated things like police control centers (about which I've posted before, and which continue). Rural Scots have regularly expressed their worries that this consolidation, which eliminates local knowledge and institutional memory, would result in diminished service. That contingency seems to be playing out through incidents such as the mistaken dispatch of an air ambulance to Shetland when it was supposed to have gone to Orkney. The trend continues in other sectors, such as Highlands and Islands Airports investigating the possibility of introducing "centralised surveillance" (which I think means consolidation).

The BBC also reported this week that despite the controversies about subsidies for the Northern Isles ferries connecting Orkney and Shetland with Scrabster and Aberdeen; and the inter-island ferries connecting the various Orcadian and Shetlandic islands; the Scottish ferry services have enjoyed a doubling of their overall subsidies in the last decade. So, it sounds as if more money is being thrown at ferries, but that money isn't getting to Orkney or Shetland.

Basically, when you add all of this up, nationalizing the Northern Isles ferry services sounds like a fantastic way to get a ferry service that takes passengers straight from the Firth of Clyde, up through the Minch, through the Pentland Firth, and on down past Aberdeen and into the Firth of Forth, and back again. But, what do I know?