Page 22 - James Pirie News

The issue of ferries in the islands around our shores has been a hot topic over the last few years, but for once there seems to be light down the tunnel, an electric light. There is to be a new trial electric ferry for the Orkneys. Let’s hope there are enough recharging points! The test is part of a £15.5m trial project which is part of the country’s bid to go carbon neutral and reduce our reliance...

Kilty Pleasures

I don’t know if you have been keeping tabs on the wondrous Sam Heughan, who very definitely is in the hero mould. He has transformed himself into a media star and all round entrepreneur and he’s come a long way in a short time, with his books, his whisky, his performances in Outlander, the well know TV drama. He’s also filmed another series of Men in Kilts with Graham McTavish, who...

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a slightly reddish haired Scot playing professional sport outdoors should have a sponsor that manufactures sun-screen. So I was not shocked to find that Sir Andy Murray has brought a British sun-screen brand under his brand umbrella, or should I say parasol! Slap it on Sir Andy.

Sir Andy Murray grew up in sunny Dunblane, Scotland and he has won the Wimbledon men’s...

A Venetian option is being considered to curb the influx of massive cruise ships into Orkney which are overwhelming the tourist destination.  La Serenissa is the locals name for Venice and these days there are only 60,000 Venetians still living in the world heritage spot, but there are 27 million visitors each year. I was one, but we didn’t arrive by cruise ship we caught a wonderful high speed...

Tongues have been wagging about the Lord of the Isles, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew and the heir to Scottish Throne. In case you don’t know they are all the same man, Prince William and the tongues have been saying that the royal has an allergy to the kilt and highland dress. The tartan kilt, jacket, sporran and sgian dubh is a visual demonstration of the much loved heritage...

How Scottish can you get, well the Lord of the Isles also known as the King found out when he visited a distillery in John  o’Groats just a few miles from his summer home at the Castle of Mey, which featured in the hit Netflix series The Crown, alongside Bridgerton the historical romp famous for featuring our classy glassy wine suites. The monarch was greeted by kilts and whisky galore and horizontal...

 The people in the picture are the missus’s grandparents cutting their cake in a post Second World War ‘make, do and mend’ wedding in the 1940s. The cake is tiny and likely it was only one real tier. The second tier was likely have been a cardboard empty shell because of rationing. But nowadays the cake is likely to be an immense confection, often vegan, and you will probably have to order it a...

The wedding season is in full swing and kilt hire companies are swamped with orders. But what do you give to those getting married when there is a squeeze on all our spending?

I did some research on wedding gifts through the ages and celebrity presents in the recent past.  When The English King Charles II and the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza married the dowry was pretty immense. It included trading...

For £200 I got a view of a man’s head.

Regular readers will know I am nuts about watching tennis that involves Sir Andy Murray the Flying Scotsman on a grass court. So I was greatly pleased to get Wimbledon Quarter Final tickets, despite their huge price of £200 each, thinking I would see the great man himself, but I was grievously disappointed when he was knocked out in the second round. But tickets...

There is a tiny speck of rock 230 miles or 370km west of North Uist. It’s way out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean and it’s called Rockall, and indeed there is rock-all there. But it attracts adventurers who want to break the 45 day record for living on that tiny speck of granite. Just above the water level, Rockall is only 100ft or 30m wide and 70ft or 21m long that’s a lot smaller than most...