In my early twenties. in the 1970s, some fifty years ago now, I used to go camping around Scotland with my friend, Bill. We used to travel around the perimeter of Scotland in a clockwise fashion, with a route through Glasgow, then up to the north-west corner of Scotland at Cape Wrath, then to the north-east corner at John O’Groats and then home southwards along the east coast to Edinburgh and England. In those days we used to camp where we could find a reasonable place to do so…..”wild camping”, it used to be called. As long as we left no mess, the landowners didn’t seem to bother. I used to take slides with my trusty Voigtländer and was then able to bore people rigid with my slide show “The Geology of the Western Highlands”.
I found all my slides recently, in a very large box in the attic, but unfortunately, there were a good few which I could not identify. One or two of them had also suffered during their conversion into digital images, usually with either an overall blue or purple cast being added to the image, or, on other occasions, with the image being much darker than it had originally been.
This 45 year old slide shows a long forgotten glen in the Highlands. It is probably a little darker as a digital image after going through the conversion process from the original slide…..
One of the most famous places in Western Scotland is the Isle of Skye. It has two very famous ranges of mountains. This hill here is one of the Red Cuillins, based on sandstone and not very difficult or dangerous to climb. According to legend, a Viking princesss is buried at the summit. Here is my best photograph of this brightly coloured mountain. Sadly, many of my world class photographs of its summit were minced up by the scanner in its efforts to change them from greeny-purple to red………
The next slide is of a very famous view on the Isle of Skye, namely not the Red Cuillins, but the Black Cuillins, long reputed as being the only mountain walk in Britain which cannot be completed without the use of climbing equipment.
In front of us are the ruins of an old farmer’s house, probably a victim of the Highland Clearances. Alternatively, they may be the ruins of the school house in the village, which was called “Elgol”……
These ruins here may be of a cottage. Sorry about the Purple Haze………
Moving backwards slightly reveals the remains of a cliff, now eroded down to just forty or fifty feet in height…….
I have always loved to watch clouds drift along the face of a mountain. This is one of the Cuillins in the previous picture, with heavy mist swirling in one of the corries visible in the slides above. A “corrie” can also be called a “cirque” or a “cwm“.
At a different site is the so-called “Old Man of Storr” which is 160 feet tall, “the same height as eleven double decker buses stacked on each other!” Other pinnacles surround it, and I well remember how bizarre they all were, as we climbed up to them through thick fog…..
The western side of the Isle of Skye has some enormous sea cliffs. I think that this slide may have been taken close to the so-called “Kilt Rock” where the different patterns made by the various different rocks give the impression that the cliffs are made of tartan.
I couldn’t resist. though, a few more pictures of the Cuillins. The beach they are taken from is the same one we have seen before, called “Elgol”. These three slides were all taken at the end of a rainy, relatively dark day……
In this rather dark slide the ruined house and the little cliff both make a special guest appearance……as does a plank, washed off the deck of a tramp steamer in the Caribbean Sea, perhaps……..
Last but not least, some blue sky peeks under the dark clouds of the late morning……
This last slide is a good example of one of the great problems of using this type of film rather than the type that will eventually produce a wallet of some 36 colour photographs. Slides always seem to be dark, often in light conditions which ought to produce a superior end product.
John Knifton 
Thank you for this. I miss home. This took me back.
I’m glad that you enjoyed it!
I was thinking of Enid Blyton’ s The Secret Valley while reading your post. It is wonderful when we see photo of long ago days . Thank you for sharing.
My pleasure, Lakshmi. Scotland is a very beautiful country.
I am pleased you have managed to save these slides. The pinnacles in the fog is a beauty
Yes, Derrick, it certainly is a magical place, just waiting for some hobbits and orcs to come along and explore it!
Wonderful images, John.
Yes, the Isle of Skye certainly was a wonderful place almost fifty years ago. It was so wild and free and above all, so devoid of traffic and people.
People do have a tendency to ruin a lot of places.
Excellent images. Great memories. Glad that you saved them.
One of the places I want to visit someday. My wife has traveled there in her youth, but I’ve not made there yet. Someday.
I think you’d enjoy Scotland, both the culture of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the superb mountains of the west, which are not very tall, but certainly very, very striking.
John, you’ve done an excellent job in converting your old slides into digital images. Though the color may not be as perfect as the original, the photos retain the beauty and grandeur of the mountainous terrain. It’s great to revisit the adventures of our youth 🙂
I think that revisiting the adventures of our youth is something we all do as we grow older, and realise that we’ve had more of our lives than we have left. Then we start evaluating what we’ve achieved, which is inevitably a process which doesn’t always go well.
Evaluating achievements is a sticky one, John. I tend to be over critical in that regard.
Scottland is so beautiful. I went there myself in the 80’s some fourthy years ago and fell in love with land and people. But, I found out they don’t talk English. I don’t know what they talk but English it’s not 🙂
Yes, Scotland is an exceptionally beautiful country, with superb scenery and mountains. Around the big cities, the Scots speak their own dialect of English which will have some words of their own language, Gaelic, mixed in. In the HIghlands, the locals speak English usually without a trace of an accent and are very easy to understand.
They’re not too bad at all John, I’d call it atmospheric. I have (not so) fond memories of Skye and the Black Cuillins. As a child we went there for a weeks camping with the school and we travelled by bus from Leicester. After a long journey we got to the Skye ferry at which point he was sick! The rest of the week was very wet, it poured all week!
That sounds like a typical Scottish holiday, although camping near the Cuillins was not a great choice because 3,500 foot mountains would cause the clouds to shed their rainfall.
Theoretically, I’ve been told that May and June are often the besy times to visit, although with any sun around, you might have problems with the midges.
Indeed, we suffered that too. Eaten Alive by the little devils. Not the greatest of camping trips I must admit.
Thank you for sharing your wonderful pictures, a part of your world and adventures!!.. by seeing through your eyes I am able visit and see and enjoy things I would not be able to (don’t suppose you would have a picture of Nessie would you??.. 🙂 🙂 ).. “Life gives us brief moments with another, but sometimes in those brief moments we get memories that last a lifetime, So live that your memories will be part of your happiness.” (Author Unknown)…. 🙂
Hope all is well in your part of the universe, life is all that you wish for it to be and until we meet again…
May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!
(Irish Saying)
I’m glad you enjoyed my slides. but I was worried that their poor quality might turn people against them.
But I was wrong, and I soon realised that so long as a slide was interesting and had a tale to tell, people were willing to forget that it had been produced by a fifty year old seventh hand camera that I had bought for £10. There’s no accounting for taste!!