No comments about Orkney (Exploring Scotland's Heritage).

No comments about Fodor's Exploring Scotland, 6th Edition (Exploring Guides).

1 comments about Scotland (Eyewitness Travel Guides).

1. I now after ten years have 2 entire shelves in my upstairs library filled with these gorgeous travel books. I keep coming back to them year after year, trip after trip.
   
   When you arrive at your city of choice the book has prepared you for the money, the police, the best museums, the easiest travel options etc.
   
   I highly recommend these guides. Scotland was my lastest journey last month from USA & this was in my tote.

1 comments about Journeying in MacDougall Country.

1. This review is from Scott MacDougald in Canada:
   
   Of all our story tellers Walter Macdougall, Past President of the Clan MacDougall Society of North America, is one of our best.
   
   The old Gaelic admonition says: "Cuimhnich air na daoine o'n d' thàinig thu" - "Remember the men from whom you sprang." Accordingly, Walter journeyed to Argyll in 1981 to visit the old clan lands in Lorn and to meet friends and clansmen. There he gathered a treasury of knowledge which he recorded in a journal. His clear and colorful prose became a very readable account of his travels in the scenic land of Lorn where the past and present intertwine in humble ruins and proud estates. The resulting book was called "Journeying in MacDougall Country".
   
   Unfortunately, since that time his book went out of print and was in danger of being lost to newer generations of readers. Now, with the assistance of a very able and dedicated editor, Suzanne O. McDougal, Walter has brought out a new edition of his book. While preserving the original material, this second edition includes new content gathered during subsequent journeys to Argyll.
   
   The book opens with the trip by train from Glasgow to Oban. It soon becomes a journey through nature as well as a very useful geography lesson. Every place has a richly descriptive Gaelic name with a story waiting to be told. Then the narrative softly transitions to the stories of how many of those rugged hills, glens, and lochs form a part of clan history. Many of these tales are illustrated with diagrams or sketches.
   
   At Dunollie Manor we meet Coline MacDougall of MacDougall, then the 30th Chief of Clan MacDougall. We hear of her family, and the old family manor house, before climbing the upward path to Dunollie Castle.
   
   Every day is a new journey as we walk with Walter along the old footpaths and learn the old names. Guided by a hundred year old map we walk the old cattle drove roads, the highways over the land of yesteryear. On the next day we sail to Iona past ancient Hebrides islands whose names ring of history - Kerrera, Mull, Lismore, Iona - those stepping stones of the high prowed galleys of our seagoing clan. On another day we sail Loch Awe.
   
   We journey in all directions. Northward to Ardchattan Priory where parliaments of Scotland were conducted in Gaelic. Later we visit Glen Etive's isolated grandeur and hear of the old Celtic tales that linger there. We travel circuitously through Southern Lorn, where bloody clan warfare flared for centuries. There the old MacDougall families of Raera, Corrielorne, Degnish and others once ruled, and some yet remain. Here lie stone circles and ancient Dunadd, the Dalriadic fort, where the kings of the Scotti were invested.
   
   We walk the isle of Kerrera as Walter describes it as it was. Picture the drovers from the now vanished ferries arriving from other isles. Visit Gylen the little gem of a castle watching the sea while guarding the drove road and its revenue.
   
   As you journey to all these places there is comfort in knowing the book contains a "Lore of Lorn" section filled with supporting notes, details, and maps. There you can search out detailed information about things such as omens, lamps, saints, septs and more. If you need to learn more about geography, or Chiefs, or flowers, or architecture, or family branches, this is where to look. Clear footnotes to the text and an extensive bibliography provide additional expert sources.
   
   Over the centuries many people have left the Highlands, but the fortunate do come back. Whether you are returning or just remembering from where you sprang, you would be well served to have this book in your hand to read, and to guide your journeys.

1 comments about Live & Work in Scotland, 2nd (Live & Work - Vacation Work Publications).

1. Very comprehensive guide to relocating to Scotland. It is disappointing that it is so hard to get into the U.K. to work and experience a different kind of life - unless you are highly educated, sponsored by a company that wants to hire you, or rich. It is still a good read, and the writing is very easy to follow.

No comments about Scotland, Wild & Scenic 2009 Square Wall Calendar.

No comments about Scots on Scotch: The Book of Whisky.

2 comments about Scottish Journey.

1. Muir combines vivid descriptions of people and scenes with passionate discussions of socialism, unemployment, and the spiritual poverty of the Scottish people in the 30's. Truly a political poet's book



2. Edwin Muir, Scottish Journey (Mainstream Publishing, 1935)

   Edwin Muir is a pretty good writer, when he sticks to travelogues and abstract philosophy. He doesn't do so in Scottish Journey, though one would think so from the first hundred pages. Scottish Journey is meant as (and was commissioned as) a travelogue, and for the most part, Muir sticks to the template. He writes well of the Scots countryside, and passably of Edinburgh, slipping in bits of philosophy here and there, as is to be expected in any good travelogue. As well, Muir is an extremely quotable writer; his words are clear and precise, and draw excellent pictures in the reader's mind.

   Muir was, however, an ardent Socialist of the closed-minded sort, as much as he professes otherwise. This affects the book in his long chapter on Glasgow, which he starts with a screed against Industrialism (he always capitalizes the word, I might as well, too) and capitalism. Humorously, he attempts to say that Industrialism, in and of itself, isn't all that bad. He does so in a paragraph that spans almost two and a half pages. The first and last few sentences are of the opinion that Industrialism isn't all that bad. It's the middle hundred or so sentences that shoot the argument in the foot, as he catalogs a list of the horrors he sees in Glasgow. One wonders how it's possible to write all these things and frame them with "it's not bad." It would be kind of like a pagan writing the same of the Inquisition, from the evils that Muir ascribes to Industrialism.

   What's worse, he can't see the forest for the trees. In one breath, he talks about ho a capitalist system can't take population contraction into account; in the next, he's talking about unemployment. And he sees no correlation between the two, or at least none he's willing to admit. At one point, perhaps the book's nadir, he says, while discussing the rise of the Scottish Nationalist party, "....If such devotion and fidelity are not to be admired, then all our ideas of morality are mistaken." Leaving it as it is, he infers that no such thing could possibly be true. Yet not five pages later, at the beginning of his chapter on the Highlands, he has little good to say about the morality of a people who are so embarrassed by the twin hills known as the Paps of Jura, one of Scotland's biggest tourist draws at the time, that he couldn't find a postcard that showed them clearly anywhere in the town. One is tempted to see the inconsistencies as a (sub?)conscious undercutting of Muir's own arguments, but nothing else in the book points to it; the man's to solid and straightforward a writer to resort to such tricks.

   Overall, though, it's worth checking out for the travel writing and the easy read. Just take his political outlook with a grain of salt. ** ½

No comments about Scotland: An Encyclopedia of Places and Landscape.

1 comments about The National Trails: The 19 National Trails of England, Scotland and Wales.

1. The photos are so beautiful that I nearly bought my plane ticket and headed to England today. This book gives me much to savor while I plan my trip for next year. The major walking trails are included, with an overall level of detail that makes planning easier, while in-depth details on each of the walks can be found in Cicerone paperbacks specific for each trail. The text is well-written and clear. Anyone looking for a guide to help them zero in on the trails they most want to walk will find this book very helpful.