IslayBlog.com -> 2008 ->
Sunday, 27/Jan/2008
Islay Blogging Roundup #20
In between blogging about Short Band Names at the Top Fives blog and slowly making progress with the Glen Logan walk to the Sound of Islay page for the Two weeks on Islay in June 2007 travelogue I thought I better take a break for this weeks Islay Blogging Roundup. A tiny little milestone of the roundups, as this is the 20th roundup since I started it. Quite a few interesting topics in the blogs mentioning Islay or Jura this week:
Let me start the roundup with a rumour (unfortunately you need to be able to understand German to read it all): TheWhiskyBlog from Germany first mentioned a rumour about a distillery possibly to be sold in an entry about the Whisky fair in Frankfurt, Germany. This week he followed up with a much more detailed post about the Rumours (or in German, Gerüchte). According to it the distillery is on Islay (otherwise I probably wouldn't mention it in the roundup) and is Bruichladdich. I find that a bit hard to believe, so let's see what happens and how much (if any) truth there is in the rumour.
The Bruichladdich Blog itself has been fairly quiet this week about Islay, instead mentioning the risks of whisky smuggling in Kuwait and whisky being claimed to be a cure for bronchitis.
With that rumour out of the way let's move to something a bit more firm: John Hansell brings news about the soon to be released Ardbeg Renaissance. He's quite impressed by it, although according to the discussion in the comments his (and my if they find it through this) American readers will miss out on it.
Over in Switzerland Tom picks up on my Ardbeg spot entry (thanks for the praise, you've made me blush ;-)) and ‘translates’ it into German at “Egoistischer” Ardbeg-Spot. He also mentions Serge's war on whisky fakers, looking at Serge's page there are also quite a few Islay malts potentially being faked.
From whisky on to the weather:
The last few weeks there has been some quite wild and wet weather on Islay, interestingly enough there has also been a storm around Islay Hill in California last week. Makes me wonder if they have a Fulmar warning system over there. Any birdwatcher reading this know if there are Fulmars in California?
The bad weather also had some positive effects, at least in a way. With the weather being so bad Gordon Yates has made very good progress on his DVD of Islay. Watch his blog for updates...
The Fulmars and Gordon Yates nicely bring me to the topic of birdwatching:
Quite a lot of news on Islay Birds this week: Trips to Oronsay with many birds and the latest Geese count to start with. The week progressed with a farmland bird survey and skylarks starting to move through. Most recently there wasn't much birdwatching due to high winds, although the Fulmars were back again.
Jeremy Hastings in the meantime spent some time in the coppice where he mainly observed wee birds like tit, finches and woodcocks, but also a buzzard.
Ron with Jeremy's help has started a weekly Islay Wildlife and Birding Report and earlier in the week had a very nice picture of Loch Indaal and the snow capped Paps of Jura taken by Mark Unsworth of Islay Studios.
I think I've mentioned before that my French is a bit rusty, but it's good enough to understand that this blog entry about George Orwell has several mentions of his time on the Isle of Jura, as well as a few pictures of Jura (towards the bottom). The blog seems to be either hosted or run by Le Monde, any French or French speaking reader who can expand on this?
Keith from Leith picks up on a picture from the ‘Scotland's Big Picture’ series on the BBC News Scotland page (there doesn't seem to an archive for the picture, at least none I could find). He writes a Last farewell to the Wyre Majestic after looking at my pictures of the wreck in the Sound of Islay.
Finally the Island Holidays Blog writes about a recent nightmare journey to Islay, finishing with the promise of blogging about the actual stay on Islay. May be something I can mention in the next roundup?
That's all for the 20th roundup, I hope you enjoyed it and found something interesting. As usual I leave you with the link to the Scottish Roundup for the bigger picture and Mo money, mo problems. More roundup next week.
Advertising
Navigation
[Previous entry: "Glen Logan and Sound of Islay Panorama"] [Home] [Next entry: "Islay Whisk(e)y in Men's Vogue"]