Recent runs and Mick Tighe's museum

Last week we went to Bohuntin to the home of Mick and Cathy Tighe. Mick is a mountain guide who has decades of experience in the mountains  both for pleasure, for clients and  in the Lochaber Mountain Rescue. He has also amassed a horde of mountaineering artefacts from skis to clothing and books.He has now started a museum which you can view on line on Scottish mountain heritage collection.  It was open to the public for the first two weeks of October.
 After spending a happy hour looking at the collection, we sat in the sunshine drinking  coffee eating cake and  chatting with other friends who had come to see the artefacts. I have never had such great welcome at a museum!
 Bohuntin is at the start of a glen famous or its 'parallel roads' These are a series of horizontal and parallel identations in the slopes of the  valley sides. From a distance they look like perfectly enginered roads. For many years they puzzled scientists. Charles Darwin thought they marked the shore line of ancient seas but failed to find any sea shells to prove his theory. In 1840 Louis Agassiz postulated that glaciers had blocked the glen forming inland lakes . The freeze thaw cycle had carved out the parallel roads. This is now accepted as the most likely cause.
We drove up the glen  and then climbed Beinn Iaruinn a beautiful hill with fantastic views  of the valley and  beyond.
During  the week I had to go to Lochaline a  village on the on the Sound of Mull, I sketched the picture below on the way home

The Road Near Laudale

On Friday I had the privilege to go to Rum. On the way back the ferry was accompanied for about 10 minutes by a pod of dolphins. I was amazed by the ease at which they kept pace with the boat.

Later on the sun sank lower between the islands of Rum on the right and Eigg on the left.

Below is a painting of the view (from a photo )

Today we ran up Melantee and then across to the CIC hut. It was surprisingly hot and  we were dripping with sweat on the climb. It is always a lovely run and today was no exception.

Towards the CIC hut ( Ben Nevis on the right)

Folio Competition

 Anybody who visits my house will realise that I love books as the the walls are lined with shelves crammed with books. My poor wife wonders where it will end as I keep buying more and we only have a small house! One of my ambitions would be to write and illustrate  books .
 The main reaon that I haven't done a blog post  for a few weeks is because I have been working on an entry for the Folio book illustration competition . Folio are publishers of beautiful hardback books. and to be able to illustrate one of their books would be a great honour.
I recently discovered that they have an annual  competition; the brief for this year's competition was to create three illustrations and a cover for Michael Morpugo's War Horse. I really enjoyed researching and painting the pictures although it took a lot longer to do than I anticipated. The chance of getting anywhere with the competition is slim but it was fun to try.
Here are some of my recent sketches.

 This is a view from town with a covering of snow on Melantee and Lidl's supermarket in the foreground painted last week

 Above is a sketch of the road back from Kingairloch ; the road is squeezed between dramatic cliffs and the sea, it's a single track road with not much room for error .A farmer told me that he didn't get post for 3 days last week because the road ( which has a hill at the end ) was too icy for the postman to get through. Fortunately the weather was much milder when I was there.

Glencoe from a photo taken a few weeks ago.

Triple Hirple

Recent sketch of Meall an t-Suidhe (Melantee) . This weekend is the 'triple hirple'; a trio of local hill races . Day one is Meall an t-Suidhe, then comes the Half Ben and finally Cow Hill on Monday night. Racing three days in a row sounds tough.
 I haven't run a step since the West Highland Way Race but will hopefully start next week.

In the 70's and 80's I used to read a comic called Look and Learn . It was a wonderful mix of factual articles and fantasy serials including the superlative Trigan Empire illustrated for a while by Oliver Frey. I remember reading a series about cowboy artists in particular Remington and Russell Apparently Russell kept his paints and brushes in an old sock in his saddlebag whilst out riding on the range. As a an impressionable young boy I was inspired to take my paints out in to the Essex countryside to paint from life. Both my sister and I did a lot of art - mainly colouring in competitions  which although leaving little scope for imagination, were a useful source of pocket money. We rarely tried painting from life. I got together some acrylics and some brushes and put them in a sock and went in search of a subject.
 I selected a copse a few miles from home and excitedly got my paints out . To my dismay I found I had lost my brushes. They had slipped through the weave of the sock! With nothing to paint with I trudged back dejectedly

 . At home I was in deep trouble for my foolishness, as brushes were deemed very expensive . Grown ups did not seem to realize the importance of the sock-  of emulating  my heroes from  the pages of Look and Learn.
 I never took my paints out again- at least until very recently. I remembered this sorry little tale as I was getting my paints out to paint the above picture and this time I hadn't lost my brushes!
The view is of Aonach Mor with a great wave of cloud rolling over the summit.

View of the famous Parallel Roads  in Glen Roy, sketched this week. These linear 'roads' puzzled 19th century scientists . Darwin thought that they might have been the coastline when sea levels were higher, but no  seashells were found.Eventually it was postulated that they  were left by the shoreline of inland lakes formed when the valley was dammed by a glacier.Thus they were the first concrete evidence of the Ice Age and glaciation.Today Glen Roy is a beautiful valley stretching north from Roybridge.

Melantee early yesterday morning.

Melantee from the opposite direction  in the evening, half obscured by cloud.

Melantee and Ben Nevis this morning from Camaghael. These last three all done in my moleskine watercolour sketchbook.