Bonspiel

The other night I was talking about YouTube with a fellow trustee of a charity I help out with. My take was that YouTube had become an immensely powerful archive of much-loved TV and film (and also to a degree of radio and records). He didn't disagree - but suggested that you could get an interesting perspective on life if you changed your default search engine to YouTube for a couple of weeks.

Ever the sceptic, I tried it none the less. Given a recent post I typed "Inchmahome" into both Google and YouTube. The former, unexceptionally but as expected, returned tourist advice and guide sites, relevant Wikipedia pages and so forth.

YouTube returned this as the first hit:


With a narrative that read:-

The Lake of Menteith is Scotland`s only natural body of water named as a lake, instead of a loch.
In January 2001, during a cold spell, it froze over, raising hopes that a curling Bonspiel, or "Grand Match", could be held for the first time since 1979.
It was thick enough for people to have curling matches and walk out to the island of Inchmahome in the middle of the lake.
Sadly a thaw set in before the ice was thick and safe enough to hold the hundreds of curlers involved in the "Grand Match" between the North and South of Scotland.
Due to global warming and milder winters there may never be another outdoor Bonspiel in Scotland again, but we can live in hope!
Deep Sky Divers composed When Heaven Freezes Over after seeing the frozen lake.
The Lake of Menteith is near Aberfoyle, Scotland.

I found this ever-so-slightly astonishing. Although the video was really just a collection of stills with some music overlay, the place came alive. The reference lead serendipitously to other information, just like I always hoped search tools would. And of course the Lake seemed to have been photographed from roughly where we had stayed last Summer, which helped.

So far, therefore, a very interesting experiment.

I must try more.

The Trees around Nunhead on Tour: 14: Inchmahome

Sitting in the lake of Menteith is the tiny Island of Inchmahome (that statement is technically rather like River Ouse; as "Inch" means "Island", I gather).

We caught the boat over on a damp, occasionally rainy day. After a little while sheltering in the (almost but not quite wholly inadequate) gift shop and visitor centre, we went off on a little tour.
Little is the operative word, you can walk around the island in under twenty minutes.

The Island is overgrown with a tangle of trees. We circled around on the lake-side path, seeing what we could see.





At one point in our circumnavigation, we came across a felled oak tree - it had seemingly been blown over and mostly uprooted - but it was still alive! Sufficient of the roots were still hale and intact underground, it seemed, to keep the tree flourishing, and branches were now beginning to take a new direction. Growing through the wreckage of the roots were young birch and aspen trees - the former topping out much higher than the latter. And finally, the old crown of the oak had become encrusted and entwined with holly. It was a great confusion of different trees that these pictures, unfortunately, don't properly capture.



Also on the Island is this tiny manicured lawn and bench, which I felt was rather twee (and there are stories of fairies and bogles associated with Inchmahome, but I suspect more in and around the trees than here).
The island is also the home of the ruins of the Augustinian Inchmahome Priory.