CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH | THE HILL HOUSE 1902 - 1904 | ARGYLE & BUTE SCOTLAND

Visited Charles Rennie Mackintosh's 'The Hill House' on a damp March Saturday...

[ via NTS website ] 

High on a hill in Helensburgh, overlooking the River Clyde, sits what is universally regarded as Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s finest domestic creation. The Hill House is a visually arresting mix of Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Scottish Baronial and Japonisme architecture and design.

Mackintosh designed nearly everything inside the Hill House too, from the decorative schemes and the furniture to the fittings and contents. His wife, Margaret Macdonald, designed and made many of the textiles as well as a beautiful fireplace panel. Much of the house has been restored so it looks almost exactly as it did in 1904 when its first residents, Glasgow publisher Walter Blackie and his family, moved in.

[ more info here ] 

 

 

 

 

THREE LOCHS WAY | WEST DUMBARTONSHIRE | SCOTLAND

Last weekend I walked along parts of the Three Lochs Way and The John Muir Way in West Dumbartonshire - both newly renovated cross country routes for walkers, cyclists, deers & maybe beavers too. Set off from Helensburgh at 6am so caught the sun coming up as I headed up to Loch Lomond across moorland, deep forests, path ways and hill tops, vaguely along this route (in reverse)...

Various photos taken along the route below...

6.20AM SUN RISING SCENE

Wood pond

Rain forest...

Note the snow in background

 Apocalyptic deforesting [ CLICK TO EXPAND ]

View to Loch Lomond from Three Lochs Way

7am mist over Loch Lomond

Boat awaiting on Loch Lomond

Maid Of The Loch

US Navy boats sailing up the Clyde on way to Faslane for this

WHEEL UP! | THE AMAZING FALKIRK CANAL BOAT LIFT | SCOTLAND

Visited the spectacular & unique Falkirk Wheel over the weekend. It's a massive steel boat lift that connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal in central Scotland. 

The wheel itself and the canal approach are both very modernist in design - lots of functional concrete, industrial steel, curves and of course, water...

The wheel raises boats by 24 metres but the Union Canal is still 11 metres higher than the aqueduct which meets the wheel so boats must pass through a pair of locks to get between the top of the wheel and the Union Canal. 

 But how does in work....?!

The caissons or gondolas always carry a combined weight of 500 tonnes of water and boats, with the gondolas themselves each weighing 50 tonnes. Care is taken to maintain the water levels on each side, thus balancing the weight on each arm. According to Archimedes' principle, floating objects displace their own weight in water, so when the boat enters, the amount of water leaving the caisson weighs exactly the same as the boat.

It takes just 22.5 kilowatts to power the ten hydraulic motors, which consume just 1.5 kilowatt-hours per half-turn, roughly the same as boiling eight kettles of water.

 

[ lots more on The Falkirk Wheel Wikipedia page here ]

 

 

 

Also, along the canal on the other side of Falkirk, the Andy Scott-designed 'Kelpies' are worth a visit -100 feet high steel horse heads.  

(please note that The Kelpies are not to be confused with the common Water Kelpie, the shape shifting spirits whom inhibit Lochs across Scotland)

 

ORKNEY ISLANDS PHOTOGRAPHY | JUNE 2014 - SCAPA FLOW

Went via Orkney on the way back from Shetland in June, a 12.15am visit to Scapa Flow  (the scene of the 1919 German fleet scuttling) for disembarkation of some of those on board.  Amazing midnight illumination across a plate glass flat sea.