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Near Midtown in Inverasdale there is pond regularly used by local wild ducks and their ducklings. It is just alongside the single track road and I have frequently seen the ducks and ducklings waddling down this road en route to the pond.
On this day however this group of mallards were out of luck because the pond, just out of shot, is frozen solid. One or two ducks went onto the ice in the hope of finding a solution but they enjoyed nothing more that losing their footing and falling over!
Most of the ducks just stood disconsolately next to the pond at a loss of what to do . They seemed to have no other plan and stayed there while I took a photograph of this scene.
The ducks at Inverasdale can be cute when you see them waddling down the single track road, but not if you are a driver trying to go somewhere. I once saw a lady leave her car in complete frustration at being held up by the quite unconcerned ducks, shouting at them to get off the road. They did, but only when they reached the duck pond!
North-west Highland Place Names
The landscape of the North-west Highlands and the Gaelic language are intimately connected. Other languages have contributed to the richness of our place names, notably Norse, but the North-west Highlands have for centuries been a Gaelic landscape. In listing the meanings of place names I have relied on authoritative sources wherever possible. For further information about sources please refer to North-west Highland Place Names in the main menu.
Inverasdale; Village on the western shore of Loch Ewe. The following notes are by Professor Watson. In Gaelic it is Inbhir-asdal. A hybrid name; from Gaelic, inbhir, estuary; from Norse, aspi-dalr, Aspen-dale, from osp, the aspen tree. The old forms, together with the independent authority of Blaeu (a 16th century Dutch mapmaker), prove that the modern Gaelic is a contraction with compensatory lengthening of the vowel a.
Midtown; A village on the eastern shore of Loch Ewe. J H Dixon states that Midtown is an Anglicised version of the Gaelic Baile-meadhon from Baile, ‘a town’ and meadhon, ‘middle’.
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