Image Details
This view was taken on a very hot and sultry summer's evening at Scotland's Loch Ewe. I was driving through Aultbea, near Drumchork, when this scene came into view through my right window. I pulled up next to a gate leading into a field in order to take landscape photographs of this amazing scene.
The view is of Loch Ewe, and the peninsula with the houses on it is Aird Point, Aultbea. At the left is the northern tip of the Isle of Ewe, and beyond, on the horizon is the tip of the Inversasdale peninsula on which the village of Cove is situated.
As soon as I stepped out of the car I was beset by midgies. There was not a breath of wind and conditions were quite horrible. At the time this photograph was taken I had not yet acquired the excellent anti-midge gear I have now, so it was just a case of suffering it.
There was a very thin misty haze everywhere, not enough to obscure to any great degree vision of the nearby land, but sufficient to filter the distant sun and make it bearable to look at. I assume this haze was the primary cause of the all-enveloping red glow.
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.
Aird Point; At Aultbea, the word aird is Gaelic for a promontory in this place name.
Aultbea; From Watson; In Gaelic it is an Fhàin - the gentle slope, locative case of am Fàn. The real Aultbea, Gaelic Allt-Beithe, ‘birch burn’ is the stream that runs through the village. The Aultbea coast in Gaelic is an t-Eirthire Donn, ‘the brown coast’. The Scottish Parliament website claims that an older Gaelic name for Aultbea was Am Fàn Braonach, meaning ‘the slope of the Loch Broom area’. Considering the distance between Aultbea and Loch Broom I find this an odd connection.
Drumchork; Gaelic Druim a choirc, the oat ridge. There was a farm at this place, perhaps it grew oats at one time.
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.
Isle Ewe; Gaelic is Eilean Iu. See Loch Ewe for further information.
Loch Ewe; Professor Watson said “that he had taken iu, with hesitation, from the Irish eo, thus ‘Loch of the yew tree’; the fact that Tobar na h-Iu in Nigg showed the article is practically decisive in favour of iu being there at least a Gaelic word. No Pictish name is accompanied by the Gaelic article. But the Ewe may be a Pictish name derived from the same root, or from a totally different one.”
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