#UK Rail Tours

[trainphilos]

...of Anoraks, Pufferküsser and Tragics!

A short foreword and explanation: My friend Michael in London has been doing a blog since blogs became a thing. He started out to review, comment on and complain about all things Apple. Hence the blog’s URL: www.macfilos.com. However over the years his obsession with photography and cameras, in particular Leica equipment, became the main focus of his blog. The blog name stayed the same, but it is…

[scotianostra]

On 24th February 1923, the world famous steam train, the Flying Scotsman, went into service.

From the 1920s the train was considered the height of luxury. Onboard there were first-class restaurant facilities, a cocktail bar and radio equipment, so passengers could hear the horse-racing results.

There was even a hairdressing salon where men could have their facial hair shaved with an open razor, made possible because the barber's chair was set in such a position that there would be "no jolting". I'm not sure I would have a shave in a moving train!

The train's hairdresser was reportedly known as "Sweeney Todd of the Rails", given his precarious trade.

In 1928 the train broke the record for the longest regular non-stop train journey in the world, when the LNER ran an express service for the entire 393-mile route.

This record would last until 1948, when, unintentionally, the train broke its own record. The Flying Scotsman ran for 408 and a half miles in May of that year when flood damage to the main line caused diversions via St Boswells and Kelso.

Throughout World War II The Flying Scotsman was one of the few titled trains that continued to operate along the East Coast - it carried troops between London and Scotland, although the headboards and roofboards were removed for security.

And, on 21st June 1958, in a historic move which would signal the decline of steam, The Flying Scotsman was hauled for the first time by a diesel locomotive.

The service is currently run by government-owned East Coast.

In May 2011 they relaunched the service, painting one of their locomotives, the Class 91 No. 91101 with Flying Scotsman branding.

At the launch East Coast said the move was "part of our policy of bringing back train names and restoring pride, passion and even a touch of glamour and romance back to the East Coast railway".

It's not all a romantic journey though, just last September there was, what the called a "slow speed” crash with another heritage train hours before visitors were due to board it.

It happened lwhen the ocomotive was being shunted into place to be coupled with the Royal Scotsman train carriages, which were stationary.

A spokesman for Royal Scotsman train owner Belmond described the collision as “minor” and said there had been no major injuries.

"We are grateful for the prompt attendance by paramedics who were on site to assist the few passengers and team members who sustained minor injuries,” the spokesman said.

"One passenger and one team member are attending hospital for a precautionary check-up.

"All passengers have been transferred to a hotel where our team is on standby to offer support and to assist with our guests’ onward travel arrangements."

Last year ater travelling 10,000 miles across the UK as part of its centenary celebrations, world famous locomotive Flying Scotsman will spend the first part of 2024 on static display at the National Railway Museum in York before resuming rail tours later in the year.

The custodianship of The Flying Scotsman is up for tender later this year, so by this time next year I may be telling you about new "owners"

[4th-make-quail]

BACK FROM STARSET, OH MY GODDDD THEY WERE SO FUCKING GOOD!!! Dustin was absolutely not kidding when he said they'd return bigger and better, holy fucking shit. This time they were in Academy 1 which is a lot bigger venue!

They had no support act, because most of the stage was taken up with this amazing, huge and elaborate series of spinning blades that projected holographic shit??? It was honestly beautiful and sooo intricate, and all the images were woven in with the music and the narrative videos in between which told the story of a guy escaping the whole New East/New West dystopia and it was all leading in to the setup for the new album which I'm taking to be HUMANITY GOING TO MARS??? HELLO!!!

I got terrible photos cos Academy 1 means no close up accessibility, so we were on a frankly not great balcony (the metal railing topping the barrier was literally directly in my line of sight so I had to sit real forward and up on my chair so now my thighs are KILLING ME but it was so fucking worth it) and very far away, but being high up was nice!

They absolutely killed it, played some songs I haven't seen live before INCLUDING all three new songs (and Waiting on the Sky to Change!!)!! My screams when they started up with Brave New World haha, I went absolutely mental. Songs like that make me a little sad and wistful tho, cos I wish I was down there in the pit moshing but now I have to be satisfied with chair moshing, which honestly gets... Very Vigorous lol, I get very uh. Bouncy XD

Anyway, I cannot recommend Starset enough to see live, their shows are always stellar and they're honestly getting better and better every tour!! Absolutely worth it if you get chance, we've seen them every UK visit since they started coming here and I feel like I'll want to continue seeing them for eternity tbh!!

[statementlou]

Louis might not be chucking bricks at No. 10, but people are responding like he’s never displayed leftist politics or challenged a government position on anything. He supported demands to the government about a fix for UK touring musician post Brexit and Marcus Rashford’s petition about food insecurity. He fought the police about their social media use in 2018 and criticised the UK government position/support for factory workers in the pandemic. The things he speaks about are usually UK issues and meaningful to him or his family and friends. He’s also most likely to speak when he isn’t working. Also that specific anarchy has a punk anti authoritarian message as well. That statement fits Louis pretty well. He has been a poster boy for not sitting down and shutting up and doing what you’re told since 2012. If he was he probably wouldn’t have a solo career and he definitely wouldn’t have sold out the O2.

I like this point about him speaking out more when he's not working, I think that's a really great and useful observation and makes so much sense. I feel like it makes sense in two ways right now: like first, I don't blame him for not wanting to do things that would jeopardize how beautifully everything is going for him right now after the number of setbacks and troubles he's had to get here, it must feel so precarious. And knowing for a fact that any political statement you make will spawn a dozen tabloid stories and all kinds of outrage is bad enough, but add to that the fact that it's simply impossible to predict which thing will turn into a huge viral mess- it's a lot. And second, he's not just working, he's been on TOUR! I've been around musicians my whole life and one constant is that tour is time outside of normal time and life, it's a bubble, it's only paying attention to right where you are and what's in front of you and the people there with you and everything else is put off and neglected, is for when you get home (and have massive post tour letdown depression and fatigue). I'm not saying he can disconnect with the outside world entirely... but putting everything on pause? I would be surprised if it were any other way, and I would be surprised if he's been following the news and counter news and so forth closely enough to feel comfortable speaking out publicly about anything when it will be so scrutinized and picked apart. I would add to your list supporting the rail strike (something we wouldn't even know about if it hadn't been tossed in as an aside by an interviewer in the print only version of a piece, he didn't post about it or anything) and attending and posting about the BLM protests (not to mention telling people to pirate his stuff come on how punk is that), and I agree he is much more likely to speak out about UK issues which makes sense: most people are most moved by issues that are close to their lives in some way, and it's his brand. And I agree that even though as an anarchist I love talking about what anarchism as a political ideology actually is, the symbol does also have a common meaning in the world as just basically standing for anti-authoritarianism, and Louis as a guy who rejects authority and the status quo is nothing new at all and one of the reasons we love him, and in the last few years I feel like he's been going further in that direction both aesthetically and politically, and we love to see it! Plus he has pretty much always sported this slightly punky aesthetic to some degree, even when he was being dressed up like a little ken doll he snuck in skater looks and indie band tees and so forth (something something it's part of why his fanbase was so primed to love his new sound and it wasn't the risk he feared it was because people were always drawn to him who were already into that aesthetic even when his sound wasn't that yet) it's not like it's just a brand new out of nowhere side of him or something.

[trainsinanime]

The shapes of railway networks

A while ago @ariadsishereagain asked me about countries that have no railway networks, and what I think of them. That's a fascinating question that has been in my mind ever since, because the truth is you can tell a lot about a country and in particular it's history during the 19th and early 20th century by its railway network. So let's do that. And the best way to do that is by looking at the incredibly detailed open-source world railway map OpenRailwayMap, a part of the OpenStreetMap project. I really recommend it! And let's start with one of my favorite examples of how railway networks differ:

At this zoom level the site sadly only shows incomprehensible internal abbreviations rather than city names, so let me explain: What we have here are France and Germany, along with some of the UK and Italy, some of various neighbouring countries and all of Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

France and Germany are the ones that I find the most interesting, because the shapes of their networks are so different. Not only is the german one much more dense, but you can see completely different patterns.

In France, the job of railroads is to bring people to Paris (PLY, short for Paris Gare de Lyon) The lines stretch out into every part of the country, but almost all of them converge onto mainlines going into Paris. You can see some lines along the coasts and the borders, and there is a medium distances circle around Paris (passing MZ, DN, TO, short for Metz, Dijon, Tours). This whole pattern is known as the Legrande Star, after Baptiste Alexis Victor Legrande, the french government official who designed it. His goal was to provide great access to Paris, the nation's undisputed political, cultural and economical centre. A couple of decades later, Charles de Freycinet added plans to connect all departments to the railway network, but he still followed the idea that the ultimate goal of almost every rail line was Paris. And so it was, and largely remained. Even the high speed lines, in red, follow this pattern to this day.

A result is that you will have to go to Paris whether you want to or not. Lille-Strasbourg? You're going through Paris. Bordeaux-Dijon?

You're going through Paris, and get to make your own way from Gare Montparnasse to Gare de Lyon on the Metro (and it isn't even a direct metro, you have to change trains). It's a massive detour but it's not like you have a choice.

Even if there is a direct TGV or a connection outside the main stations of Paris, you're still ending up very much near Paris; the difference is just that you're not going via the city centre, but rather via Disneyland. Legrande wanted to bring people to Paris; he was less concerned about connecting other places with each other.

Now compare Germany, and you will see a network that is more dense, but most importantly, utterly chaotic. You can see hints of a France-like star around Berlin (BSPD, short for Berlin Spandau, which isn't the most important station but what can you do), but it's really only dominating its immediate surroundings, the region of Brandenburg. You can see vague hints of a similar star around Hamburg (AH; don't ask) or Munich (MH), but also a massive tangle around the Rhine-Ruhr industrial area (around KD), or around the Frankfurt am Main area (FF). Red high speed lines are essentially random. Some of them do go to Berlin, sure. But many, like the one from Cologne to Frankfurt (KD to FF) or the one from Hanover (HH) south, do not.

And that really reflects the history. Germany wasn't a unified country when railroad construction began, and even though it did unify shortly thereafter, there's no hiding that its different parts developed separately, with no central planning, ever since the middle ages. Germany doesn't have a single central city like France. Berlin is the biggest and most important city, but not by far. Hamburg has huge cultural and industrial influence, Frankfurt is the most important financial centre and airport, Munich is huge, and there are agglomerations like the Rhine-Ruhr region that used to beat all of them in terms of industry. And the rail network, with no single central focus point, reflects that.

That doesn't mean Germany doesn't have its own blind spots. Due to being split in two, the east-west links aren't great. Getting e.g. from Cologne (near KD) to Dresden (DH) is pretty painful. Ironically, Berlin is one of the places that really suffers from this. There are plenty of trains to it from Cologne but they take forever, and you can see why: A lot of the route isn't high speed, it's just more or less upgraded normal lines. If you have a single destination, then it's easy to build all the lines there. If you want high-speed connections between everything, that's more difficult. (Also, our government isn't investing anywhere near enough into the rail network, both compared internationally and on its own terms, but that's a different issue)

Other countries in Europe tend to be somewhere between the extremes. Spain is fairly centralised around Madrid.

The UK is just as focused on London as France is on Paris, but it has strong regional networks around Leeds and Sheffield, and the weirdness in Scotland (four different lines between Glasgow and Edinburgh and counting!).

Italy, especially south of the Po valley, almost looks like a ladder: Lines are either on the one side of the Apennines or the other, with a few brave ones crossing through.

This works overseas as well. Describing the continental US as "like Germany" is certainly going to raise some eyebrows, but the map doesn't lie:

It's all on a completely different scale, but it's also a federal country with no one single clear centre. Yes, New York and Los Angeles are big and important, but neither is an all-powerful centre of the nation. What's fun about the US is that it's almost gradient-like: The more west you go, the fewer the railroads get. You can also nicely see the Alleghenies by the shadow they cast: Just a few brave rail lines managed to make their way through or around. Other characteristic items are the huge tangle that is Chicago, the closest thing the US has to a railroad capital; and the many places where lines are almost duplicated (just count how many different ways you can get from Chicago to Memphis, or Chicago to Cleveland), thanks to different competing railway companies that all hated (and sometimes still hate) each other's guts.

So that's what's mostly considered the "western world" or "industrialised world". I skipped Japan, China and India because the post is going to get too long no matter what, but they're all fascinating as well.

But if we go away from there look at countries where the colonialism was less settlers and more exploit mostly from afar, we see another very odd pattern emerge, like here in sub-saharan Africa:

The selection is somewhat arbitrary because you can find the same pattern everywhere south of the Sahara, and in one case (Mauretania) even in the Sahara: A railroad that goes straight to the coast. (The isolated sections inland are due to issues with the map software, they're all connected to one of the lines to the coast)

This kind of railroad is designed to extract a country's resources, and not much else. In Mauretania (not in this picture), that's iron ore. Elsewhere it might have been other ores, precious metals, gemstones, but also very often agricultural products, spices, dyes. The railway line exists to take these things, and bring them to a port. The line is not designed to actually help the nation grow economically. Think about it: All things being equal, you're probably just as likely to want to go parallel to the coast as perpendicular to it.

Also, each of these lines were built because there's something interesting at the end of it, or at least someone suspected there might be. If you wanted to develop the area, it would make sense to trade the interesting stuff in Togo with the interesting stuff in Benin. But the railway lines are not set up for that at all. The goal is to get the interesting stuff to a ship, and occasionally soldiers to the place where the interesting stuff comes from.

These days, the area that I screenshotted here is actually massive, full of people. The city of Abidjan has more than four million inhabitants (more than Berlin), Lomé has 1.7 million, Cotonou and Porto-Novo come close to a million if taken together, and nobody's quite sure about Lagos, but it's at least 14 million, and the metropolitan region might be 24 million. This is a band of cities that researchers think might, in the next few decodes, become on par with Washington-Philadelphia-New York-Boston in the US, or the Tokyo-Osaka in Japan.

And the rail connections in this region do not reflect this at all. A high speed passenger line and/or a heavy duty freight line could allow all these places to do business with each other, allow people to move to or visit each other, and just spur a lot of economic development. But the powers that built the lines, the colonial powers, were not interested. They had their harbour, and the region behind it, and they just wanted to extract whatever was there.

To be clear, that does not mean the railroads are evil now. Selling natural resources is still better than bringing no money into the country. And there are a lot of places where railroad junctions and depots became the point where cities were founded, so in some countries these lines do end up connecting the most important cities, more or less by accident. It's just that other lines or more lines are sorely missing.

A simple example for how this could look like is provided by Australia, where the colonists were settlers and did want to develop the land economically:

You have the lines from the coast inland, and sometimes quite a lot of them. But you can also see a line along the east coast, connecting the cities, and you can see that someone said "we need to build a railroad across the entire continent. No, two actually". That is not to say that Australia does everything right with railroads, they have a lot of weirdness there. But you can see that the railroads had more jobs than to just move resources to ships.

(The big exception is the Pilbara region, in the north west, with its odd tangle of lines. Those are all just resource extraction lines, where the world's heaviest freight trains haul iron ore from various mines to various ports. The mines and ports are owned by different mining companies that don't like each other, so everybody has their own line from their own harbour to their own mine, even if a different line would have been shorter. That's why you get the tangle there.)

So, that's basically it. The railroad map of a country shows you a lot about how a country works, and more specifically how it worked during the late 19th and early 20th century, when most railroads were built. Where they lead to and where they don't reflects what planners thought of as important, and in turn, it has shaped the way these countries developed. And personally, I always find this endlessly fascinating.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Hey I have trouble with sending asks so if you see this twice pls disregard. I just wanted your opinion.

In regards to the “Tour” post, I’d love to see it actually. I’d love if the big four break up the states in one big visit to cover more territory. Nothing against C&C. If anything they should handle the DC, New England elite circle.

Will & Cathrine can take Appalachia. Kate has drug addiction patronage, if it’s not too touchy (hard to avoid though) they can also listen to the addiction problems that plague the indigenous & rural community. Cathrine can deal with education and early years and Will can touch on the biodiversity stuff.

Sophie & Will can touch on the Civil Rights south. I’d love to see them partner up again. Very touchy, I’d know 👋🏾 but better to face it and get the backlash then keep avoiding it. Sophie does a lot of visits on the African continent & well, William is the heir, of & Tusk.

I can see Edward & Sophie in the northeast, maybe going to meet the migrant community. Visit some of the fruit farms. The US still sends fruit/food to the UK right?

It would be cool to see Artsy Cathrine & Edward in something art related. You can find that virtually anywhere in this country, bonus points if they avoid Hollywood. Visit some small local theaters. They can also meet up w\ The Princes Trust and definitely with some to the celebrities that work with the organization.

Will should definitely visit some public transportation systems. Places like NY, LA & even Chicago are likely out of the question because of the safety risk, and they’re well used but Sacramento and South Florida and even Atlanta would be good to visit. That would be nice to encourage more cities to adopt/expand a light rail/buss system. I know Florida needs to.

I would also absolutely, embargo this whole trip. Only mention that “members of the firm are coming” in advance then state the trip\visit the day of or the day before. Then have the big four with C & C meet up in DC for a very glam visit with the president( whoever it is) . By glam I mean, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring out the tiaras. The president or First Lady should borrow one from and American jeweler too. Americans may not understand royal visits and what it is the Firm can do for charities but we understand bling and how much we love-hate to see it. Like the MET Gala and all those Bridgeton shows people go crazy for.

Cathrine in Diana’s sapphire choker in DC & possibly the Wales kiddos on a school bus would be the absolute highlight in the fanfic tour of mine. ( I wouldn’t bring them for the whole tour, just DC). Make a school stop, early years plug or something. Especially in DC since the government is often talking about expanding maternity leave and Woman’s (reproductive) Rights.

So much potential but it’s worth it because it’s such a big country. It sucks to mention the obnoxious two but I’ve always dreaded them here (im over it now) and sometimes I’m surprised at the things they didn’t do. I’ve always expected them to do a “Harry learns America” type thing to win over the nation. They put out more PR about how much “America” was their new forever home and how much “the country” loves them, than they actually did visiting anywhere and showing it. Might have done them more good than going all the way to Nigeria and Columbia. Also, I don’t just mean LA & NY. Their NF (granted I never watched it)deal could’ve been all about that. Make visits in smaller overlooked places etc. I guess they went to Texas & allegedly partied with the wealthy in Wisconsin was it ?but that was always for their own photo op on a situation that others were already paying attention to. ( ex: Texas school shooting & some race in Miami, Just like this hurricane. It’s so inauthentic but that’s not new to them. Oh & I guess he’s surfing now. For all their loud mouth talk about colonialism and how evil the firm is they visited no plantations, no soul food restaurants to have well “SeAsonnED FoOD”? They really capitalized on the pre-existing anger we rightfully have against the firm and the blame its current members have inherited but there were so many other effective ways they could’ve really hammered the nail in. The best thing about these two is how shortsighted they are, because it does more to sabotage themselves better than anyone else could.

*********

It's a nice thought but it's never going to happen. If Charles, Camilla, William, Kate, Edward, and Sophie are all in the US at the same time, that means Andrew, Harry, or Beatrice will be deputized counsellors of state, alongside Anne, since the law requires 2 counsellors of state to act in the King's absence. So no way, no how.

I'm not going to lie - I really did expect one of the Netflix projects to be a "coming to America" docuseries where Harry adjusts to life in California all the weird idiosyncrasies that comes with living in America and being American, only because the Beckhams did it and Meghan is nothing if not a copycat.

(I deleted your comments about Kamala because it's going to rile up tempers but I did want to address one of them: "the powers that be" determining who the president is is the American public that goes to the polls and votes. If you think there's something, or someone, else choosing who the President is, then this is really not the blog for you.)

[diabolus1exmachina]

Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth  (1 of 500). 

The Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth was built with one aim only – to defeat the rampant Rover SD1s in Group A touring cars. The rules mandated that 5000 road cars had to be built, plus a 500 extra examples with modifications that could be utilised by the race teams. For the RS500, these included a reinforced cast-iron cylinder block, a bigger Garrett AiResearch T04 turbo, a larger air-to-air intercooler, oil-cooled pistons plus upgraded air hoses and oil, water and fuel pumps. A second set of four Weber IW025 fuel injectors came with the car for competition use (adding up to a total of two per cylinder), but these weren’t connected to the ECU on road-going RS500s. The ECU itself was remapped, while there was also a bigger intake plenum and a secondary fuel rail; the addition of the latter two items necessitated that the battery tray be altered by Tickford, which was charged with making the conversions to RS500s. It’s rumoured that the battery trays were altered by use of a hacksaw… Further changes included a slightly different thermostat housing and alternator bracket, while the front bumper was altered with a slim air intake above the numberplate and the foglights were ditched for extra cooling ducts. The enormous rear spoiler was augmented with a thicker trailing edge and a secondary spoiler added below this.While all these changes made only a modest difference to the road machine, bringing horsepower up from 204bhp to 224bhp, the car sold out in August 1987. It pretty soon became the model to have for outright race wins in Group A touring cars. The engine, a four-cylinder Pinto, made just 90bhp in unturbocharged form. In 1987, the Sierra Cosworth was making 370bhp, but the RS500 took this to 470bhp. Further racing enhancements from the likes of Rudi Eggenberger in Germany, Andy Rouse in the UK and Dick Johnson in Australia boosted this to 500bhp and beyond in just a few years. When the RS500 finally bowed out in 1992, Dick Johnson had the motor up to a rumoured 600bhp.

[the-empress-7]

was it here where there was an anon who made a post about how harry is the biggest red flag of all red flags and this was from their experience from a defense background? if so may i ask if anon could give insight on what they thought on angle of why the heck did the obamas get a chopper into wc, driven back to wc by pp, get invite to kp drawing room, meet pg & why the heck was ph there 5th wheeling like no other? loveshield notice was issued when trump won 11.8.16. all happened in 2016

That was me! (That submission was to @honeytothebee and it went all over tumblr from there.) Apologies in advance; this is going to be a long one. Grab yourself a cuppa, make some dinner, get some wine, and strap in.

I liken the situation with Harry to the situation with Hunter Biden. Like Harry, Hunter has always been a mess and also like Harry, he and his family kept his mess well-hidden. (But also like Harry, if you knew where to look then you knew what Hunter’s skeletons were and where they were buried.) That is, the messes were well-hidden until A Thing happened. Before The Thing, there were leaks and rumors and one-offs, but they were all mostly blown off by the general public because of the shine from their families; the royal family in Harry’s case, the Biden-Obama Administration in Hunter’s case.

A Thing happened to Hunter and A Thing happened to Harry, and they lost control of the messes. Look at everything we know about them now that we didn’t know before these Things happened. Hunter’s Thing was his brother’s cancer (Beau was diagnosed in 2013 and died from it in 2015. Hunter first went off the rails publicly in 2013). Harry’s Thing was Meghan moving in in late 2017. In both instances, both men lost their stable family relationships to an external disruptor; Hunter – cancer, Harry – wife. Then there was a very messy handful of years. Harry’s still in the thick of it. Hunter, however, seems to have come out onto the other side now, (And to be perfectly candid, I can see the royal family looking at the Bidens’ success in rehabilitating Hunter as a model for how they might rehabilitate Harry if/when the time comes. However, like Hunter is to Joe, Harry will always be the albatross around Charles’s and William’s necks because of the damage he wrought during these messy years.)

Okay, so let’s dig into anon’s question. First I’ll share a whole lot of context for the Obamas’ visit in 2016 because it feeds into why Harry was at the dinner, then I’ll get into some more commentary about Harry’s red flags.

So first, why did the Obamas go to the UK in 2016? Officially because it’s tradition for a two-term POTUS to get a farewell tour their last year in office and these “farewell tours” almost always include a stopover in the UK for a visit with The Queen. Sometimes it’s a state dinner, sometimes it’s a private visit. Unofficially, because of Brexit, whose referendum was in June 2016. PM Cameron’s establishment were remainers. So was the American establishment. The Obamas were brought over in April 2016 to help Cameron with the campaign to remain. And during their visit, Obama gave a speech or made remarks that basically told the Brits “if you Brexit, see ya. EU comes first.” It was a not-subtle declaration that the UK/US special relationship as everyone knew it would be over if Britain left the EU which Cameron, and The Queen on Cameron's behalf, did not want happening.

Second, why did the Obamas get such special treatment from the royal family? Because they had a genuine friendship (which both Obamas confirmed in their books) and it wasn’t an official state visit. When the royals have a genuine friendship with a foreign head of state, they tend to be more informal and personal and when it isn’t an official visit, the whole mood is more relaxed. Prince Philip picking the Obamas up from the helicopter himself is the royal equivalent of you picking your friend up from the airport.

Third, if it wasn’t an official state visit, why did the Obamas get a private audience and dinner at KP? Because it was a symbolic passing of the torch. We know now that 2016ish was when William started being more closely mentored by The Queen. One of the duties as King/Queen is to host and entertain foreign heads of state, officially and privately. William and Catherine had been part of the official visits for some time, but they never had been involved in a private visit. It was thought that the Obamas were a safe, comfortable choice for William and Catherine to begin flexing those diplomatic muscles; William, Harry, Barack, and Michelle were said to be close and friendly (as one could be in that situation) so the evening was justified as a special meeting between friends, which would avoid setting a precedent and an expectation for the then-Cambridges to host every foreign head of state that visited privately.

Fourth, why was Harry at that dinner? Because he had the closer relationship with Michelle than Catherine did. Harry and Michelle have worked together on several initiatives over the Obamas’ time in office to support veterans and military families, including the Wounded Warrior Games and Invictus Games. And, William, Catherine, and Harry were still very much The Trio in April 2016. They were a package deal and, frankly, Harry wasn’t the security risk then that he is now. (Timing wise, remember that Heads Together, the pinnacle of their trio-ness, launched in May 2016.)

So now the defense stuff/red flags and insider threat commentary.

In April 2016, Harry wasn’t a public risk. The only two red flags he had then were 1) he was a high profile public individual and 2) he traveled often. Where the government was concerned, he had a slightly higher risk than William because of his time in Afghanistan. (Pause for an aside: government and military are very separate things. The military reports to the government but the military doesn’t always tell the government everything. I suspect it’s the same way in the UK.) Where the military was concerned, Harry was an enormous risk but he wasn’t their problem anymore since he had separated in 2015. Where the royal family was concerned, Harry did have problems – anger issues, the “confirmed kills” comment, and lingering trauma from Diana’s death – but those issues were counterbalanced by these stabilizing forces: his home life/relationships with his family, he was in therapy and on medication that worked, and he found meaning and purpose in his work.

But publicly? As far as the public knew, Harry wasn’t a problem. And the royal family banked on that. They bet the house that Harry’s public reputation and his popularity would keep him in line. Since Harry’s work was a big part of the counterbalance against his demons, the royal family knew that as long as he found his work meaningful and purposeful, he would tow the line. That’s why he got so much that was equal to William and Catherine.

Harry met Meghan in July 2016 and then later issued the love shield in November 2016. But neither of these really did anything to Harry’s risk assessment. Publicly it added a third red flag: high-profile public girlfriend to whom, the love shield made clear, if anything happened Harry could be easily exploited and manipulated. But Harry was still largely under the control and influence of the royal family. Even though he was spending a lot of time with Meghan, it was still a long distance relationship where Meghan went home to Toronto and Harry went home to London. And when Harry was in London without Meghan, he always went back into the royal enclave and was the Good Lad Hal the general public knew him to be.

(Aside: That is another reason why Meghan knew it was important to get Harry alone and by himself. She probably pegged him from early on – sorry, pun unintended – as someone whose personality, behavior, and attitude were influenced by whoever he is with. As long as he was around the royals, he would still be their darling boy. To get him angry, resentful, and jealous enough to “see” her side, she had to make it impossible for Harry to see them or be around them. I suspect this is why she was so eager to spend the summer at that rental in the Cotswolds – away from his friends in London and the Cambridges in Norfolk – and didn’t mind moving to Windsor. They were placeholders that separated him from his family before she could spring moving overseas on him.)

Harry’s red flags didn’t become a problem until Meghan moved in with him in late 2017 and it disrupted Harry’s status quo. He is not someone who can tolerate change (Spare makes that very clear - if Harry is not in charge of change, he cannot handle it, which is also another red flag on its own). Once Meghan moved in with him, all those stabilizing counterforces that mitigated Harry’s risks were eliminated, one by one. She disrupted his relationship with Catherine. She exploited his trauma from Diana. She got him off his medications. She got him away from his therapist and into woo-woo California alternative lifestyles. She built a wall between him and William. She cancelled his friends. But he still wasn’t that much of a security risk to the royal family because Harry still had his public reputation and that was the only change he likely cared about. As far as the public was concerned, he was still a low security risk. I would argue that Harry’s risk as an insider threat didn’t start escalating internally until late 2018, after the Australia tour. This is when Meghan started damaging his public reputation. And once Harry’s public reputation began to slide, they lost total control over Harry and the red flags began piling up. Because that was the one change Harry didn't want and hadn't expected Meghan to evoke. She promised him change for the better, but look at him now (then): changed for the worst and declining.

The thing about insider threats, and espionage in general, is that what makes them so dangerous is that you don’t know what damage they’ve done until long after it’s happened. Forget about the horse bolting out of the barn. By the time an insider threat is discovered, the horse has already jumped onto a freight train and is over international borders. Despite all the warning signs that we’re trained to watch for and observe, a good insider threat – much like a good spy – will go undetected for a long time. Till A Thing happens that blows their cover. Someone gets suspicious (William having Meghan’s number from the start), there’s a whistleblower or a turncoat (Jason’s letter to Simon Case about the bullying), they get sloppy (Waity Katy, 2018 edition), they don’t cover their tracks as well (5 People friends), their stories become inconsistent (*waves hand at everything*), their equilibrium gets rocked (William kicking them out of KP).

What makes Harry particularly dangerous and nefarious is how well his red flags were hidden from the public. It’s one thing for the government, the military, and the head of state to know about an individual’s risk assessment – that’s their job. They keep these things hidden from the public as “matters of national security” because if the truth really were to come out, it threatens the public’s trust in their institutions. And Harry’s red flags were so well hidden from the public that when they all came out, and they all came out in rapid succession one after another after another, it absolutely shook the public’s trust in the institution. Just look at the conversations we are having this week: should he be allowed at the coronation? Is Charles an effective King? Why can’t they control him? Why aren’t they responding? Why aren’t they correcting the lies? Why can’t they tell us what the truth is? What even is the truth anymore? Should we believe them when they say it’s the truth? Why can’t Charles end this once and for all? WHAT IS HE WAITING FOR?! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS RECONCILIATION SHIT?

Well, this is the stuff that nurtures rebellion, dissent, and revolution. That Charles is missing the forest (his country) for the trees (his darling boy), it’s long past time for the government to step in. I’ve said this before but this is a perfect gift to Sunak. Be the bad guy, kick Harry out of the coronation, and maybe the public will remember this too next time at the polls, not just your scandals like the cost of living crisis and the mail/rail/NHS strike.

If this was an espionage movie – say, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – this is the chase scene. The spy is stuck. His cover his blown. The enemy is closing in. His girl is gone and oh, by the way, she emptied his safe and stole his passport while he was sleeping. Does his handler intervene to help him escape? Does the enemy get him? Or does he turn out to be a double-agent who gets a hero’s welcome and a victory parade on his return home? In other words, does Charles rescue Harry and invite him to the coronation? Or does Charles leave Harry to suffer the consequences of his actions and lets the government block him from the coronation? Or does Harry flip on Meghan and expose her skeletons to protect himself?

Because that’s the other power of an insider threat with as many red flags as Harry’s got. Whether the insider threat realizes it or not, there’s always someone worse off than they are. And they always offer that person up in exchange for their freedom. That’s why Spare is so potent. Harry knows and understands there are threats against him, but he doesn’t understand that it’s coming from inside the house. He thinks the threat is William and Charles, which is why he attacks them in Spare and why he’s blackmailing them with Spare 2. He does not yet realize that the threat is Meghan. But Meghan does. She knows that her problems are taken care of if/when Harry becomes the bigger, more dangerous, threat and target. That’s why I feel she is keeping a low profile now. His red flags are finally bigger than hers.

But long story short – Harry wasn’t the same kind of threat and didn’t have the same red flags in April 2016 so he was included in the Obama visit. It probably would have been more of a public relations disaster for him to be excluded from the visit given how high his popularity was and how globally well-known his friendship with Michelle was over their mutual interest in supporting veterans and military families.

If Harry was the same threat in April 2016 with the same red flags that he has now, he absolutely would not have been part of the Obama visit. And I don’t even think there would have been a private audience/dinner at KP. It would have just been the private lunch at Windsor Castle with The Queen and Prince Philip. Any other meetings the Obamas had with any of the other royals, William and Catherine included, wouldn’t have been publicized till after the fact or it would have just been William meeting with Barack for 10 minutes (the way William met with Joe at Earthshot).

Because the bottom line is it wouldn’t have been just the UK concerned about Harry’s red flags, the US would have been concerned as well. And given the state of affairs in 2016, to paraphrase Disney – the UK needed the US more than the US needed the UK because of Brexit. If the Americans had concerns about Harry being in a meeting with Obama, the Queen would have blocked Harry’s involvement because she understood the UK needs our special relationship to survive Brexit. (And that is why we got all those royals coming to the US last year after The Queen’s funeral. I think it was within the span of four weeks, we had visits from Anne, Sophie, The Duke of Gloucester, William’s UN visit that turned into a virtual speech, and later, Earthshot.)

This deserves a standing ovation. I agree with your assessment which is deeply insightful and thoroughly well rounded. A huge thank you to you for sending this in.

In the end, it all comes down to the special relationship between US and UK. As of right now, Charles risks not only losing his own public's support but that of the UK's closest ally as well. Washington is watching, by the same token so are our joint enemies. If a Head of State is too inept to handle treasonous son, it creates beaucoup opportunities for those who loathe democracies. Charles might as well post a sign outside of BP saying "Here are all the chinks in my armor, aim your arrows this way".

[raapija]

Delusions questions I had in the shower

Is Nicole piastri still known / keyboard warrior in this au like Oscar isn't her son but she is still proud of her name and genetics (I'm sorta seeing her as this loving wine aunt)

Lando technically would be 0% British... I imagine he has citizenship due to growing up in the uk but technicaly has 0 British blood. I'm just seeing the whole 'British drivers quiz' thingy they always love doing with the 2019 rookies and George just going 'technicaly I'm the onyl true brit here.'

On that point! Nando and Carlos only having 1 passport each and loosing the passport wars everytime. (lando got 3, Oscars got 2, lance also has 2) like each time travelling not in eu do they split up to go through customs or do they all drag their feet behind the pureblood spainiards.

Though saying that nando and lance might have spouce citizenships? Would nando get ausie visa easy cuase his son is ausie???

Anyway I'm just picturing the fans at every race pulling up wiki going 'is one of nandos lot got claim to this as a home race?' cuase you never fucking know. Spanish gp is probs chaos

Now this is the kinda deep lore shit I was talking about!!!!!!

First of all, I love Oscar's mum so definitely, she needs to be a part of the Nugget au. She probably shares very embarrassing childhood stories about the kids all the time and has like 17 million followers just for that 😭

Lando is British in his heart and I think he would get the British citizenship on his own at some point. But yeah, him not actually being a Brit would be so funny just to add more confusion ✨

Carlos and Nando always having to go through security checks at the airport while the rest of them have to wait... And it's not just because of the passports but also because Nando and Carlos would probably raise some suspicion with acting all unhinged and being way too loud 😭 I imagine Nando making some bad joke at border control and ending up being interrogated for 7 hours 💀

Half the season is just their home races.... Belgium, UK, Australia, Spain, Canada... They dub it The Alonso World Tour (Fernantour???) and there's a separate scoreboard for their races 💁💁 Winner gets to pick the next family holiday location

These two would definitely climb the security railing and get arrested ☝️

[the1975attheirverybest]

Or I could just write Amelia begging matty to rail her after UK tour opening nights in Glasgow that would be not sad though. And I’m in the mood for sad.

[gerardpilled]

@ last anon id say America and UK. EU per se didn’t get many tour dates :/

What's the point of having high speed rail systems if you're not willing to take one from Portugal to France...

[songjo]

Diary: T&K Live in Newcastle

Well, it's been so long since I've been to a PUBLIC EVENT, and I have a relatively small number of friends who are part of this fandom, so I figured I'd write a little summary to send into the tumblr ether (where I lurk among T&K content anyway). And, to be honest, mostly for me to look back on, because it was so fabulous and I do not want to forget the feeling.

Long story short: possibly the best thing I've spent money on this year. Perhaps even on par with Except money spent on travel to see loved ones.

So I went to see the show at O2 City Hall in Newcastle on 8/12, which is located fortunately close to mine, since I knew I would have to go at the end of a working day. It was also the day of the first snow up in the North East, and we got the social-media posts from T&K stuck on the LNER service up from London. Trains have stopped running in the UK for less, and I'm just glad that they seemed to have avoided the fate of rail-replacement buses.

Impression on arrival: very mixed and happy crowd. All a bit cramped in the downstairs bar at the O2 (cramped mostly because of covid-resurgence/strep A/general winter bug concerns). For those who saw the backstage clips/photos from Obsessed where they were getting changed in what looked like a stairwell: the O2 is nearly 100 years old and grade II-listed (and it contains an organ with a Grade 1 certificate), so renovations would have to be highly considered, and I'm guessing that the dressing rooms were too far away for the quick changes.

Then I sat in my seat for about an hour, with Duolingo, watching the ads, hoping nobody taller would sit in front of me, deciding until the very end whether to buy merch now and have to somehow hold it all night or to buy it later. The North East is a place where nothing placed on the floor of a concert venue/club/cafe/shop is safe. Not from theft, but from spilled drinks.

The thing about having tried not to get too spoiled about the show, and failing to a certain degree, is that the anticipation is raised. So when the curtain drops and Trixie is there, it was pretty surreal.

They looked so good. I can't remember exactly where it was that T talked about Katya's performance being influenced by how good she thinks she looks (was it a tour bts clip?)... but the matter of that fact was that they looked GOOD.

Both T&K attempted the Geordie accent, and that was good too.

Whoever does their research for each stop is obviously meticulous - they knew that having Sunderland being the butt of jokes would go down well in Newcastle.

When they needed to gesture to the disco ball they couldn't find it. At first, I didn't even know if it was a gag, but apparently it's usually behind them, but it was in front of the stage (and suspended in the air ofc) this time.

The lighting was amazing? Pretty much every sparkly outfit was fully blingy. I'm sure this is by design, but it's worth mentioning.

Did I say that they looked good yet? Ugh.

The crowd duly cheered for the first outfit changes (black-and-white sparkly mini, which T paraded around; and the shiny red robe, which K modestly said "oh it's just a robe"). And also subsequent outfit changes. Some very VERY loudly. Even when T put on the boa (during the part where they were fighting and angrily throwing the contents of their clothing rails into their trunks), which earned an exasperated "it's a boa. *pose*"

Tbh, I think we just cheered very loudly for allsorts. At one point T went off-script (I think?) and said "are y'all just really drunk??" (crowd: more whooping) This is, for better and worse, very Newcastle.

T joking about being old is always funny since she's younger than I am. But I expect I elicit the same feeling when I joke about being old (and genuinely loving it) to older friends and colleagues.

The dancers are all adorable.

T fixed K's skirt when she's lying down on the stage just before Wind Beneath My Wings again. Maybe this is habit by now? When T first comes out on stage when K is "passed out", and asks where K is, nobody in the crowd actually said anything... T: "Thank you for being dignified enough to not point out the obvious and going 'she's behind you!'" (No idea if this was scripted, but it was a fun interaction.)

The little interlude/scene-change music was so funny, and had the exact right feeling for them?

During the TEDxxx portion, K was just in a black leotard. When T came in to do her talk, K wiggled out each time, and the screen (obviously) zoomed in on the butt.

T in her "T-is-K" get-up, in person, is insane. It already looked amazing on fancams but I guess being in the room heightens everything? Also, I don't know what the sound systems are like in their different venues, but the bass was dialled UP at City Hall, and Rasputin going into Ding Dong was a moment. It nearly became an unfortunate moment because T looked liked she lost her balance a teeny tiny bit and leaned backwards, but she's a pro's pro the number proceeded as usual. (I then played Ding Dong all the way home in my car.)

Seksi was everything I'd hoped it would be.

In fact, every choreographed piece was even better in person.

When T and K are tied up and Kelly Mantle is being the Klarma CEO, the girls are one point say, "murder is illegal in this country right?" Crowd: *crickets... then laughs*. K: "we leave tomorrow right?"

Kelly Mantle is amazing and I want all her suits. When Sandy returned from being locked up in the Klarma dungeon, her bangs were covering her eyes. (T&K both smiling, T stays smiling until she remembers to act again) T: "you gotta uh fix your wig there Sandy?" S: *adjusts hair* "I don't wear wigs, this is my hair."

At some point, when Sandy comes out looking for K, and K is mostly definitely not on stage, the crowd then went, "she's behind you!" And Sandy humoured by having a look behind her and then scolding us for messing about.

Can I just say one more time that the costumes are so fabulous? And the non-full-number music choices equally so?

It was just really, really wonderful.

I had planned to try to only take it in with my eyes, but I couldn't resist recording some of it as well. Clips will come up in due time.

[allwellthatendswales]

i got locked out of this account last week unfortunately, but i am back! these past weekends i went to london and dublin! these were such amazing trips and i am so thankful to have been able to study abroad where i have to ability to visit such cities like this! we took the train into london and had some issues due to rail strikes, but made it there! we were able to do the eye, visit the tower of london, see the lit streets, see big ben, buckingham palace, all the hits! there is so much history in london and i felt like every street i went to had so much behind it.

from wales we are able to get to dublin by ferry! taking the ferry and going through the big port of holyhead was really amazing too! i have been learning a lot about the UK border system and policing in one my classes and have a professor who has spoken about the holyhead port multiple times so it was great to get to see that! and be able to compare it to borders we have in the US, and learn from that.

dublin was amazing! we visit st.patrick’s cathedral, trinity college and the old library (seeing the book of kells!), toured the guinness factory, and visited some famous pubs. we went to one of the oldest pubs in ireland, the brazen head, and then ended the night at temple bar.

i have always loved ireland and i really enjoyed my time in dublin!

[candy-floss-crazy]

At one time mobile catering consisted of almost entirely box shaped 'burger vans'. Occasionally someone with a touch of flair, or perhaps just a bit mad, would put together something quirky. With the dawn of the instagram generation, boxy burger vans suddenly dropped out of vogue. To get ahead you really needed people to be sharing your set up. Sure, good food was important, but it was no longer the sole arbiter of success. Your food truck needed to look better. We are going to be taking a look at some of the quirky, weird, wonderful and downright strange catering outlets around the world. Happy Larrys Shipping containers are ubiquitous throughout the world. A standardised method of transporting goods via road, rail and sea. Many of them however do find a second life as something totally different. From bars, to offices to mobile toilets. They have also found favour with catering vendors. The basic container is a strong watertight structure, that is built to accurate dimensions, and lends itself to conversions. Happy as Larry is an Australian company that specialises in selling Napoli-style wood fired pizza. A nice touch in this container conversion is that they have replaced much of one side with huge glass pains to give a real contemporary feel to it. Space Shuttle Cafe If you are looking for something to convert into a food truck, the most obvious thing you could think of is an aeroplane. Probably not! This one was converted to a mobile eatery by GMC in 1976. But it started life as an actual flying machine in 1944. Cotton Candy Jeep One of our favourites this, take an iconic WWII off road vehicle, and shove a cotton candy (candy floss if you live this side of the pond) machine in the back. Oh and for good measure paint it all pink. Walls Mini Ice Cream Truck Walls ran a campaign called 'Goodbye Serious', where they built a miniaturised ice cream truck designed to drive into offices and dispense their best selling goodies. This is one seriously quirky little food truck. Though some of our taller staff might struggle to operate in this one. K99 Ice Cream Cart This one is notable, not for being a different type of food truck. But because of its target market. This sells ice creams for your canine companions. That's right, doggy ice creams. Seems that scientists have discovered  that gammon and chicken-flavored ice creams really hits the spot for our doggy friends. Vintage Caravan These are gaining in popularity, and are being used for everything from a gin bar to a burger joint. The ironic thing is, was during the late 90's, the fairground industry used these for staff quarters, then tended to scrap them at the end of the season. If they were scrapped, it wasn't unknow to just remove all identifying marks and leave them in a layby for the council to dispose of. You try buying one now, I have seen them advertised for upwards of £30k. Step Frame Food Truck More of a Stateside set up, they have a plethora of large step fram delivery vehicles from the likes of Dodge, Ford, GMC etc. These are pretty near the size of a 7.5 tonne lorry in the UK and make an ideal blank canvas to fit out as a mobile eatery Airstream Style Food Truck Another option hailing from the good ole US of A. Airstreams were originally touring caravans. Till some adventurous soul decided to cut the side out and add a kitchen. They are now a fairly regular sight on the UK scene. With both the original Airstream brand and a number of both EU based and Chinese manufacturers building similar looking trucks. Converted Vintage Horsebox Stunning Horsebox Food Truck Hire A regular sight nowadays, horseboxes are easy to obtain, pretty easy to convert and very flexible, though a bit on the small side for some catering options. Prices are steadily rising, to the benefit of anyone needing to dispose of a horsebox that's past it's sell by date. What you once would have scrapped, you can now get a tidy few grand for. Snow Mobile Food Truck This one is as far as we know, pretty unique. A burrito joint on a tracked snow mobile platform. Great for last minute corporate jobs in the arctic. Bloody noisy if you need to take it down the M1 motorway to London. London Red Bus Yoghurt Truck An iconic British vehicle this time, an ex London Routemaster bus, turned into a yoghurt dispensary by Snog. A cool vehicle for a cool brand serving a cool product (literally)! The Peanut Van Occasionally there are totally custom built trucks out there. I've seen vehicles that look like hot dogs, doughnuts, oranges. This one is a peanut. Leaves you in no doubt what the product is. Land Rover Ice Cream Truck Another off road vehicle pressed into service. We have already had a Willy's Jeep with a candyfloss machine. This one is the UK equivalent. In vehicles that is, not food. This is one cool ice cream truck. Monster Truck Another ice cream van. This time shoehorned into a monster truck. Unless you are 6ft 6 you need step ladders to be served here. Rocket Launcher Coffee Truck A big boys toy this one. A coffee truck on a rocket launcher. Though it didn't work out too well for two of the staff when they were arrested for causing panic on the streets of Malaysia. What's next, doughnuts served from a Challenger tank? Tactical Tapas Another paramilitary offering. Tapas from a tactical armoured car. It's all starting to get a bit Mad Max. Fire Engine The last couple of options were built on trucks designed to blow things up and start fires. These were designed to put them out. Popular both sides of the pond, though the US fire trucks just seem to be a lot more jazzy. Read the full article

[scots-gallivanter]

TWENTY-FOUR

Smiles in the sunshine and tears in the rain

Still take me back to where my memories remain

Flickering embers grow higher and higher

As they carry me back to the Mull of Kintyre.

PAUL MCCARTNEY & DENNY LAINE (1978)

THE ZOOLOGIST James Wilson stood on a boat not far from here one beautiful summer’s evening in 1841. It was calm. It was still. Lights gleamed along the shore, and there was ‘a peculiar concerto between sea and land’. He jotted: 'A shoal of porpoises was tumbling and blowing in the bay, while the dry monotonous craik craik of the land-rail was as distinctly heard as if we had been anchored in the middle of a clover field.'

Nikki and I are sheltering in the doorway of a disused shop in cold, wet Campbeltown. I’ve an electronic version of Wilson’s A Voyage round the coasts of Scotland and the Isles on my steamed-up phone.

There is a shower of the kind of rain that looks less wet than it turns out to be. There are no seabirds or cetaceans in sight. It’s a damp day at the stub end of April. We are in between showers in Kintyre, that arm of land that reaches down the map to meet the ocean beyond the Mull. I have mislaid my rain-proof trousers. Had my dear father, who died while I was writing this book, been standing beside me, he’d have advised me, as he had done during a storm when I was eight: 'If it disnae kill you, it’ll cure you, boy. Your skin’s waterproof, either way.'

For some folk Kintyre may be the road to nowhere, but Scotland was more or less born here: as dreamy Dál Riata, the kingdom of the Gaels from Antrim, who settled here at the end of the fifth century. John Macculloch wrote, of Campbeltown itself (The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, 1824): 'A more picturesque and beautiful situation for a maritime town could not well be found, and, from different points, it presents some fine views; uniting all the confusion of town architecture with the wildness of alpine scenery, the brilliancy of a lake, and the life, and bustle, and variety, incidental to a crowded harbour and pier.'

Visitors to Kintyre used to arrive by sea. Most now take that long and winding road from Glasgow to Campbeltown, but the last leg of it, down the A83 from Tarbert, is relatively straight: it edges a raised beach lashed by the Atlantic rollers of the west: a wild seaboard gashed by mini ravines that have no right to be so close to so sandy a littoral. A glacier maybe dumped them one after a jagged other to become rocky outcrops. Shards and larger boulders. Mini-pinnacles. Seabirds of several species perch out on a scar there today and I’ve counted, what, 20 cormorants. A sight to behold, as we unwind from jumping off the bus to help the driver release a lamb trapped in a fence.

Here, from the Glasgow bus, you can, in fair weather, marvel at the distant outline of the Paps of Jura undulating their strangeness out on the horizon. After a while the road turns inwards for a few miles to reach the ‘wee toon’, which is fringed by a sweeping horseshoe bay beneath hill-land. Wee Campbeltown was once the capital of the old Gaelic kingdom. At the end of the 19th century it was a boomtown – one of the richest towns per capita in the UK, and so full of distilleries that they called it Whiskyopolis.

In the game of snakes and ladders that is Scotland’s economy it wasn’t always that way. Campbeltown had been the chief town of the Lords of the Isles, and effectively the capital of Scotland before Edinburgh was thought of, although Pennant observed in 1772 that it had risen in less than 30 years from ‘a petty fishing town to its present flourishing state’:

'About the year 1744 it had only two or three small vessels belonging to the port: at present there are seventy-eight sail, from twenty to eighty tons burthen, all built for, and employed in, the herring fishery ; and about eight hundred sailors are employed to man them. This town in fact was created by the fishery.' (A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides)

By the time the Rev. Daniel Kelly penned his entry for the New Statistical Account of Scotland in 1843, 500 families fished here but he stressed that ‘the great staple commodity of this place is the distillation of malt whisky’. There were then 25 distilleries, 76 pubs, and an Excise Office that employed 50 people.

The deep harbour was ideal for whisky to be steamed out to markets in the UK and America. Whisky tycoons built villas as grand as any erected by shipping magnates elsewhere. But the distilling industry was ultimately a victim of its success. The demand for liquor was so great that the distilleries concentrated on quantity rather than quality. The killer blow was a series of rises in spirit duties. When the 1911 census revealed an eight per cent drop in population over the past 10 years, the Argyllshire Herald declared:

'The removal from town and district of the best and most virile of our youth continues. There is but one way to stem the tide; that is, by the promotion of some new local industries.

'It remains for somebody to take the initiative, to devise new industries and so resuscitate the trade of the town, otherwise the decline will certainly continue.'

The paper noted that 37 people were emigrating every week, mainly to Canada. The distilleries began to close. There are now only three – in a town that was identified in 2013 as one of the most vulnerable in Scotland, and one of the most remote in the UK. Fuel poverty rates were nearly double the national average then. Professor Cliff Hague, chairman of the Built Environment Scotland, stated in a report: 'Like so many small towns, Campbeltown has been the plaything of forces beyond its own control. Its traditional industries – whisky, shipbuilding, fishing, forestry and tourism – have all experienced restructuring, and the same is true for agriculture which was once the mainstay of the surrounding area.'

There are encouraging signs. Glen Scotia Distillery’s 25-year-old malt has been crowned the world’s best. In the 2021 SURF awards for best practice in regeneration, Campbeltown was judged to be ‘Scotland’s most improved place’ (As many as 40 industrial buildings had received investment that totalled £13 million).

In 2023 plans were lodged for a ‘net zero’ distillery in the erstwhile whisky capital. The Brave New Spirits brand will be distilled at Witchburn Distillery in the former RAF Machrihanish airbase, which the community bought for £1. Their target is two million litres of alcohol per year, powered by 100% renewable energy and heat and energy recovery systems. The former NATO base operated as an airfield for nuclear-armed V-Bombers, for maritime aircraft hunting Russian submarines in the North Atlantic, and during the testing of Concorde.

The local populace, moreover, successfully fought plans to convert Scotland’s oldest atmospheric cinema, Campbeltown Picture House, into flats. It opened its doors the year before a young Charlie Chaplin signed for Pinewood Studios. It is still showing flicks.

Paul McCartney’s association with Kintyre is well documented. In 1966 he asked his accountant to find him a hideaway from the world of autograph-hunters and Beatlemania. He came up with High Park, an isolated farm on the moors near the Mull of Kintyre, which became the subject of one of the best-selling songs of all time in Britain. Very few people visited the Beatle in his far-flung bolthole. But Peter Brown, who was best man at John Lennon’s wedding, revealed in his biography of The Beatles, The Love You Make (2002):

'Paul summoned Alistair [Taylor, his office manager] to High Park so that he could pay a visit to the local pharmacy for him. According to Alistair, Paul had the crabs and needed a pesticide to shampoo with.

'Being Paul McCartney, the neighbourhood celebrity, Paul was too embarrassed to ask the pharmacist in the small town for the pesticide himself, so he sent Alistair. There was also a sense of urgency to this mission, lest Paul give the tiny parasites to Jane [Asher], who would most certainly realize he had been unfaithful to her.

'The town pharmacist was baffled by Alistair’s request. He had nothing for that purpose other than "sheep dip", which was used to delouse cattle. Paul presumably made do with that.'

In August, 1887 an unnamed boater rowed ashore in Campbeltown loch to stretch his legs. He wandered into one of the seven caves that notch the south of Davaar island, struck a match to light his pipe – and fainted. The following day hundreds of townspeople ran along the shingle causeway to the island brandishing byre lamps and candles. There in the cave was a life-size mural of Christ on the Cross. The Campbeltown Courier informed its readers:

'Nothing could be more suitable for the contemplation of such a subject than the semi-darkness and rocky grandeur of the large cavern in which the picture is placed.'

An embarrassed local art teacher, Archibald Mackinnon, owned up to being the creator of the fresco.

Locals said Mackinnon, who attached a brush to his walking stick to paint the high features in the cave, fearing the consequences of having used the school’s raw materials to paint the mural, did a moonlight flit soon after press coverage. He turned up in Grantham, where he became an itinerant artist. There are reports that he used hair from his nagging wife’s head to make brushes. Journalists reported his subsequent return to touch the mural up in 1934 – a visit that featured in cinema newsreels. He died the following year, aged 85.

Davaar’s second claim to fame is that the island appears on the Mull of Kintyre album cover, and many latter-day seekers of weirdness visit Davaar, which is accessible along a shingle causeway at low tide. The walk takes about 40 minutes. The island, home to peregrine falcons, dolphins, basking sharks, otters and seals, is privately owned and is part of an organic working farm with holiday cottages. One pilgrim visited in 2006 with a can of red spray paint and stencilled an image of the revolutionary Ché Guevara over the painting of Christ. His identity remains a mystery, but his work was short-lived.

Along the jagged shore opposite Davaar, ‘coasters’ used to roam and squat, away from it all. Jamie ‘Loafs’ Moran, Jock Smith, and Teddy Lafferty often crashed out in a written-off ambulance; and the four Morrans brothers, Joe, Dan, Mickey and Archie, used to sleep in a converted Co-op grocery van. In search of worldly contentment they wandered through land that featured evocative names: Ru Stafnish, Johnston’s Point, Second Waters, Polliwilline Bay, Gartnagerach, and a hill called The Bastard. Journalist Freddy Gillies told the Coast Scottish heritage website: 'To aver that the coasters "roughed it"would be an understatement, but they were a breed set apart who found true happiness during their forays, either alone with their thoughts or in company, particularly in the surroundings of the Learside’s coarse grass and pebble-strewn beaches.

'Sustenance came in the form of dry or tinned stores, occasionally supplemented by rabbit stew or "wilk bree", a thin soup made from periwinkles. Tea, naturally, was taken regularly, as were certain stronger brews.'

For holidaying motorists a 66-mile circular road trip, Kintyre 66, was launched in 2021. From Campbeltown it snakes its scenic way up the east coast via the B842 to Skipness and Claonaig, one of the ferry points to Arran. On its way up the Kilbrannan Sound the route doesn’t veer too far from the coast. There are some stunning views of the Arran skyline from this narrow highway. The road is a single-track one for its last 18 miles.

En route, eight miles north of Campbeltown, lies Saddell Bay, along which a pipe band marched in a memorable video that promoted Wings’s hit single.

Kintyre, of course, has a long history of music-making, on top of McCartney and the ‘Campbeltown Loch I wish you were whisky’ that Andy Stewart once belted out. From his home in the south of England the Rev. Edward Bradley visited Kintyre most summers and he wrote books about its folklore, under the pseudonym, Cuthbert Bede. One of them was Argyll’s Highlands or MacCailein Mor and the Lords of Lorne, published posthumously in 1902, three decades after his research. In the preface John Mackay, the editor of Celtic Monthly, argued: 'It has been left to "outsiders" to produce the best books on Kintyre. Cuthbert Bede ….. has, by implication, shown what a native might do, if he only took the trouble to even note down the ceilidh stories which he heard told round the winter fire.'

Bede wrote warmly of pedlars, vagrants and assorted travellers doing their bit to keep the old Gaelic tales going by narrating them or singing them in the vernacular:

'The shining rafters of the peat-reeked roofs would vibrate to the reels and jigs and strathspeys danced by the barefooted lads and lassies on the earthen floor to the inspiring music that the beggar with the Jew’s harp blew from his pipes, or scraped out of his fiddle, or breathed from his Lochaber trumps.

“Then, tired from jigging, they would gather around the fire and listen to the beggar recite the mystical poems of Ossian. The beggar would relate wild legends and thrill them with stories of ghosts and warlocks and brownies and water-kelpies, told with dramatic power and an actor’s art.'

Bede added: 'Such wanderers as these were wondrous popular in the Western Highlands and Islands, and nowhere more so than in Cantire, where, at its veritable Land’s-end, the Mull was more thickly populated than it is in these sheep-farming days.'

A lady in white and a sinister monk are the resident ghosts of Saddell Castle near the aforementioned bay of the same name. Bede observed in the 1870s that it was one of only two castles in Kintyre in a reasonable state of repair, the other being Skipness further up the peninsula. In 1976, the Landmark Trust restored it to its former glory.

After a basking shark made a boat capsize in the Kilbrannon Sound in 1937 – killing three people – a shark processing factory was established at Carradale almost in revenge. The oil was used for Tilley lamps and candles.

A piece in The Scotsman in June 1939 tells of crowds gathering on Carradale Pier to watch sharks being harpooned. As soon as the harpoon was fired, the sharks dived and disappeared, but one was hit and it ‘made off at racing speed towards the Kilbrannan Sound but whirled back in its tracks and went round and round in the bay in a series of great circles’ towing the boat with it.

Not far away, in 2022, an Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems, appeared overnight in a car park nearby to erect masts! Niall Macalister Hall, who owns the Torrisdale Castle estate, told the Daily Record:

'They were pretty arrogant and said they didn’t need permission to do anything. They design and operate drones and they are into weapons systems, so we’re naturally wanting to know what they are up to.'

Elbit Systems UK employs 600 people over 13 sites, many of which have been targeted by protestors from the Palestine Action group.

The novelist and socialist activist Naomi Mitchison lived in Carradale for many years, and Flora Drummond, the Arran-born suffragette ‘general’, who was one of the pall bearers at Emiline Pankhurst’s funeral, lived her final years at Carradale, almost opposite her childhood home in Arran. She is buried in the village cemetery. Drummond was jailed nine times and undertook hunger strikes to advance the cause.

Possibly the highlight of the eastern flank of Kintyre is Skipness. Skipness estate was once run by stereotypical gung-ho gentry. The shooting extended over 20,000 acres, and visitors could bag grouse, black game, partridges, hares, rabbits, wood-cock, snipe, plover, pheasants and roebuck.

Colonel Walter Campbell, the so-called ‘Old Forest Ranger’, owned Skipness when he wrote his Indian Journal in 1864. Campbell revealed that when he returned from the colonies, his tutor, the foxhunter Alan McIntyre was still creeping about with his long-barrelled gun under his arm in his 70s. Campbell reminisced:

'It was really affecting to see the poor old man with tears of joy pouring over his furrowed cheeks, as I displayed to him my Indian trophies of the chase, and reminded him that, but for his good training I should never have earned them.

'He patted me on the back, calling me "the calf of his heart", the pride of his old age, and would sit for hours gazing at the heads and skins which decorated the hall, as an old Indian chief might do upon the scalps taken in war by his only son, chanting the while a song of triumph which he had composed on my return from "the far-off hunting-grounds near the rising sun", where I had slain great wild cats larger and stronger than a Highland bull.'

In his 1853 book, The Old Forest Ranger: Or, Wild Sports Of India On The Neilgherry Hills, In The Jungles, And On The Plains, he had written longingly about spearing wild boar watched by ‘vulgar Hindoos’. That’s probably enough of Campbell.