Ancient abode

It is hard to believe that not so very long ago a family would have lived in this old cottage. Maybe it was they who replaced the turf roof with this more modern corrugated iron. The right hand end of the building included a byre.

As you can see, outside the front entrance is a reminder that the owner of this property was somewhat better off than many of these crofters. They had a hand driven sewing machine that is now forgotten and rusting away.

I am not sure that the lives we now lead are any better than they were then. The view from this property people would now pay many thousands of pounds to own. Due to the shape of the land this cottage was well sheltered from the prevailing wind.

The residents no doubt made their living from the land in front of the cottage but also they might have walked down the path behind the cottage to the sea where they might have aslso supplemented their income with fishing.

Incidentally the path which my wife and I walked up from the shoreside township of Camustianavaig is known as the 'Scholars Path'. Years ago the children from that township would have used this path to go to and return from School.

Penultimately, if you read the Tags you will note I have used the name for the cottage of 'Blackhouse'. There are many ideas for the reason why they were called this but the reason I like and understand best is that long before it had been learnt to make whitewash from burning oyster shells the people used to weatherproof their houses by coating them with Pitch.

Finally since by creating a double image I have lost the data for the image I can confirm that basically both images were taken at 1344hrs today. Further;- I used my Nikon D80
1st image F/6.7, 1/60 sec, ISO 400, Focal length 18mm, Max Aperture 3.6, metering mode - pattern
2nd image F/8, 1/15 sec, ISO 400, Focal length 48mm, Max aperture 3.6, metering mode - pattern