books maps writing and research

The coast to coast I looked tentatively at the north sea as the waves crashed along the shore of the Voe, the weather was perfect for an endurance event of this type, not overly hot slight breeze and the faintest of light drizzle, this should keep me cool when running and be bright enough for great views of the route ahead, my previous coast to coast adventures had been done by bicycle, the C2C Irish sea to north sea with Brotts`y and Bates`y, then later the Scottish coast coast-forth estuary to the Clyde estuary with gary park, this was going to be a solo event, a nonstop run from the north sea to the Atlantic ocean I felt this epic journey should be marked by touching my feet first into North Sea then pocketing a small stone for the journey. Not a heavy one that could become uncomfortable and perhaps hinder my progress, this done I set my GPS watch to start and pressed record on the go/pro I was off. Leaving the North Sea behind I scrambled up the pebble beach to bound up the grassy slope towards the road. There was a crowd around the car park at the road with my mate robbo there in my support, he said you`re fuckin mad you are in his thick smoggy accent as I ran past him, once over the road I literally bolted through the gate as it was the self-lock spring bolt type of gate that shuts itself effortlessly once you are through, there was no path beyond this gate, moving as light of foot as I could down through the extremely damp squidgy grass, en-route to the seaweed covered boulder and pebbled upper shore, once over the seaweed I ran into the sun which was by now low and casting a warm glow over the water, my now wet shoes were slipping slightly as I quickly approached the Atlantic shore This is my attempt at some creative writing, unlike the rest of my blog! (no comments please) the Shetland coast to coast at Mavis grind had taken me less than a minute as I knew it would, it was just a bit of fun as something I could say that I had ran nonstop from the North Sea to the Atlantic on a coast-to-coast adventure which I now had I love books and maps its been a huge part of this whole Shetland trig point adventure for me, doing the research into getting to remote areas along with the history flora fauna and geology of that area I was visiting, it makes the whole concept of getting from one trig point to the next much more fun when you find out facts along the way and can stop at sights of interest with a knowledge about what you are witnessing, this is also one of the reasons I like keeping a blog, because writing about these adventures is a great way to encourage myself to keep it up, even if it is only to one or two readers I still feel a need to keep going and get the mission done for the blog!

The mission is as far as it can go for now on the Shetland trig point front! My original objective started in June was to get to all of the seventy-seven pillar trig points plus the two curry stools, I have achieved this except for the two pillars on extremely (for me for now) difficult to get to islands of foula and fair isle,

Last week on the eighteen of April 18/4/21, this day marked the eighty fifth anniversary of the trig point! On the18 April 1936 a group of surveyors gathered around a white concrete pillar in a field in Cold Ashby England and began the retriangulation of Great Britain. That trig pillar is still standing 85 years on, these shining (sometimes) white monoliths, I would need to go through my Shetland trig point photos, but I believe there is a couple painted white? I should have counted these! Trig points are now instantly recognised by any walker, or geography lover and have inspired many a trigbagger. Which I suppose I am? I haven’t counted the ones I have visited ion the mainland but may do so one day, they are now largely redundant, back in 1936, they formed a state-of-the-art network built to re-map Britain, dreamt up by Brigadier Martin Hotline, He also designed the iconic trig pillar to provide a solid base for the theodolites used by the survey teams to improve the accuracy of their readings. these are now named after him

Some 6,500 were built, to be used for triangulation, the mathematical process that makes accurate map making possible. It works by determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline. OS surveying teams spent 26 years gathering measurements across Britain to create a highly accurate map of the country, but time and technologies have moved on enormously to the point where the traditional trig pillar is now obsolete in its original guise. They still act as a beacon for many an outdoors lover, but they no longer help shape our maps, these days we still use triangulation for map making but it’s done by computers from some of the two thousand satellites circling our planet As I travel through Orkney, I will not be ticking of the trigpoints that bagging challenge is over for now, I have completed maps one two and three of the O/S landranger series, with only foula and fair isle left to do on map four, map five is north Orkney I will not be purchasing it, just in case?! It is time to move Kenny`s daunder onto a new venture, but as the legendary arnold Schwarzenegger I’ll be back,

This mission for Shetland’s trig points would have been so much harder without the friends that have helped me along the way, I cannot thank them all enough I can only hope they know how greatly I appreciate it. Hopefully I will be of some inspiration to some to go on to do this challenge also? It’s a fantastic way to truly see these islands, in order to properly map the UK the O/S teams also used markers called bolts (19) of these rivets (3) of these and also 11 surface blocks, I have visited one surface block at fethaland and one bolt on the crooksetter hill, the crooksetter hill bolt is right next to the gas plant, if your going to track these down then you will probably need to be better with a map and compass than I am! I looked for that wee bolt at the nearby cairn and in the end was lucky to find it at another smaller cairn

I have logged all these on the trigpointing.uk web site if you are considering doing this challenge then print of a sheet, log all the ones you do I’ve logged mine on the web site and manually on my check sheet and map, also have a photo of each one visited on my phone and this blog, I have no idea how many I have done on the UK mainland or the highlands and islands as I’ve not logged these, I have done the highest peaks in Scotland England and wales each of those has a trig point I could log? I’ve now done the most northern and eastern maybe I should do the most western and southern of Scotland’s trig points, or is my trig point adventures over?

I’ve found reading some books about local people was an invaluable source of knowledge, I learned much more about the islands from reading books like- a town called toilets and also bobby the birdman two biographies about influential Shetlander’s, than I ever found out looking at maps and speaking to people, but those have also been great it’s a shame I’ve been doing these trigs during a pandemic because I could then have spoken with more people,

I am now reading mairi hedderwick Shetland rambles book which is fantastic. I love her stuff, yes the katy Morag stories are great especially the art work, I have this week became a great uncle again to a baby girl called penny, she shall get some katy Morag books from great uncle kenny when I get home, but Hedderwick has also done adult books about her touring around Scotland in the footsteps of a Victorian artist/travelogue`r called john T Reid, these are great books she recreates his paintings and visits the places he visited comparing these places with then in his words and paintings and now in hers, I am enjoying this read sadly its out of print or I would gift it before leaving