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A Taste of the Neolithic
“The main course will be shin of beef braised in an un-hopped bere malt beer, because I don’t want bitterness there. I am hoping to acquire some neep tops to serve with it. It’s a
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The Era when the Cold Came Back
By 16,000 years ago, according to the current estimates of the BRITICE-CHRONO project, the ice sheet which had covered almost all the future British isles for thousands of years was gone. There were still glaciers
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Island Wildcats?
I once saw a wildcat. I was approaching a bare heather clad summit, about 900 metres above sea level, when it started out of the heather a few metres ahead and flowed away up the
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Festival will commemorate Moon landing
Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary will be commemorated in Orkney in September with a programme of talks on space and astronomy in the islands’ annual science festival. Speakers will include Scotland’s Astronomer Royal and the chief
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Old Ways and New Journeys
“I’m nothing more than someone who is trying to gain an understanding of my past history through learning the skills that have enabled us all to be here standing on this earth today.” These words
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Science festival gets foraging dimension
Orkney International Science Festival this year will have an added outdoor dimension as it joins forces with a new Foraging Fortnight being established in Scotland. Foraging food from the wild, once standard for older generations,
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Living off the Land
Unless you are a forager, you might not know that the early leaves of the rowan tree taste like marzipan, that shoots from the pine tree can make an awesome spice, that the saponins in
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The great cartographer: Murdoch Mackenzie
The great cartographer: Murdoch Mackenzie One of the great names in cartography is Murdoch Mackenzie, whose charts of Orkney waters in the 18th century were a breakthrough. His story was told in a talk to
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Fresh food approaches for Scotland
Wendy Barrie is coordinating Foraging Fortnight events on mainland Scotland, and coming to Orkney to speak on Swedish food from the wild. Mary Leonard has been finding out more about her background. Affectionately known as
“I’m nothing more than someone who is trying to gain an understanding of my past history through learning the skills that have enabled us all to be here standing on this earth today.” These words [...]
I once saw a wildcat. I was approaching a bare heather clad summit, about 900 metres above sea level, when it started out of the heather a few metres ahead and flowed away up the [...]
Whenever the poet George Mackay Brown reorganised his library, getting rid of some of the overspill, some books from younger years would always remain. There was the first Penguin book from 1935, a biography of [...]
“The main course will be shin of beef braised in an un-hopped bere malt beer, because I don’t want bitterness there. I am hoping to acquire some neep tops to serve with it. It’s a [...]
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