THE OUTLANDISH WAY

The August walk was attended by an august group of walkers that didn't include me. In fact, there were a few of us missing for one reason or another.

As I wasn't there, I am indebted to Jim and Jacque and to Hugh for providing me with ammunition, sorry, photographs, to use in the blog. It will, due to my absence, be a work of complete fiction.

The email advising of the walk indicated that they would meet at Dunphail at 1100, sort out transport and then drive to Dava Bridge to start the walk. I expected, therefor to be able to simply sort the two sets of photographs by time and, so, have a neat chronological sequence of images starting from about 1130. Fat chance!

Hugh's camera clearly updates the time automatically depending on the season. The one owned by Jim and Jaque, clearly disnae! So the times on the photos start at 1030 for the J&J images and 1130 for Hugh's. Then they start to overlap and it became desperately confused. So, I had to pick the photos i wanted to use and rename them all to get them in the right order. To say I was losing the will to live before I even started typing is an understatement. Not that this will colour my musings about the various people on the walk.

Anyway, here they all are at 1128 by Hugh's camera at the car park and ready to go.

Here they are, well on their way, an hour earlier at 1029 according to the J&J camera. Confused? You will be, but not as much as I was.

Sandra was just using a bit of spit on her hankie to clean Pam's face. Do you remember when your mother used to do that to you? How can it possibly have been hygienic? How did we manage to make it to adulthood? 

Dave tells them where they are at 1130 by BHT - British Hugh Time. In fact, all this time travel could lend itself to an Outlander blog! If you haven't watched it and you want to be amazed, then you should. It is truly incredible.

Which way to go? Lallybroch in 1745, or Inverness in 1948? Jings, I dinnae ken, sassenach? Whatever ye dae, you better watch out for Blacksmith Sandals, he's a richt de'il, that ane.

Is this the Dava Bridge, or is it, in fact, the bridge between two separate times? Judging by the clothes, I would say there are two different eras represented here.

Ye ken, sassenach, the mark of the English is everywhere on our homeland - there's nae escape from the buggers. It is clearly the work o' that Blacksmith Sandals, or mair like, his son, Andra'.

Aye Murthugh, can ye no open the gates o' the castle so that wee Davie can get oot and away tae warn Jamie that the redcoats are on his trail?

That's us a' oot the prison, but now we dinna ken where to gang next. If only we had a sign.

Och aye, sassenach, here's the sign we were looking for - Bantrach Wood. No, that's not right, this is the 1950's. Frank Sandals, Blacksmith's descendent, or maybe not, is out to shoot that Jamie chap.

Perhaps it is time we all escaped from the 18th Century, through the stone bridge portal. I dinae ken if I can keep up this train of thocht, sassenach. By the way, what's a train?

It says here, sassenach, that this bridge was built in 1861 - I should be dead and ye're no even born yet! How can that be? I'm just glad I accepted everything you told me without even batting an eyelid.

Here, sassenach, d'ye ken what a divie is? It's someone who disnae ken what time it is on their camera!

Aye, Mistress Fitzgibbons will aye see you've got something to keep body and soul thegither. 

 

Alas poor Murthugh has fallen over after Lady Claire told him the whole truth about prohibition in the 1930's. Luckily, wee Davie is on hand to help him understand how it is possible to pass through stones and between times. Murthugh, doesn't care about that, he just disnea want to live through a time without whisky.

Murthugh explains to Mistress Fitzgibbons and her niece, the scheming, Maurie, how good he is at using his dirk. He's nae bad wi' an axe either, but ye may no have got to that bit of time yet, so I'll nae spoil it fur ye. Suffice to say, ye might go aff yer heid when ye see it.

This must be the source of Ian Murray's legs. 

This, of course, is Collie MacKenzie,the clan chief and a sly old dog.

Mistress Fitzgibbons gives Collie a stroke - there's quite a lot of that sort of thing in the programme. Murthugh seems more pleased than he should be.

Another sign from the future about the past. It gets more confusing the more you watch it.

Wee Davie tries to make sense of it all. Does Lady Claire really no love Frank Sandals, because of what Blacksmith did to Jamie? How did Jamie get that hat? Why are Mistress Fitzgibbons and her niece here? Is that really Louise Pam de Rohan Jacket? (She was that flirty temptress in Paris and I don't think the Young Pretender was pretending all the time.)

 This is the route to the cludgie.

The French king had a bit of bother for some time, until Jamie suggested porridge would solve all his problems.

It clearly worked, because he appears to have blown the doors aff the cludgie.

I wouldn't get too close if i was you!

No wonder he blew the doors aff, do you see the size of the porridge bowl.

Time to get some more porridge afore they have to charge the English guns at Culloden.

I had to think long and hard before I decided what to say about this photo, but eventually I recognised that it was that besom Maurie's decolletage. Lucky heather anyone?

The battle is over, It is time to try and find the way back to Lallybroch, but I'm guessing it doesn't really exist, so this could be the road to nowhere - Talking Heads 1985, if you really want to know.

Perhaps you'll be able to cure my cynicism using the roots of this plant, Claire. Then again, I don't know what it is, so it might be a case of kill or cure.

How did Tyrian Lannister get here from Game of Thrones? Someone should tell him he's in the wrong show. 

It might be 1745, but they clearly had somewhere for a helicopter to land.

Or, perhaps this is all a result of eating too many of these.

Luckily they got to the cars, jumped through the back of Jamie's charabanc.....

....and ended up at Logie in stead of Lallybroch.

Well done to the whole cast and crew of Outlandish, a film directed by Jim and Jacque Smith. 

If you haven't seen the TV programme or read the books, well done for getting this far and my apologies for putting you through all of that. You won't need to catch up on it now, anyway.