Scottish Islands Explorer

30/07/2025

The familiar sound of the ferry leaving Berneray for Leverburgh… the most familiar sound is right at the end as the first of many car alarms went off! fans

29/06/2025

23/06/2025

At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, representatives of small island states made impassioned pleas for help to combat climate change. In an impressive speech, Mia Motley, prime minister of Barbados, presented delegates with the unvarnished truth that a two-degree rise in temperature would be a “death sentence” for island nations.
The Outer Hebrides is not a nation, though it sometimes feels like one, but as an island entity, it faces many of the same problems as Barbados. Of course, climate change is affecting the whole of the UK – indeed, the whole world – but it is hitting the Outer Hebrides and other islands communities in Scotland in specific ways that relate both to their state of being an archipelago and their connection to the land and the sea.

Fiona Rintoul looks at Climate Change in the June/July edition of Scottish Islands Explorer Magazine

03/06/2025

"It’s a strange place [the Isle of Rum], not in the slightly eccentric way which Eigg might be perceived, but in a darker more foreboding way, with its mountains rearing up like the gates of Mordor wherever you go on the island. It has a dark past too, and one which, despite two visits in very different weather, I don’t feel it has yet shaken off. "

Read what Alastair Macdonald Jackson has to say about about Rum in the June/July edition of Scottish Islands Explorer magazine!

27/05/2025

One of life's simple pleasures, hanging your sheets out on the line!

Rosemary Barry takes us to Lismore in the June/July edition of Scottish Islands Explorer magazine - which is out now!

Click the link in the bio to get your copy :)

15/05/2025

One of the less useful gates in the Scottish isles

12/05/2025

Stornoway-Ullapool ferry Loch Seaforth passing point - seen from Swordale.

21/04/2025

Poets from Scotland, New Zealand and Australia in event at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh – including Donald S Murray from Shetland and North Lewis. https://www.welovestornoway.com/index.php/articles/38163-donald-turns-starman-as-cosmic-crofter-soars

21/04/2025

Remembering the 'bothan' culture of North Lewis…and the court cases in the 20th Century
https://www.welovestornoway.com/index.php/articles/38185-police-raid-recalls-struggles-at-bothan

06/04/2025

Berneray yesterday and then heading for Leverburgh

06/04/2025

06/04/2025

A book by Shteland-based writer Donald S Murray’s back catalogue is spotlighted in a Canadian book club website feature on whisky and words. The Dark Stuff: Stories From The Peatlands is part of a showcase that blends literature and whisky into a fascinating dip into 'uisge beatha' – the water of life – and the relevant books to devour.

A Canadian book club recommends The Dark Stuff: Stories From The Peatlands by writer Donald S Murray as the perfect companion to a peaty Scottish whisky.