Scotland, day 12: Lewis.

Today we went for a long bike ride up north. Cycling in Lewis is fun and the weather looked OK today. Our first stop was Dun Carloway broch. These blackhouse remains sit at the bottom of the hill.

On top of the hill stand the best preserved remains of an iron age roundhouse that was called a "broch". A broch was home to an important person or chieftain. It's a double cylinder structure where the inner and outer cylinder are connected by mostly stairs and bits of flooring. The whole structure is made of "dry" stone meaning no cement was used. Creating something that stands for over 4000 years by using dry stone is quite an achievement!

The info board.

Inner and outer walls.

The awesome thing about these remains is that you can still walk through parts of the wall. People walked these stairs 4000 years ago and today I walked on them.

The doorway is very small, you have to squat to get through.

Dun Carloway Broch on the right. Abandoned blackhouse in the front and new "white" houses in the background.
Great visit!

Next up was the blackhouse village of Garenin, just outside of Carloway. This used to be a tiny crofting village of about 5-6 so called "black houses". One of them is left as it was when the last occupants left. This was also the very last black house in use.

As I said they left all their belongings in there. I don't really know what happened to these people. I think they were quite old when they left and were looked after in a nursing home. This was their bedroom.

Beds and heater.

Looking out of the bedroom in to the kitchen/living room. The fire was almost out.
Notice that you can see clearly!

Kitchen/living room the other way. There's also a bed in there.

Stuff.

The shed/working area. Lots of people in villages like this took to making the famous Harris tweed.

The last occupants.

Living conditions in a blackhouse were not exactly ideal as this picture illustrates. The man looking after the fire came back after lunch and put new peat on the fire. It was a bit wet and therefore created a lot of smoke.

More smoke was coming out of the window instead of the chimney...

Moving on! The last place we wanted to visit was a water mill which is a reconstruction of a mill that stood on this site once built during the iron age. And we found it, with a nice rainbow in the background :-)

The building in the front contained a drying area where a fire was heating whatever was being milled. The back building contained the actual watermill.

The mill.

The midgies :-( There were so many midgies around here (there was no wind and it had rained) that I could hardly stand still for taking a photo.

On the way back I spotted this house. I had already seen it on the way up and knew I had to stop for a picture. Love it.

We had to pull in to a hotel to shelter for the rain at some point. This rain wasn't funny anymore. Thank god we were nearly home and had seen all we wanted to today without getting wet!

Had a fantastic time cycling and seeing all these historic things today! :-)

Scotland, day 5: Harris.

The b&b has bikes so we rented two. This photo was taken 5 minutes in to our ride. We stopped at the supermarket in the village and when we came out noticed that my bike had a puncture. Unreal. I had to drive back on Marjolein's bike, holding my own and replace the tube AND the outer tyre. I was SO not amused... 45 minutes later we managed to continue.

Anyways, off we went and soon enough we saw our first target of today's trip: St. Clement's church in Rodel.

Marjolein in front of the church. There are MacLeod's everywhere here. The church was build in the 15th century.

This wall tomb belongs to the 8th MacLeod of Harris chief Alasdair Crotach MacLeod and was build in 1528.

This was his son William's tomb if I'm not mistaken. He was the 9th chief.

Not sure what this exactly was for.

This tomb belongs to John MacLeod of Minginish, the 10th Chief I believe.

Not too much is documented and the church fell in disuse for quite some time and ended up as a cow byre until being restored in 1873 by Catherine Herbert Countess of Dunmore.

More MacLeods outside.

St. Clement's church, Rodel, Harris, Scotland.

Vincent, Rodel, Harris, Scotland.

The view most of the day. Harris is not really well suited for cycling. Very hilly...

Close to the church there is another very interesting site that is overlooked by most people probably. There is this cairn but that's not what I meant. Cairns are everywhere here. They are little hills made of stones. Some hills are very old and some are new. People (mostly tourists I reckon) still build them...

View from the cairn. Quite nice.

This was the find of the day though! Remains of a dun (or duns?). The arrows point to 3 rectangular walls. A "dun" was an iron age fort. I haven't been able to find any information on this particular site unfortunately.

Me standing in the doorway.

On the way back we stopped at the Rodel Hotel for dinner. not overly impressed with the food but the location was great!

View.

Uni day 2012

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I went to town just after 9AM today to meet Marjolein for her uni-day 2012. The university she studied at organizes this day every year. There is a guided tour through town in the morning, interesting lectures in the afternoon and a classical concert in the evening.

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The weather was fantastic for walking around town and I took some great pictures. This was while walking to the meeting point. The building at the end is "De Waag" at the Nieuwmarkt.

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This is the "Noorderkerk". The views in the old town are really fantastic.

I picked up my pass and then we had a coffee before the tour would start.

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We did a tour that would take us past a few places that hold an important place in Amsterdam Jewish history. The lady in the middle was our tour guide. There were about 6 groups like ours.

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Late 16th century, a few spanish and portuguese jews lived in Amsterdam. Around the year 1600 a rabbi and a dozen or so other jews from Emden (DE) arrived at the tower in the above picture (Montelbaanstoren). They came to Amsterdam because it was one of the very few places in Europe where they were kind of free to practice their religion. They were at the time not allowed have a synagogue though and they were not allowed to do most common jobs. They were however allowed to trade goods and to work in the diamond trade.

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Due to the jew-friendly climate in Amsterdam, more jews kept arriving and their numbers grew rapidly.  On the Houtgracht (which bordered the island "Vlooienburg" and which was later converted to the square which is now called "Waterlooplein") the first three Jewish congregations were created. One of these in a warehouse in 1618 and 2 others in nearby quarters.

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In 1639 the warehouse was enlarged and the three congregations merged together created the very first synagogue of Amsterdam called "Talmud Torah". After construction elsewhere of a much bigger synagogue in 1675 it was renamed to "De Herschepping" as its function changed to a wedding hall. In 1875 its function became a general meeting hall for the poorest of jews and finally in 1931 it was bought and demolished by the city of Amsterdam.

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It wasn't until after the second world war that an apartment building was build in its place. The plaque above the door is all that remains of this large chunk of Jewish history...

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This is the new (Portugese) synagogue. You can find a bit more info on it by clicking here.

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Also in front of the synagogue is the statue "De dokwerker", erected to remember the big strike in February 1941.
I had never been here before. It's a wonderful statue, I like it a lot.

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This building was a house to a Jewish family.

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They were all deported and murdered during WWII.

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After the tour we got lunch on a canal boat. All canal boats take you past this replica of the famous Dutch ship "Amsterdam".

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Even though it's a replica, it can actually sail!

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Marjolein just before we had to go to our first lecture.

It was quite busy.

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The first lecture was about tourists (and how they got to see the city) in Amsterdam in the 17th century. A historian presented us with old paintings and drawings and explained the off phenomena that could be seen in those days. Very interesting.

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The second lecture was about a new process of converting CO2 in to energy. Also quite interesting. The process has been in beta test for a month now and the results are promising.

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And then there was free booze!

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Outside a pigeon was having a nap.

We went to have dinner. On our way to the Indian restaurant we saw "Amsterdammertjes" (that's what all those little poles in town are called...) that were converted in to seats by putting a bicycle saddle on them. Marjolein couldn't resist ;-)

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After dinner we went to the concert of the uni orchestra. They played three pieces. The first one was modern crap and I hated every second of it. The 2nd and 3rd were very nice though.

It was a lovely day :-)