Ron January 2nd, 2009
The new Jura passenger ferry service has won a gold award at the annual Argyll & Bute Excellence Awards in the “Vibrant Communities” category. Members of the Jura Initiative at the Edge team and Jura Development Trust were invited to attend, and received a commemorative plaque, a gold certificate and a cheque for £500 to spend on their project.
The Jura Ferry presentation was made by Blair Fletcher of Argyll & Bute Council who emphasised the ‘very positive impact it had on both the Jura and Tayvallich communities’. Deborah Bryce told the Ileach that: “We were overwhelmed and stunned to hear the announcement that the Jura ferry had won. When the first folk to congratulate us were our immediate competitors, it shows what a great spirit of camaraderie there was around the whole event.”
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Tags: award, council, ferry
Ron December 4th, 2008
The For Argyll Website reports today about the problems with broadband connections on Jura. A quote from the article:
Argyll’s Isle of Jura has had no broadband connection for almost a week. The fault is proving difficult to trace and BT’s so-called Customer Services have pronounced that the problem lies with individual homes and is not a matter for their engineers. Surely the fact that all the houses are experiencing simultaneous down-connections indicates that the fault is a general one. It defies logic that every household on the island would suddenly experience a different individual fault at the same time.
The preparedness to see an entire and remote island without its lifeline broadband connection is typical of the company. For Argyll has expressed concerns on many occasions that neither governments nor people in the UK have updated their historical perception of BT as a nationalised company. This leaves it with an unearned commercial advantage, in pole position for public contracts that might well be better served by rival companies and as the ‘authority’ in nationwide service development which is far from nationwide.
Read the full story here
Tags: internet broadband
Ron December 3rd, 2008
The Islay community is in mourning after three people - including a farmer and his young son - were killed in a road crash which took place in the afternoon of Tuesday 2nd December. Dougald MacTaggart, 38, and his son Jamie, 10, died when their pick-up truck was involved in a four-vehicle smash near his parents’ house on Islay. A third man, Neil MacFadyen, 47, who worked on Mr MacTaggart’s farm and was in the same vehicle, was also killed in the accident.
Click here for more information on the Islay Blog
Ron December 2nd, 2008
This is not a lengthy account of Jura Venison, but merely a made up title for an article I found on the “The Age” website. The Age is an online as well as a magazine publishing company from down under in Australia. The author, Andrew Marshall, visited the Hebrides and wrote about Islay and Jura. I was specially interested in what he wrote about Jura, therefore a quote from the article called Island flair with a whisky flavour:
From Islay, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to Jura, a mountainous island wilderness of 5000 deer, 200 people, one whisky distillery and a pub. It’s a Friday night at the Jura Hotel, the hub of social life in these parts. There’s a mixed clientele in the cosy interior: fly fishermen, whisky enthusiasts, distillery workers, gamekeepers, hikers and gourmet travellers. After ordering a couple of Jura Superstitions, the distillery’s latest single-malt offering, we fall into a conversation about venison with retired gamekeeper George McDougall. “The deer aren’t daft. They have an instinct. They know when it’s the stalking season and disappear into the mountains,” he says. In the winter the deer are quite bold and come down to the shoreline to eat seaweed and lichen which gives the meat a distinctive flavour. “My stepfather always used to say he could tell the difference between Jura venison and mainland venison. Have you tried the venison pie yet? You’ll have to stay a few more days and work your way through the menu…”
Tags: venison deer jura-hotel
Ron November 30th, 2008
This panorama picture was created by Arra Fletcher from the Persabus Pottery, he sent it to me more than a year ago and I found it again today. Arra used to live on Islay and visited Jura quite often. In the next months I will post a lot more very beautiful Jura Images, including many taken from the top of the Paps. For now you can have a look at the Jura panorama image which he took from the Isle of Gigha. Click on the image to enlarge!
Tags: image panorama gigha
Ron November 24th, 2008
I found an interesting interview with Willie Tait who was both manager of Bruichladdich Distillery on Islay in 1999 and the Isle of Jura Distillery. Willie Tait’s involvement with the Isle of Jura brand began in 1975 when he was first hired as a “Tunroom Man” at the remote Hebridean distillery. He was involved in 1975 with the introduction of the distillery’s first Single Malt an 8-year-old expression. In 1985, Willie Tait was named Distillery Manager for the operation off the western coast of Scotland. He stayed in that role until 1999 when he was appointed Distillery Manager at Highland malt distillery Fettercairn. The Interview is available as podcast (MP3 file) which can be downloaded from Whisky Cast. A quote from Whiskycast:
Willie Tait has been a fixture at Whyte and Mackay for 34 years, and is most known for his work at Isle of Jura Distillery. He’s the third of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award winners at the Malt Advocate Magazine Awards, and shares some of his stories with us in this episode… including how he and his family wound up on Jura in the first place.
Tags: distillery, manager, whisky, willie tait
Ron November 23rd, 2008
Earlier I wrote about the Jura Malt Whisky Writer Retreat. The Scottish Book Trust and Isle of Jura malt whisky are working together to offer writers the opportunity to spend a month living and writing on the Isle of Jura. Each selected writer receives a month’s exclusive use of the luxurious distillery lodge, a bursary and travel expenses. In the first article I quoted an article of John Burnside for the Scotsman and a couple of weeks ago I found another article from his hand in the Times Online. John has a way of writing about the island which makes you think you see if happen before your eyes and I loved reading his second article, from which I quoted a good part:
Donald Ewan Darroch looks up at me from the haunch of venison he’s in the process of quartering. I’m a slow butcher, he says, with a wry smile and, though I have no way of knowing if he is slow or not, I agree, mostly because it’s such a pleasure to watch him work - as I have done all morning,
ever since I left my car by the ferry and walked half a mile along the shore to his house, passing the big, wind-thrawn rowan tree on the beach by the
sailors’ graves and stopping now and then to pick a citrus-coloured shell from the white sand, the solitary, elm-green deer larder always in view as I
negotiated a path through the rocks and the dark, brown trickles of water and peat spilling on to the sand from the slopes above.
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Tags: report, retreat, travel, writing
Ron November 4th, 2008
Drew Ratter, Convener of the Crofters Commission, visited Jura last week accompanied by local Area Commissioner Cllr Robin Currie, where the two men attended a meeting to discuss the creation of six new crofts on the Rily-Smith’s Ardfin estate. Ratter told the Ileach: ‘The meeting was very well attended, particularly by young couples and families. I have found the whole Jura experience very energising with loads of ideas for diversification within the crofting communities being thrown around. I sincerely believe that it will be the creation of small crofts such as these that represent the future of the industry. ‘We must remember that crofting has never been the sole source of income for tenants - it has never been possible to make a living purely from crofting. What crofting does provide is a secure base for people to build on, and it is a Crofters Commission responsibility to make sure they have a sound support structure to enable this. Six acre crofts such as these provide the opportunity for a bewildering range of small scale local economic activities - to erect a workshop, perhaps a polytunnel, to raise a few animals and build a house and home. Having this base enables tenants to really utilise their imagination and skills - to genuinely interface with the global modern economy and not simply scratch a living from the land. On Jura you have many examples of this happening right now, from graphic designers, to plant operators to teachers to people working in the service industries. ‘This situation is underpinned here by policies such as Argyll and Bute Council conferring an absolute right for crofters to build a house on the croft - there are many other crofting areas which do not enjoy this right.’
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Tags: ardfin, community, croft, estate, population
Ron November 4th, 2008
Over 70 friends and family of Calum Bell gathered at Ardfin, Jura on Saturday 27 September, for the first annual clay pigeon shoot in Calum’s memory. The idea of a memorial shoot came from his friends who contributed over £600 towards a silver quaich. 42 competitors took part in the shoot, travelling from as far away as Leeds and Mexico (see photo). Although the 30-bird shoot took place in poor weather, spirits and standards were high and culminated in a shoot-off for the main prize between Gordon MacAffer, Port Ellen, Willie Mack and Peter Campbell, Jura.
Results were as follows:
Winner of the Big Quaich and Top Senior Shield - Peter Campbell, Inverlussa
Top Junior Shield - Gordon MacAffer, Port Ellen
Top Lady Shield - Lynn Wilson, Cultoon
Top of the Lowest 5 Trophy - Kim MacAffer, Port Ellen
Following the prize-giving there was food, drink and good craic before many of those present headed for Craighouse and the Jura Music Festival. Thanks to Willie and Lorna MacDonald and assistants for organisation and hospitality, Kevin Heads for sponsoring the shields, Craig and Jean MacAffer for a great barbecue, Niall Campbell for the burgers, Dugald Ferguson for whisky, Mary, Mairi and Diane for sandwiches and cakes and Gill for presenting the prizes. A total of £ 466.64 was collected for Islay and Jura Sick Children’s Fund. Many thanks to all competitors and spectators.
Tags: ardfin, calum bell, clay, pigeon
Ron October 3rd, 2008
It’s probably the time of year that people return from their summer holidays and start posting on their websites or blogs about their whereabouts. Today I found another report about Jura from a family who arrived by boat in the Small Isles Bay and spent some time on the island. It’s interesting, specially for people who own a boat, to read what facilities Jura has when you arrive over the water. Below some fragments of the post from the blog called Sun Dog Sailing Blog:
August 4 - After breakfast we decided to use the tide again and head for Craighouse on Jura which again we had to do under engine as there was no wind; but it was lovely to be under a warm blue sky and it was only a few hours until we were turning in past the Small Isles and picking up a mooring buoy close into the shore. The bay has quite a number of mooring buoys for visitors and we are fortunate enough having a shallow enough draft to get the spare one near the shore on the 2m contour - which was fine for us as the forecast was for a period of settled weather so no waves to reduce the depth. We had to get ashore and get some provisions and also use the laundry facilities behind the Jura Hotel, so it was out with the dinghy and a bit of exercise with the pump, then over to the pontoon provided for dinghies at the pier. Jura is a large island with a population of slightly less that 200 people in total, so the facilities they provide are very good all things considered, and should be supported. Cost for one night on the mooring was £10.
Tags: boat, facilities, mooring, small-isles-bay
