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Festival of Spring
April 27th to May 17th 2015
For the fifth successive year the island will open its shores to welcome in the lighter & brighter days of the year with its three week Festival of Spring.
There will be the usual eclectic mix of nature, art, foraging, craft, heritage and baking events, with rspb guided walks, textile workshops, bread making, island history lectures & local music, to name but a few.
New topics for this year ...
Organisers of the Colonsay Book Festival today announced the line-up of authors for the fourth annual Hebridean literary celebration, for 25 and 26 April 2015. This year’s programme stars celebrated Scottish crime writer and screenwriter Lin Anderson, roofer-turned-poet William Letford, cookery writer Mary Contini, novelist Sara Maitland, nature writer and poet Jim Crumley and award-winning author James Buchan, grandson of The 39 Steps writer John Buchan.
In addition, acclaimed composer and musician Mike Vass will provide entertainment of a musical ...
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Hannah, our LDO, has secured funding for an all-singing, all-dancing Colonsay App which is being designed by BlueMungus. Some of us are a bit unfamiliar with such things but apparently it will have an interactive map and the user can select symbols according to taste – beauty spots, places of interest, shop, church, pantry etc. If, for example, you select The Pantry you will get contact details, hours of opening, possibly a menu and (who knows?) a glimpse of the ...
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Our Local Development Officer is working to arrange satellite Broadband for Colonsay within the next 18 months or so, which is very encouraging. As it happens, one local business is struggling very badly – with no less than five Broadband connections and BT bills of over £3,800 p.a. the connections are frequently either down or so far below 0.5kb as to actually be unmeasurable. It has become impossible to operate a business on this basis, so whilst maintaining the BT ...
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Readers might remember the Christmas competition, which aimed to identify a tiny holding on the 1808 Estate Map; purely by chance, it has now been noticed that the area in question has a proper name and is clearly shewn on the modern O.S. map – it is Cnoc an Ardrigh. As many people will know, Symington Grieve had been told that this was some sort of “pleasure ground” associated with Dun Eibhinn and he took the name to mean “Hill ...
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The Parish Church was recently the subject of a professional inspection and it was noted that BOTH the western windows are in a very poor state; one of them is actually so fragile that it has had to be strengthened as a temporary measure, to minimise any risk of implosion in high winds. This is a Listed Building, it plays an important part in island life and it is available to all, not just for worship but for baptisms, weddings, ...
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Most people in Colonsay will normally drive at between 25mph and 40mph and all will be wearing a seatbelt; and most people do slow down considerably when passing pedestrians (who should have stepped off the road and be standing still whilst the vehicle passes). It is well worthwhile to slow down like that, just in case the pedestrian stumbles. Even at a low speed, accidents happen – in the 1880s a local man in his mid 50s was killed when ...
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Fotunately, there is nothing much to say. Despite the appalling conditions elsewhere, Colonsay was fairly fortunate – there was very little damage. The wind did not often gust much over 70 knots, and for most people the damage caused by lightning was the worst, with widespread damage to telephone and broadband services. It was the longest unbroken spell of high winds for over twenty years, about ten days in all, making it very hard to move around and for many ...
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This meeting had been heralded by both a two-page letter from the remaining four Directors and a subsequent newsletter, with a view to encouraging members of the community to adopt a more proactive attitude to this vital community organisation. The meeting was held at the Service Point in challenging weather, with driving rain and winds already gusting to over 40 knots and which were later to exceed 75 knots. Despite these conditions the four directors and the remaining job-sharing half ...
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COLONSAY Ploughing Match: Competitions for ploughing supremacy were commenced on this island twenty-four years ago, and, with the exception of a few years’ break, have been continued to this day. The last was held on the 14th ult. , on Kiloran farm, tenanted by Mr. William Stroyan. The morning opened wet and unpromising, but as the day advanced the weather cleared up, with a sharp east wind, which, however bracing to the nerves of the competitors, nearly killed the onlookers, ...
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Gavin was away again! This time he was in the Canaries but he seemed to be making the best of it; Anne and Jim were on the High Seas once again; Dave and Jan are in Oz; Helen and Dell took Eve and Ella to Fuerteventura, they must be keen on islands; work on Hazel Cottage is going ahead well, the annexe found is in place and a new porch went up this week; two of the Housing Association properties ...
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Despite the persistent extreme weather over the last two months we’ve had some really spectacular wildlife sightings and encounters.
We have had brilliant views of a pair of golden eagles over Benn Oronsay in the last month. We enjoyed watching them from the farm yard several times between the hail storms. Even some blue sky!
The colder conditions we’ve been experiencing ...
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COMPETITION TIME
The competition is based upon the fact that the Bible has a significance in our culture which goes beyond religion. It is probably true to say that it is nowadays a closed book to many people, since it is no longer mentioned in most schools. On purely cultural grounds this seems to be a pity, so competitors were invited to read over Genesis in preparation for our competition…. please do not cheat (the answers are readily available on ...