Framedlight

On the Butt of Lewis in the little village of Europie is a 13th century church, St Moluag's, a saint associated with healing. It is situated up a track running between low pebble-dashed housing. We paid a visit and found the prayers put up on a notice  board for those with personal problems. We spent the night parked on a piece of hard standing we found next to Stoth Inlet, a tiny cove near the promontory. 

Seeing a lovely bluebell wood picture from Jane Goodall, I was anxious to know where exactly the wood was. A quick bit of googling showed it to be only about a quarter of an hour from my door, so we went there on a late Sunday afternoon and took a few pictures. The sun was filtering through the fresh beech leaves and the wood was a calm tidy place, giving space for the blankets of blue bells, now reaching the end of their flowering. A few more abstract images follow the main bluebell ones. Afterwards we went down to the tiny church at Strethall, which lies off the beaten track, in a farmyard. Here we saw a rather interesting grave.

Bute does not lack for ruined churches and chapels. On our second day we drove to the very south of the peninsula that Kilchattan Bay stands on, as far as we could go, where there was a small lay-by for parking. It so happened that the land we were on belonged to our landlord who was out and about on a quad bike. From the lay-by it is a walk of around 20 minutes uphill to reach the church. Alan's Mum struggled up the incline and found a bench by the church where she could sit and take in the view. Here are a few pictures of the walk up. At the top you pass by a pleasant grove of trees before reaching the church. Parts of the building date back to 1135 and may have originally been Norse. It was the abbey belonging to a Cluniac monastery, all traces of which have now gone and St Blane was purportedly buried here in around 630AD. Story has it that he originally came from Bute and was sent across to Ireland to gain a religious education, returning to But...

While I was in Covehythe I took some pictures of the church using an infrared filter on the front of my Fuji XE1 with its 17-55mm lens. With this lens, although exposure times were not too long, I got a hotspot in the centre of the frame, which I have had to remove in photoshop, not totally successfully. This seems to be a function of using autofocus zoom lenses for infrared.The last picture, taken from the footpath, was not photographed on the Fuji but on the D800E using the 24-70mm lens which did not give me such a pronounced hotspot. I have left some of the colour in this one, rather than converting to monochrome. I rather like the flat colours and simplistic nature of this photograph.

After the excitement of the otters we drove across to St Govan's Head, a headland used a lot by climbers. There is a small stone deserted chapel situated in a rocky cove next to the headland. This dates from the 13th century and is supposed to lie over the cave where St Govan dwelt.  One story says that he came over from Ireland to visit St David. On the way he was chased by pirates into this cove where the cliff opened up allowing him to squeeze to safety through a fissure. In gratitude to the place he stayed here as a hermit for the rest of his life to warn the local inhabitants of pirate attack. Another legend says that St Govan is Gawaine, one of the knights of King Arthur who went into retreat later in life. There were two wells here at one time, one of which was a holy well but they are now both dry. We broke away from St Govan's to visit the strange 13th century church of St Petrox near Stackpole, but returned for a fantastic sunset. View from St Govan's Head...