Our new brochure has arrived from the printer and will be mailed to our database over the next couple of weeks. Although we didn’t change the basic layout, we did make a large number of small changes to improve its usability. The main change was the front cover picture, as ever year.
During our October trip to Barra, we had a couple of hours before our return flight and as it was sunny day we decided to find a new beach to explore. We ended up at Traigh Eais, which is in fact the beach across the road from the airport - though not the one the planes land on.

As we walked over the dunes and the sun chased the clouds away, we both realised that this would be an ideal place to try to take some website pictures and even to experiment for some front cover options. We had already pretty much decided what look we wanted and for the next 30 minutes set about trying to work out some angles from the dunes, with plenty of beach, blue sea and the headland in the background. Each of us in turn headed onto the sand to try giving the enormous sweep some perspective, though as it was October we were both wearing big coats and that idea was soon shelved. Still we worked away, took over 100 pictures and were confident that there would be a good candidate in the bag. The sun was shining, the sea had just enough waves and the clouds were fluffy
Taking a break we walked together down the dunes and along the beach to our left. In a few minutes we came across a large tree trunk, neatly sawn off around 3 metres from the base, lying on its side. Heather walked up to it to take a look. “Stop”, I said, ” I want to take a picture”. From my angle the tree had an interesting angle and had a mysterious look. How had it got there, where was it from, why was it cut at such a height? How long will it stay? Anyway Heather retreated, leaving a few small footprints in the previous pristine sand. I took 3 shots. “That could be quite fun for the website, or as a screensaver, I said. We walked on. After climbing the dunes again we took another 30 pictures in the other direction, from the dunes, but the light was not so good and we headed to the aiport and for Glagsow.

We sat down in early January to choose the front cover picture. I did a shortlist exercise reducing our library to 10. As I was browsing I threw in one of the tree trunk just so we could enjoy it again. Of course, when we looked at the selection together, it was perfect - definitely See Scotland differently.

My only regret is that you can still see Heather’s footprints on the sand!

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