Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 608
The Highlands
Hello Everyone
Holiday season is drawing to a close here in Rocky Bay.
The West Country is the most popular place for holiday makers in this country. We have miles of beautiful beaches for children who love splashing about in the water and making sandcastles.
For those people who prefer lonely, wild and windswept landscapes, the Highlands of Scotland have enormous appeal.
The Highlands are to be found to the far north of the country and the Scottish islands are beyond. There are mountain ranges and highest mountain in Britain, Ben Nevis, is there.
lt is home to the Highland Games and the Loch Ness Monster.
The area is one of the most sparsely populated areas of Europe. So with not many people around it is a very good place to get away from it all!
Originally owned by clans populating each area, the Highlands were eventually owned by rich landowners who cleared tenants off the land forcing them to travel to large cities or crofting communities to find new homes.
A croft is a small farm.
The displaced people made way for large sheep farms.
The Highlands were loved by Queen Victoria and she adopted Balmoral as a holiday home and it is still used by the Royal Family today.
The Queen’s love for the area made it a fashionable place to visit.
The Highlands consequently became a place visited by many Victorians.
They loved the romance of the wild open spaces.
They also had a huge fondness for blood sports. This entailed shooting animals especially deer and grouse in large numbers.
They could eat some of what they shot, but the shooting was what they really came for.
The landscape was grazed by the deer kept on the large estates, and changed its appearance. The deer ate any new trees that started to grow and the landscape became more bleak and barren.
But that is all changing in modern times.
Some of the old estates have been bought up by new landowners.
There are several billionaires with enough money to buy such large areas of land and they have big plans for the future.
These new landowners have been dubbed the ‘Green Lairds’. Laird is the Scottish word for lord which means owner of a large amount of land.
They want to restore the land to how it was before it was overpopulated by grazing animals. They are redefining land use and appearance to reverse what was created by the Victorians.
They are in the process of re-wilding 100s of acres of bleak, rugged landscape and returning it to its natural state.
The landscape that was lost hundreds of years ago.
They have a 200 year vision to allow the forests to return.
They can see trees coming back on their own. The trees do not even have to be planted, they can just reseed themselves. And without being eaten by the deer that used to live there, they have a chance to grow.
You can see small trees creeping up the hillsides establishing themselves away from their larger parents. This is called natural regeneration.
You can see birch, juniper, rowan aspen and lots of pines. These are all trees than grow well in this part of the country.
With the new forests springing up, biodiversity returns; insects are drawn to the trees and a variety of birds come to eat the insects. Small mammals like squirrels and pine martens follow.
There is also peatland which if managed properly can lock huge quantities of carbon into the ground.
The whole atmosphere changes and comes alive.
ln times when people are so worried about climate change and polluted skies, the forests that will grow there will help to benefit the whole world.
Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bob: Did you know there are only two seasons in the Highlands?
Bill: Really?
Bob: Yes, August and winter!
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
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Picture Gallery
Rowan
Trees self-seed
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, Miss Pringle told her class a very interesting fact.
For a long time, in our language and our literature we have associated our hearts with feelings and emotions.
We say things like: I knew in my heart, I knew in my heart of hearts, broken hearted, heart-wrenching, to have a sinking heart, my heart is not in it, a matter of the heart, absence makes the heart grow fonder, to bare your heart, a heart’s desire and home is where the heart is.
Do you know what all of these phrases mean?
But then doctors who looked after heart transplant patients noticed that people with new hearts changed their personality in some small ways.
They started liking foods they had not really liked before, and doing things that were completely out of character, like maybe riding fast motorbikes.
When they checked back to see who the donor was, they realized that the recipient had taken on some of the personality traits of the donor.
(That isn’t to say that they had lost their own personality and replaced it by another completely.)
Then scientists looked carefully at the heart and decided that it contained cells similar to that of the brain – meaning that in some way the heart did think.
So maybe the poets of old really did know what they were talking about!
Sometimes we feel that something should or should not be done; or we get a strong feeling that something is going to happen.
But we can’t really explain how we know – it is just a feeling. The feeling is more in our body than our brain. It feels like the knowledge is coming from the centre of your body.
Women call it women’s intuition and men call it a gut feeling.
To increase your intuition’s ability to work, you can try lots of deep breathing.
Experiments have shown that men and women have equal access to the kind of knowledge you get from intuition; but women are more likely to trust it and act on it, whereas men want more logic and proof.
Sometimes, when you have to make a decision, using your intuition is the only way you can move forwards, because you have absolutely no clue what the outcome of your decision will be.
The more you trust your intuition, the stronger it becomes.
What is so strange is that your intuition tells you to do something or to not do something but it will not give reasons or explanations as to why – and that is the difficult part. You only find out what the reasons and explanations actually were in the fullness of time.
Most people say that their intuition has never let them down.
You can keep an intuition diary to keep a record of decisions and outcomes and see how they work out!
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Quick Quiz
Can you answer these questions about Scotland?
- What is the capital city?
- What is the most famous poet?
- What is a bairn and a wain?
- What is the most famous skiing resort?
- What is the national dress?
- What is a crofter?
- What is the Palace of Holyroodhouse?
- What famous flowered plant is found out on the moors?
- What is a capercaillie?
- Who was Grey Friars Bobby?
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A FRUlT YOGHURT SMOOTHlE
This is the perfect way to use up all the last berries from your garden from the summer.
Put a cup of soft fruit into a blender
Add 1 cup of plain yoghurt
Add 1 tablespoon of honey
Whizz together…
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Answers to the News Desk Quiz
My heart is not in it – I do not have a desire to do something
A matter of the heart – relating to love
Absence makes the heart grow fonder – when someone is away you miss them and appreciate them more
To bare your heart – to talk about your feelings
A heart’s desire – a passion that you have
Home is where the heart is – a house is not a home if you do not want to be there
Quick Quiz Answers
- What is the capital city? – Edinburgh
- What is the most famous poet? – Robert Burns
- What is a bairn and a wain? – a child and a baby (dialect words)
- What is the most famous skiing resort? – Aviemore
- What is the national dress? – kilt
- What is a crofter? – farmer
- What is the Palace of Holyroodhouse? – the monarch’s official residence in Scotland
- What famous flowered plant is found out on the moors? – heather
- What is a capercaillie? – large woodland bird
- Who was Grey Friars Bobby? – a Skye Terrier that famously spent 14 years guarding his human’s grave in Edinburgh until 1872 – you will be pleased to know that they are now happily together
