Scottish Picks

What's New - Irish Picks - Picks of the Week

Scottish Picks: May 2000

Welcome to Scottish Picks, handpicked by our Scottish web connoisseur. If you have a
suggestion for a cool site you'd like to see included in a future edition, why not send us an email?

If you are one of those who has caught the hill walking bug, then you've come to the right place. This week's first Scottish Pick, WalkScotland.com is put together by a bunch of well-informed and experienced hillwalkers somewhere up North. A lively hub for walkers of all levels of experience, it covers plenty of ground, from the best Munros (hills over 3000 feet) to valuable topical reports on the state of bothies - those rugged hillside refuges. As well as wilderness news, WalkScotland.com takes up some of the burning walker issues like rights of way and conservation of the upland paths. It's good to see the writers don't shy from controversy. Worth a look is the article on the shenangians in the BBC's Castaway 2000 series, where 35 modern-day Robinson Crusoes have been abandoned for a year on the remote Western isle of Taransay.

The one thing that WalkScotland.com could do with more of is photographs. However, there is no lack of these on the web when you start looking. Anthony Dyer's Mountain Diary, for example, carries a pile of photographs of his excursions into the big wide Scottish yonder. He could be a bit more rigorous with the spell check, but the pictures - several hundred of them - are looking good.
Another site to drop by at before strapping up that rucksack is Stones of Scotland, a site that combines potted descriptions of various brochs, standing stones, cairns and stone circles with evocative photography and QuickTime movies. The obvious attractions are here, like the Ring of Brodgar and the Skara Brae neolithic settlement, both of which are in Orkney, as well as less familiar sites like the aptly named "Hill o'Many Stanes" in Caithness.
And now to sport. Which sports people do you think should be in Scotland's Hall of Fame? This is the question that Sport Scotland, the national agency that promotes sport nationwide, is posing on its newly launched site. Please send your answers in an email. Sport Scotland is a relatively corporate affair, but of interest are the latest initiatives the organisation has taken, as well as official reactions to hot sporting issues in the press office.
If you are looking for something more colourful in the sport dept. try the Dogs Bollix Guide to football which bills itself as "a completely biased, childish and vindictive guide to Scottish football". It is, but then again the season's drawing to a close and there's only bellyaching about Scotland's poor showing in the European Cup qualifiers filling the editorial pages.
There's always cricket. No, really. This quintessentially English game of bat and ball is now widely played in Scotland. The Scottish Cricket Union is the best place to get up to speed with the international and domestic competitions which start this month. You can also find a large collection of links to club and pub teams North of the Border as well as abroad. What ever next? Morris dancers on the High Street in Edinburgh?

Sites Featured in Picks of the Week:

WalkScotland.com - lively hiker's hub.

Anthony Dyer's Mountain Diary - nice mountain pics.
Stones of Scotland - brochs, cairns and big stanes.
Sport Scotland- national agency for sport.
Dogs Bollix Guide to football - straight-up footie site
The Scottish Cricket Union - howzat!?

[ Irish Picks | Picks of the Week]

Previous Weeks' Picks:

[ April | March 00 | February 00 | January 00 ]