it’s not like east street
August 29th, 2005
The Storr was even better than I’d anticipated, and slightly different to how I had imagined it. More sensually evocative. Plenty of other people have reviewed it, so I won’t. I have very few criticisms (which is unusual), and I won’t detail them.
All I will say is that, additional creativity aside, the opportunity to be guided up an exposed and dangerous landscape at night in the safety of an organised, and slightly odd-ball, group was one of the best feelings. The event, certainly on the surface, would seem to have had an immense impact on the local community – I have never seen any arts-based activity be so widespread.
Other exciting features of the trip to Skye:
The West Highland line
Best train journey ever, well, in the UK anyway. Glasgow to Mallaig, it really did provide a sense of a landscape unfolding pre-Storr. You swiftly move from the inner city to industrial to immense countryside. Skirting around Ben Nevis, and climbing to a surprisingly high altitude, the views are amazing. This is the sort of journey which would be perfect on a clear day, or in a massive storm.
Public transport on Skye
The local bus operator are slightly crazy. Locals on the island all seem to love their local bus service, calling it ‘very good’ and ‘very frequent’. Unfortunately, the 4-times per day frequency on the routes made it very hard to interchange between buses at Portree, the timings didn’t align – so we had to take a taxi 17 miles to our camp site. It would seem that the local bus operator also only has 1 price, a single journey from Armadale (where the boat docks) to Portree (the ‘capital’ of the island) costs £6 single. It also costs £6 for a return. Alternatively, you can buy an all-day ticket (noted by many as ‘good value’) for £6. The all-day ticket isn’t all that useful though, because it is very hard to actually catch more than one bus in a day.
I also liked the friendly touch, there was to be no eating or drinking on the bus, and you must not put your bag on a seat. A sign politely mentioned that ‘if you damage the seatbelts, then your parents will be billed for the damage’.
And on transport integration, it was nice to see the bus driver collecting sandwiches to take to the ferry staff, and collecting and delivering newspapers to the southern end of the island.
Silence
Staffin campsite was possibly the quietest place ever. There was actually not a single sound on Saturday morning when we woke up. Not quite like East Street, Sarah pointed out.
The other major silence for the trip was at The Storr itself, the audience were mostly amazing and deadly silent, stunned to silence I think. I was.
One Response to “it’s not like east street”
1tomment » Blog Archive » Half Life
February 27th, 2007 @ 20:33
[...] 2005 I raved a lot about The Storr, brought to life by environmental arts organisation nva. It was certainly one of the most [...]
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