#Assynts

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Cliff Hand, with a view towards Assynt and Coigach, Highlands, Scotland

Photograph: David Hutchings

Mountain Photo Of The Year Competition

[zomvake]

“The sea! The sea! The open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free!” – Bryan W. Procter

[scotianostra]

Elphin Bothy, with Suilven in the distance, Assynt

Elphin Bothy, Northwest Highlands. Located in the village of Elphin, this building sits with the spectacular peaks of Assynt in the distance. It is often mistakenly referred to as a bothy, whereas in reality it is a dog kennel. Built for the 1st Duke of Sutherland, it was used for the dogs used in the various hunts undertaken in the surrounding landscape.

📸Deanallanphotography

[thefollyflaneuse]

The 'Hermit's Castle', Achmelvich, Sutherland

On a rocky stretch of shore at Achmelvich, in the remote Assynt district on the west coast of Scotland, is a little concrete structure. Built in the early 1950s, it is known today as the Hermit’s Castle and the tale is told that having erected a shelter in the form of miniature fortress, the builder spent only one night under its roof. Continue reading Untitled

[nosasblog]

Cairns in Clusters: Chambered Cairns in Assynt

By Gordon Sleight Carrachan Dubh chambered cairn near Inchdnadamph Over the last twenty years I have thoroughly enjoyed tramping around Assynt, sometimes on my own and sometimes with groups of friends.  That sense of enjoyment is often enhanced by surprises.  It might be disturbing a mountain hare and seeing it race away at speed or watching an overhead confrontation between golden and…

[bwthornton]

Highland Stoneware Assynt Evening Ginger Jar

Designed and Painted by Dawn Healey

Hand Thrown by Paul Gow

A Limited Edition of 50

Highland Stoneware Assynt Evening Ginger Jar

Designed and Painted by Dawn Healey

Hand Thrown by Paul Gow

A Limited Edition of 50

[clancarruthers]

SCOTLAND IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES - CLAN CARRUTHERS CCIS

SCOTLAND IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES   SCOTLAND IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES In 1124, David I fitz Malcolm ( Carruthers ancestor ) united Alba (the north), Cumbria, and Lothianas one nation under a single set of laws called the Law of the Brets andScots, which remained in force until 1305.Think of this as a panoramic picture taken with time-lapse photography ofthe geographic, political, and…

[johndburns]

John McLellan: The Faultline | Podcast

John McLellan talks about his romantic novel set in a stunning landscape.

Sometimes a landscape can cast a spell on you, drawing you to it and leaving you changed forever. In John McLellan’s new novel, The Faultline, he charts the experiences of a group of young people whose lives are changed inexorably by the time they spend in the wilds of the the Scottish Highlands. A coming of age story, this novel is about love and life, set in a bold, uncompromising, ageless…

[paolobrand]

Ardvreck Castle emerges from the mist, standing watch over Loch Assynt, forever reminding us of a long-gone era when hordes would roam, ravaging and pillaging! Oh wait, doesn’t that sound somewhat familiar! 🤔 #ardvreckcastle #lochassynt #beach #loch #farnorth #britain #assynt #coigach #westcoast #highlands #scotland #hame #staycation #scotland2022 #nofilter (at Ardvreck Castle) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChCARZcjMuo/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[scotland-all-day-long]

Wailing Widow Falls, Assynt, Highlands, Scotland

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

Ardvreck Castle, Loch Assynt

Scottish Highlands

[ey-tu-chupalohh]

 Ardvreck Castle - Loch Assynt

[zomvake]

“Ah İstanbul! Beni büyüleyen isimlerden en çok büyüleyeni yine sensin.” Pierre Loti

[scotianostra]

Stac Pollaidh by JamesPicture Via Flickr: The sun setting on Stac Pollaidh from Sgorr Tuath summit. Hard to share the scale of the landscape here, you can just make out the road running around the edge of the water. Stunning scenery ------------------------------------------------ Please pop by my website at www.jamespictures.co.uk ------------------------------------------------ All images are Copyright © James Pictures. For full details please see www.jamespictures.co.uk/copyright

[justforbooks]

Long before Dave Myers, one half of the TV duo the Hairy Bikers, was hairy, or a biker, he was a cook. While still a child, he prepared family meals when his mother, a former shipyard crane driver, became so debilitated by multiple sclerosis she was scarcely able to leave her bed. “Dad and I became Mam’s carers, muddling through each day,” said Myers, who has died aged 66. “Sometimes I got out a cookbook and made a pie or a stew out of whatever ingredients we had in.”

His mother had been “a fabulous cook and was often preparing food while I played at her feet”. His father, the foreman of a local paper mill, would put little Dave on the saddle of his motorbike so he could pretend to ride. “I loved the smell of oil and machinery and rubber; just one whiff would set my pulse racing.”

But it was only half a lifetime later that Myers, after many years of working as a television makeup artist, managed to make an onscreen career by combining these two childhood passions. In 2004, when he was 45, Myers and his friend Simon King, a locations manager on the Harry Potter films, pitched their idea for a TV show focusing on motorbikes and food to the BBC. “It was midlife crisis time and you can’t have more of a midlife crisis than going off on a motorbike,” said Myers.

The show’s premise was that two burly, hirsute motorcyclists would visit foreign locales, often getting off their bikes to cook by the roadside. In the first episode of The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook (2006), the pair motored through Namibia, stopping off to cook crocodile satay and oryx rolls.

This culinary travelogue ran across three series, taking them to Portugal, Vietnam, Turkey and Mexico, and became such a hit with the viewers that a memo circulated the BBC praising the two men for winning over “a difficult-to-reach audience”. “Basically a ‘difficult-to-reach audience’ translates as ‘normal people’,” said King.

The two self-taught cooks had a disarmingly unpretentious love of food and easy on-screen banter redolent of Keith Floyd, if less bibulous, or Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson, if less posh. In a sense, Myers and King were the male northern riposte to the Two Fat Ladies. What’s more, their two fat lads were refreshing fare in the age of telegenic cooks such as Nigella Lawson or angry chefs like Gordon Ramsay.

Spin-off shows followed, including The Hairy Bikers’ Food Tour of Britain (2009), The Hairy Bikers: Mums Know Best (2010), The Hairy Bikers’ Mississippi Adventure (2012) and The Hairy Bikers’ Asian Adventure (2014), along with allied cookbooks and a 2015 memoir, The Hairy Bikers Blood, Sweat and Tyres.

What was the secret of their success? “We are mates, it’s not something that’s been manufactured,” said Myers. “We’re not snobby about food. We’re very happy with egg and chips, as long as it’s very good-quality eggs and good-quality potatoes. About 95% of good cooking is good shopping.”

They met by chance in a Newcastle pub in the 1990s when Myers was working there as makeup artist and prosthetics technician on an adaptation of Catherine Cookson’s The Gambling Man starring Robson Green. King, an assistant director on the project, was at the bar ordering a curry. The barman told King that if he ordered two curries he would qualify for a special offer: four poppadoms instead of one. “I just stepped up and said, ‘I’ll have the other curry’,” Myers said.

The pair cemented their friendship with road trips up the west coast of Scotland, travelling with a pan, a single-burner stove, some butter, a lemon and some brown bread. “We’d go up round Loch Assynt, up by Lochinver, and catch wild brown trout.” The idea for the television series was born from these trips.

But, while the Hairy Bikers became celebrated and their cookbooks successful, some worried that their recipes were unhealthy. Their banana French toast recipe, consisting of brioche, bananas, peanut butter and cream, was ominously dedicated to Elvis Presley. One critic suggested that their full-English shakshuka, featuring sausages, lardons and black pudding, “looks as if it should come with a diagram on how to administer CPR”.

Indeed, as their fame expanded, so did their waistbands. By 2012, Myers recalled, he was taking tablets for high blood pressure and to lower his cholesterol, and both he and King were diagnosed as being morbidly obese during a medical. He weighed 17st 12lb, with a 49in waist, while King weighed in at 19st 6lb, with a 50in waistline. “I was prediabetic; human foie gras, basically,” Myers said.

The diagnoses pushed them to make the series The Hairy Dieters: How to Love Food and Lose Weight. Both men lost 3st 7lb during filming and published their most successful series of books afterwards under the general title Hairy Dieters. “Doing it publicly was the thing that encouraged us to make it work. People admired the honesty. We sold about 1.3m copies of our first book. We learned an awful lot from it.”

The following year, 2013, Myers appeared on Strictly Come Dancing, performing a “Tartan tango” to the tune of The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) with his dance partner, Karen Hauer, and becoming, in the words of the show’s judge Len Goodman, “the people’s champion”, winning the weekly popular vote despite sometimes low marks from judges and armchair critics deriding his “ungainly boogying”. He didn’t win, but the Hairy Biker received the longest standing ovation for, fittingly enough, a Meat Loaf-themed paso doble.

Myers, the only child of Jim and Margaret, was born in Barrow-in-Furness ( then in Lancashire but now in Cumbria) and attended the town’s grammar school for boys, where an inspirational teacher, Mr Eaton, encouraged him to develop his artistic skills. He took a fine art degree at Goldsmiths, University of London and a master’s degree in art history.

His first job was as a trainee makeup artist at the BBC. He worked there for 23 years, including a stint on Top of the Pops, before the Hairy Bikers got together. While filming the show in Romania, Myers met Liliana Orzac. “In our hotel there was a striking woman on reception. Nudging Si, I whispered: ‘I fancy her!’” They married in 2011.

In 2022, Myers announced on the podcast Hairy Bikers – Agony Uncles that he had been diagnosed with cancer. He and King made a moving return to the screen in The Hairy Bikers: Coming Home for Christmas in December 2023, in which they discussed his illness and treatment; and had filmed a new series, The Hairy Bikers Go West, which is currently screening on BBC Two, and which King described as “a celebration of a joyous and creative friendship”.

Myers is survived by Liliana and her children, Iza and Sergiu.

🔔 David James Myers, chef and television presenter, born 8 September 1957; died 28 February 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[lawrenceleemagnuson]

Andrew Cranston (Scotland b. 1969) Robert in Assynt (2019)