Diggaz with Attitude

EARTH MOVER

Following my last moonlight outing in February, I realised I’ve been accumulating a collection of digger pics over the past few years. Not sure why… it must be a ‘man’ thing 😉

The first of the bunch dates back to March 2010. It was my first attempt at a star trail shot and by a very convoluted route has a tenuous royal connection:

My comments that accompanied the resulting image (as posted on Flickr at the time):
Evidence of the earth’s rotation about its north-south axis, as shown by the star trails captured during this stacked 24 minute exposure. I needed a foreground subject to give some perspective and thought it’d be cool to capture the earth’s movement while the mechanical earth mover remained stationary.

The digger was being used to build an access road to two new Borve Lodge buildings, which have since been completed: The Broch and The Rock House. The house you can see in the background of my photo is now owned by the owners of Borve Lodge but at the time of the shoot was the part time residence of the Queen’s equiry. Shortly after I posted the photo on Flickr, I heard a friend of the Queen’s equiry printed off a copy of the photo and presented it to the royal employee. My informant told me the picture was now pinned up somewhere within the confines of Buckingham Palace! I like the idea of Liz or Phil creeping into the kitchen during the middle of the night for a few scoops of Häagen-Dazs, with a poor quality print of my digger pic Blu-Tacked on the side of a fridge full of Corgi food.

A few days before the Earth Mover startrail shot, I found another digger on the east side of Harris:

In the prime of its life, this particular Priestman was one of a pair of excavators used to build the road to Rhenigidale, North Harris. Until the road’s completion in 1990, the local postman used to walk the scenic (but treacherous in places) coastal path from the village to Tarbert Post Office three times a week. The path was also used as a route by the Rhenigidale children on their journey to school in Tarbert, a round trip of 10 miles! The new road to Rhenigidale is 4 miles long and connects with the main A859, north of Tarbert.

Less than 100 metres from the Rhenigidale digger is the electricity sub-station at Uamh Aird. The place was literally crackling and buzzing with electricity:

In recent months a great deal of work has been taking place at the sub-station, including a brand new metal frame building being erected next door to the existing facility. Last month I stopped off  to nab this photo of a modern day digger parked outside the new facility:

WhenI was on the way home from that outing, I continued on to Quidinish, where  extensive ground works were being carried out in preparation for three new holiday chalets. Two diggers were on site – a full size JCB and one of those ‘toy’ diggers that have become so popular in recent years:

While I’m on the digger theme, another industrial type machine, manufactured by the French company, Manitou. Photographed on the mini slipway at Loch Langavat fish farm, between Finsbay and Leverburgh: