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I was honoured and delighted to be asked to do four talks about my book, The Salt Roads, for the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in February. The lectures were at various venues in the south of Scotland. Well attended and generating a fascinating discussion afterwards, they were an absolute delight.

I was delighted to be asked to speak about Shetland’s artificial beaches at a recent meeting of Archaeology Shetland. Extending the beach area by moving stones created a much larger area for drying salt fish during the nineteenth century. This was essential as there was simply not enough natural stone beach areas to cope with the huge quantities of salt cod that were being landed by the Shetland smacks fishing at Faroe.  There was a very good attendance and some great questio

In November I travelled to Faroe with my daughter, as part of her election campaign, to look at how Faroese Home Rule works and what lessons Shetland can learn. I have written a lot about Shetland and Faroe and how Shetland used to belong to Denmark before we became Scottish. There was therefore something quite special for a group of Shetlanders to be in Faroe the night that Scotland beat Denmark in the World Cup qualifier. Since I was up in Faroe, I was gave a talk about my

Shetland is as famous for its knitwear as it is for its seafood. Knitters from all over the world come to Shetland to be inspired. One of these is Christina Campbell from the USA. Christina (also known on Instagram as The Healthy Knitter) recently posted that she had knitted a jumper in colours inspired by the cover of The Salt Roads. She also very kindly added that she had really enjoyed reading my book.