It’s a good week for ... smelly hillwalkers
Eighty-five years is a long time to go without a hot shower, but the power of hydro electricity has finally reached Loch Ossian Youth Hostel.
For the first time since starting up in 1931, the accommodation in the Highlands is able to offer visitors hot running water.
The hostel is one of Scotland’s more remote, and can only be reached by travelling by train to Corrour Station and then walking for about 20 minutes. I suspect that its clientele are not there for the mod cons, but the stunning scenery round about.
Nevertheless, visitors must welcome the end of years of cold showers thanks to connection to a nearby hydro electric scheme. It also means the building now has a fridge and electric heaters.
Cold beer, warm welcome. Sounds like the perfect culmination to a day on the hills.
It’s been a bad week for ... ostrich hunters
While the rest of the world was chasing Pokemon, the small Ayrshire town of Patna was the focus of a very different type of hunter.
The prey? A rogue ostrich.
As social media attention mounted, reported sightings grew arms and legs, even wings, with speculation that the bird was not operating alone. But suggestions that there were accomplices involved could not be confirmed.
A Twitter account was set up in honour of the loose bird.
According to the ostrich's online presence, the bird would surrender itself for a "three-bedroom council house or a nice pen at Heads of Ayr".
Another tweet goaded the hunters: “Nobody has the Poke-balls to catch me.”
Although at the the time of writing the bird was still at large, the mystery surrounding it seems to have been solved. It turns out the Patna ostrich is actually a pet rhea on the run.
Its owners, Elaine and Ian Wilson, have had the bird for six years without incident, but something spooked him and he vaulted the high wall where he was kept. They have appealed to the public to leave the bird alone as rheas, similarly flightless cousins of the ostrich more commonly found roaming the pampas of South America, are timid creatures and it is thought he will be disorientated and scared.
And maybe a little emu-tional.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here