Black Isle Show - 1

During August I worked for two days at the Black Isle Show which was held at Muir of Ord. This is a marvellous agricultural show for farmers and their families. I was wine waiter in the VIP hospitality marquee and had a great time! As you can see, suppliers of farm equipment use the show to display their latest products for farmers to buy. They probably hope I poured plenty of glasses of wine before the farmers got their cheque books out!



The poster below gives you some information on the family entertainment provided during the show.



The Black Isle is not an island but is, in fact, a peninsula, in the Scottish Highlands. It is about 23 miles long by about 9 miles wide at its broadest point and is more or less oval in shape. Situated just to the north of Inverness with Dingwall to the west, it can be reached via the A9 from the south or north, or the A832 from the west.

It is attached to the mainland at the heads of the Cromarty and Beauly Firths, and the description 'Black' is no more correct than 'Isle'. The exact origin of its name is unknown, though there are at least six possible explanations of why it became the "Black" Isle, ranging from the most intriguing, through its association with witchcraft and the black arts in mediaeval times, to the more prosaic, that the soil here is very black, or that it has so many trees that it looks black when viewed from surrounding areas in Winter.