The entrance display room to the Ocean Liners Exhibition, V&A, Dundee, displays advertising posters from the earliest liner eras up to the time when they were replaced by air travel.

My eye was mostly taken by classic Art Deco ones such as this for an Italian shipping line:-

Not to mention the classic SS Normandie:-

And the SS Empress of Britain:-

This brochure is from the NYK line:-

These are pages illustrating the high life of ocean liner travel:-

Finally and not Art Deco, the cover of a brochure for the QE2, whose first voyage down the Clyde to take her sea-trials we were all given a day off school to witness. Even then everyone knew there would never be such a ship built on the Clyde again:-

HMS Queen Elizabeth is the Royal Navy’s latest aircraft carrier. (That’s the one there’s not enough money to fit out with any aircraft.)

She sailed out from her fitting out at Rosyth in the Firth of Forth for her sea trials in June 2017. We happened to be in Cellardyke, Fife that day and caught a glimpse of her near the Isle of May.

HMS Queen Elizabeth (yacht in front) and the Isle of May from Cellardyke Harbour:-

HMS Queen Elizabeth and Isle of May closer view:-

HMS Queen Elizabeth closer view:-

Isle of May:-

HMS Queen Elizabeth and another ship:-

We made the crossing to Orkney from Gills Bay in Caithness via the Pentland Ferries’ catamaran the Pentalina. It skelped along at a fair pace:-

Landfall was at St Margaret’s Hope, South Ronaldsay, the third largest settlement in Orkney:

Closer view of the town:-

This is the Northlink Ferries’ ship Hamnavoe in Hoy Sound on its way from Stromness to Scrabster:-

This video (click on picture to get to my flickr to play it) shows the Hamnavoe steaming through Hoy sound with Hoy in background. Unfortunately I zoomed in and as a result the focus went awry:-

We were along the Fife coast a fortnight or so ago; at Limekilns where there is a good view of Rosyth Dockyard and the Forth Bridges.

Currently fitting out at the dockyard is the new Royal Navy aircraft carrier – the one there won’t be any planes for once it is completed. Both bridges are in the background.

The rig has been off Kirkcaldy for about a week now. I can’t find out anything about it on the net beyond its presence.

Does anybody know if there’s an oil rig location website similar to ais.com, which is for ships?

You could be forgiven for thinking I had gone to the Lake District and not visited any lakes, but of course I did.

En route to Cockermouth we passed Bassenthwaite Lake which is large but flat looking if you know what I mean.

We passed Thirlmere, a pretty enough lake but nothing spectacular, in order to visit Grasmere, lake and village, where we sampled the “famous Grasmere gingerbread.”

We also climbed up to Allan Bank, a house which William Wordsworth once rented.

From the left hand side of the house as seen above I took three photos of the lake and village, stitched into the one below.

The lake itself is little more than a puddle but the village is a delightful wee place.

Then onwards, up and over from the A591 to the A592 a very steep ascent giving me the opportunity to photograph Lake Windermere. Again a stitch (of two this time.)

We then kept on up the A592 travelling almost the full length of Ullswater – which is impressive, if not quite as magnificent as most Scottish fresh-water lochs. Particularly appealing were the tourist pleasure boats plying the lake, reminding me of the Loch Lomond of my youth and a trip to Loch Katrine about 12 years ago. It was raining by that time though and we didn’t stop. Perhaps next time.

This is the Island Enforcer, moored off Kirkcaldy for a few days at the end of October. On the shipping websites she is described as an offshore construction vessel. She is not quite as Swiss Army Knife in looks as the Solitaire or Audacia of fond memory but still has some weird sticky out bits.

The first description I found of her was as a diving ship and I thought, “Isn’t that a submarine?” but she has been redesigned for offshore work.

More images of her can be found here.

Two more ships and an old favourite.

This is the cruise ship M S Rotterdam heading out of the River Forth last week en route to Invergordon! Apparently 100,000 cruise passengers dock at Invergordon every year, which is somewhat baffling. One of my work colleagues comes from Invergordon (as often as possible.)

This is the Rotterdam in the Netherlands six years ago (photo from Wikipedia.)

Just off Dysart is the rather rakish from of the cargo ship M S Troms Capella. She’s been hanging around for well over a week.

Here’s our old friend Solitaire from the same vantage point above Dysart harbour that I photographed the Troms Capella.

Behind her stern that’s North Berwick Law on the opposite shore.

You wait all your life to see one pipe-laying ship… and then two appear at once.

Solitaire has been joined by the Audacia. This was the pair of them yesterday afternoon.

Here is the Solitaire foreshortened.

And the Audacia aftshortened. (You can just see the Bass Rock in the background to the right.)

By this morning, when conditions were much hazier, they had swung around.

Here’s a close-up of Audacia from today.

The link to the Audacia above has a cracking picture of her as well as a couple of promo videos!

One of the interesting aspects of living in Kirkcaldy is the ever changing view out to sea. There are usually quite a few ships either at anchor or moving up and down the Forth.

For the last week one in particular has been prominent. Here it was along with another about a week ago.

As you can see the one on the left has a peculiar shape. The good lady remarked that it was the shipping equivalent of a Swiss Army knife what with all the bits hanging off it.

Here is a crop of the above.

The ship is still hanging around and I finally looked it up on a shipping movement website. It turns out it’s the Solitaire, the largest pipe laying vessel in the world.

I don’t know if it’s actually been laying any pipes.

This is a picture from the ships and harbours photos site.