Best of Scotland (U/V)

Published on Friday 26 June 2009 20:17

ULLAPOOL: Developed from 1788 by the "British Society for Extending the Fisheries and Improving the Sea Coasts of This Kingdom of Great Britain", as a centre for herring fishing. The regular layout, harbour and church (now Ullapool Museum) were designed by Telford. Ullapool is gaining a reputation for music and the arts with a book festival and Loopallu, a backward-looking festival.

UNCO GUID: In Address to the Unco Guid Burns has a go at the "Rigidly Righteous," of whose displeasure the sexually errant bard had some experience. He suggests that, similarly circumstanced and tempted, they too might have succumbed. Natural sympathy and compassion should be prioritised over stone-casting, priggish reprobation.

UNION CANAL: Among the navvies constructing the canal were Burke and Hare. They soon abandoned the gruelling shovelling and barrowing. The 31-mile canal, opened in 1822 to link Edinburgh with the Forth & Clyde Canal at Falkirk, was built as a contour canal, without locks, along the 240ft contour.

VACUUM FLASK: Born in Kincardine on Forth, James 'Flaskman' Dewar neglected to patent his 1892 invention and the flask was developed commercially by Thermos. Dewar was a distinguished chemist and physicist who also co-invented cordite. The term "Dewar flask" is still used scientifically.

VICTORIA FALLS: In 1855, David Livingstone I presume became the first European to sight Mosi-oa-Tunya, the "Smoke that Thunders" which he called the Victoria Falls and declared that "scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight". The great explorer's treks were part financed by college chum, oil tycoon James Young who developed the West Lothian shale oil industry.