Two fingers to the ash cloud No2

Moira Mcpartlin

Bute in June


Lighthouse just south of Kilchattan Bay

A weekend is all you need as an introduction to this little gem. I had always been a little sniffy about Bute because of all the ‘goan doon the watter fur the fair’ history. What I found was an island of many faces.
Bute has a short/long distance route – The West Island Way – This meanders round coast land, through forests and roadside paths for thirty miles, giving the feeling of a long tramp but never far from the main town of Rothesay. The views are towards the mainland and Cumbrae on one side and Arran on the other. Good fish and chips too.


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Published by Moira Mcpartlin

Moira McPartlin’s debut novel The Incomers, published by Fledgling Press in 2012, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award. Over the next seven years Moira wrote her speculative fiction, Sun Song Trilogy novels (also published by Fledgling Press). The novels, set in 2089, reflect many issues we face today. Moira’s last novel, Before Now: Memoir of a Toerag, is written entirely in the Fife dialect and was published by her own imprint, Trilleachan Press, in May 2021. In 2021 she became a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle. In 2022 she was appointed the Scriever for The Federation of Writers (Scotland), and in 2024 was the recipient of a Bridges Award, a residency at Cove Park, Argyll. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. Moira’s latest publication, A Thing So Delicate: The Hidden Voices of Scotland’s Mass Concrete Viaducts, is a collaboration with her husband, Colin. It is a hybrid about the social history surrounding the building of Scotland’s Victorian mass concrete viaducts. This includes creative nonfiction, prose, poetry, and photography. Moira is listed on the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Database.

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