#altnaharra

[theoriginalladya]

I can't believe it's only been a year - seems like forever ago - but a year ago today, on my birthday, I got to post my MEBB story for 2021, No Rest For the Wicked.

No Rest For the Wicked

Summary: War is hell.

In 1940, just weeks after the Nazis invade and occupy France, Spectre-Commander Caleb Shepard is sent behind enemy lines to extract a Prothean beacon that could help Britain win the war. Instead, he encounters murder, double agents, and ends up on the run for his life. With help from an unexpected ally, he fights his way back to England, but will he make it in time…?

Relationship: (mShenko) Caleb Shepard/Kaidan Alenko

Characters: male Shepard, Caleb Shepard, Kaidan Alenko, Liara T'Soni, Ashley Williams, Saren Arterius, David Anderson, Steven Hackett, Admiral Kahoku, Major Coats, Dr. Karin Chakwas, assorted NPCs from the games

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Game Level Violence, Mass Murder (Mindoir), Realistic War Situation, WWII Typical Situation, Canonical Character Death

Tags: Crossover Fic, Mass Effect/World War II Crossover, Alternate Universe, Adventure, Angst, Sexual Content

Notes: This is a crossover fic for Mass Effect and World War II set in the 1940s/WWII. It is part of a new AU series I will be working on called Something Wicked This Way Comes featuring Caleb Shepard, an Earthborn Shepard from Shannon, Ireland. Shepard occasionally speaks Irish, and there are instances of Ukrainian and German that appear in the story. Any translations will show up in the notes at the end of the chapter or be explained within the chapter itself.

It started my ME/WWII crossover story experience which now has/will have at least three series tied into it: 1) Something Wicked This Way Comes - Caleb Shepard/Kaidan Alenko

2) Romance & Resistance - John (Shepard) Smith/Lachlan (Shepard) Berger (with @happychica)

3) On A Wing & A Prayer - Scott Ryder/Reyes Vidal [to be published]

It's been a wild ride over the past 365 days, and I'm damned proud of this story for far too many reasons to count and the art by @altnaharra is just perfect, so I thought I'd share it again on its anniversary.

[brianmchenry]

Essie Stewart is playing the accordion again for Richard Burton in Altnaharra

A quick drawing based on ‘The Summer Walkers’ a wonderful book by Timothy Neat about the pearl fishers and travelling families of Scotland.

[scotianostra]

Wilderness by Jenny Cameron Via Flickr: Taken at a wee place called Altnaharra in Sutherland one late afternoon in October 2015 on my way home from the North Coast of Scotland.

[thejohnfleming]

Where is the coldest city in the UK?

This is certainly not be the most universally interesting blog I have ever posted, but – hey! – it interests me, even if it is not something with which my loyal reader in Guatemala may identify. I stumbled upon this piece of trivia today totally by accident. I was looking up ‘the Lang Stracht’. (Don’t ask.) I was slightly but not very surprised. My mother used to make the fire (a real fire with…

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[alexdehaas]

Endless road. A836 near Loch Loyal, Scotland. by Alex de Haas

[alexdehaas]

A836 towards Tongue, Scotland. by Alex de Haas

[alexdehaas]

A836 near Crask Inn. by Alex de Haas

[spodzone]

Then came the churches, then came the schools Then came the lawyers, then came the rules Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads And the dirty old track was the telegraph road Then came the mines, then came the ore Then there was the hard times, then there was a war Telegraph sang a song about the world outside Telegraph road got so deep and so wide Like a rolling river – Dire Straits, Telegraph Road

I’ve known of Altnaharra for many years, gradually accumulating little facts about the area. Situated in the middle of the far northern Highlands, it doesn’t get much more remote. Jointly with Braemar, it holds the record for the coldest recorded temperature in the UK – at -27.2ºC I’m glad I wasn’t there at the time.

However, last November on holiday – gravitated north as always – I found myself with a not-completely-planned day where the best weather indicated a visit was indeed possible.

As habitations go, it doesn’t occupy much space in the landscape.The high street (there is none other) is the A836, a single-lane road with passing places. Within about a 200m radius it boasts a handful of houses, an outsized hotel, couple of petrol pumps and a primary school. The village centre is barely a bend in the road with a pleasant Scots Pine tree and the Allt na h’Aire burn from which the place takes its name. I do love the little epiphanies when one makes the connection between the Gaelic names and their anglicised equivalents – in this case I was wondering if the burn in a photo had a name, looked it up, saw the gaelic and the pronunciation dawned on me: “that IS Altnaharra”.

  A different world from the other “River Aire” I grew up near – the one down in Leeds, this one giving its name to Altnaharra in the far north Highlands.

The township of Altnaharra is little more than this strip of road with a hotel on one side, a couple of petrol pumps opposite and the primary school beyond. And this tree in the middle.

A wayside petrol station in the middle of Altnaharra

Altnaharra primary school grounds – a nice modern building with adjacent playground. For a town in the middle of wilderness conscious of its own story of survival after the Clearances, that must have quite a catchment area.

We like flaking paint texture. Green garage doors in the middle of Altnaharra

A solitary tree silhouetted against dramatic clouds

Altnaharra primary school grounds – a nice modern building with adjacent playground. For a town in the middle of wilderness conscious of its own story of survival after the Clearances, that must have quite a catchment area.

Of course it is also very much Runrig territory; sitting at the end of Strathnaver, it suffered in the Clearances – I wonder what size of catchment area is required to keep that primary school active.

Around Altnaharra Then came the churches, then came the schools Then came the lawyers, then came the rules…