The Echo Observer

The Spirit of Speyside is a local festival; in its essence a celebration of our local drink, culture and the tradition. This festival is as much for tourists as it is for the locals. This article is introductory to the Spirit of Speyside. This image is from the Spirit of Speyside Facebook page The whisky festival will be hosting a numerous amount of activities, stalls and events from; a pop-up crafts stall which is to be orchestrated by a lovely local lady and her friends (who are renting the shop for a few days from the owner) to an event at the Cooperage where there will be four highly skilled Coopers building a 190litre barrel in the fastest time possible. Here is the link for more information on the Guinness World record attempt at the Cooperage. Many videos have been created called The Faces of The Festival and can be found on this link for the Spirit of Speyside Facebook Page. These videos show some of the important people who are part of/contributing to the festiva...

I live outside of a small town about 24 miles from the coast, in the north-east of Scotland. Where the grass is painted green in the summer, drowned in the autumn and buried in the winter. The days are long in half of the year and the days seem to do whatever they want towards the end of the annual cycle. All in all where I live is pretty normal; children go to school during the day then hang out with their friends, the local clichés doing whatever they want to friend, foe or town. The weather is as unpredictable as the people, their emotions, daily lives and routines throwing everyone in their surrounding area off of their game. The town just down the road the town sits upon a hill, its outskirts surrounded by a variety of farms, green lichen filled forests, old crack packed roads, shiny Distilleries where the local economy seems to be driven and a small train station that many of the locals use on the weekend. There are small shops, cafes and restaurants within the town. A beaut...