My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Robert Burns
CHAPTER 58 SITE ASSESSMENT

“Thanks guys,” said Sir Robert Norberton. “I think we can start. Everyone all right with that?

Right, the agenda. It seems it will be Easter Ross, they seem fairly set on that, mostly because no one else wants it. But saying they all want it up there is a bit of an exaggeration. Most working guys want it, but there are the usual nimbys and spoilers as well, just less of them up there. Then there will be all the difficulties of compulsory purchase. That is going to take a politically savy department all of it's own. I hear the Scottish Parliament will make things difficult without huge pay outs and incentives. New roads, schools, you name it. And of course the Treasury will be squeezing all the costs it can.

So whatever happens we are going to have to present a really tight case to the enquiry. And there will be an enquiry. They want to go through all the correct procedures, everything above board, so there can be no complaints after wards. the last thing we want is some arse stopping construction half way through because the human rights of some pigeon are being violated. Now we have a decent budget, but we must not waste it. We must eventually have the public on side. Now Alex, can you give us a broad outline of the proposed site?”

“Yeah.” Alex Holder took control of the screen “As you see, we now have a semi permanent suggestion as to what goes where. The launcher starts at Nigg Bay and goes north east towards the Dornoch Firth. At the Nigg end we have the jetty's and gantry's to lift the ship from the water onto the rail. We have the oxygen and hydrogen plant here making fuel from seawater.

There will have to be radar sites around here and here. And we will need to have the radar trailers all the way up the coast from Dornoch to Joe O Groats and into the islands. The idea is to mount all the equipment on trailers that can be brought to a central site for maintenance and repair. We hope that keeping it all portable means we wont need a planning enquiry for each radar site.

Over here is a main road leaving the A9 here, crossing the railway at the new station and goods yard, going past the office and control complex at Fearn. Going under the launch track towards Tullich to another junction here. The B9165 goes north to Port Mahomack, and this new road going south to join the B9175 towards the Nigg Yard. All other roads going east to west would be closed at the launch track. I thought you could spin that as making the areas traffic free and more tranquil for the wild life. Of course this is just the outline. We must also consider the magnetic pulse of the rail gun. It will play havoc with unshielded electronics. Computers, cameras, everything. The exclusion zone you see here should be adequate enough. But the final details of where service roads and power lines go will be worked out once we're sure of the launch rail and fuel plant.”

“OK guys,” said Sir Robert “So we now know roughly where everything will be. The next thing is archaeology, Doctor Hill Barton.”

“Yes,” said Hill Barton. “The Archaeology. There is a lot of it, so we must allow plenty of time for a survey and dig, and I think we are going to have to dig all of it, the whole line early on. Then if there are any significant remains we could make sure the launch rail supports go either side of whatever it is, not through it. I'm told the supports can be varied if need be?”

“Oh yes,” said Alex “It had to be that way in the original design because we had no idea where the site would be, or if we'd be crossing roads or streams or whatever.”

“So you could cross over the remains of a Pictish monastery if need be,” said Hill Barton.

“Yeah.”

“Splendid. Now rather than run through the whole of history, if you look at the map, I've put on finds from the different periods. Neolithic, Bronze age, Iron age. Actually the Bronze age is interesting because there was a huge tsunami then. It was started by a landslide off the Norwegian coast and the wave pushed sand over the whole area. Lets hope it doesn't happen again. Here's the late iron age. the Picts, early Christian, Viking, early medieval, and the more modern. As you see, a bit of everything and the chances are that there's more on the line of the track.

Right. Now one good thing. There is a tradition, if you could call it that, of removing all significant finds, Pictish crosses, Viking burials and stuff, to museums in Glasgow and Edinburgh. So if we just do that instead of preserving stuff locally or building museums or whatever, it would solve a few problems.

Now I have divided the area into sections as per the map there.” He indicated the screen “I am asking the various archaeological trusts for tenders to do the


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