The Rugged Scot
The Voice of the West

The Rugged Scot

Just me writing things down - from the Clyde to wherever I end up next.

The Man Behind the Chronicles

My name is Paul. I'm 42 years old, born and bred in the rugged landscapes of Scotland. I've got a wife and two wee girls who keep me grounded and remind me what's truly important in life. This journal started as a way to document ma travels and recipes, but it's become something more.

Why I Write

To be honest, I'm fed up with the world today. It feels like we're being squeezed from every angle. The elites in their high towers seem more interested in their own power than the well being of the common man. Whether it's the constant surveillance, the manipulation of our food supply, or the blatant cloudseeding messing with our natural weather patterns, it's hard to stay silent.

I believe in returning to the basics. Climbing the Munros, baking ma own bread, and keeping a watchful eye on the systems that try to control us.

How This Site Came to Be

This site is built with Astro, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. I chose Astro for its blazing-fast performance and static site generation. The site is hosted on ma own VPS because I wanted full control over ma content, without the bloat of traditional platforms like Wordpress.

Most of the site is still proper static publishing. The longer chronicles, pages, and core content are written in Markdown and built into the site. That keeps things fast, simple, and entirely under ma own control.

The one newer addition is the Field Notes section. That's for the shorter updates I want to fire off when I'm out on the road, up a hill, or stuck somewhere with a flask and five spare minutes. Those quick notes are managed through a small Strapi CMS setup, then pulled into the site alongside the static content.

So the site now runs as a hybrid in a sensible way: long-form writing stays static, while the quick micro-blog style notes come in through the CMS.

But it is still all mine and all self-hosted. The main site is hosted by me, the CMS is hosted by me, and the content lives under my own control. No third-party publishing platform, no rented audience, no corporate middleman deciding what stays up and what disappears.

Tech Stack

  • Framework: Astro (static site generation)
  • Language: TypeScript
  • Styling: Tailwind CSS
  • Content: Markdown files with frontmatter for main content
  • Field Notes: Strapi CMS for short-form updates
  • Live Flight Data: Pulled in live from my own antenna feed at skies.northdock.net
  • Hosting: Fully self-hosted by me

Why Blog Now?

A lot of people think blogging is dead. With social media, video platforms, and AI-generated content everywhere, who reads blogs anymore?

For me, this isn't about making money. It's not really about people seeing the site either. It's about me just offloading my brain.

I've got decades of memories, opinions, and experiences rattling around in my head. Climbing Ben Nevis, growing up in the 80s and 90s, watching the world change in ways I never expected. If I don't get these thoughts out, they'll just fade away.

This is my digital brain dump. A place to preserve the real stuff before it gets buried under the constant noise of modern life. The memories, the rants, the recipes – that's all me. Real as it gets.

In a world of fake engagement and artificial everything, sometimes you just need a corner of the internet that's genuinely yours. Even if nobody else reads it.