It’s almost two years since I began the whisky label marathon where I drew over 400 individual sketches of places in Scotland for Sansibar-Whisky’s bottling of a really tasty 1976 Speyside malt. Every sketch was of a place that I had been to and from photos that I had taken.

A year later and the bottles were on display in Finest Whisky, Berlin.

Having drawn labels from Dumfries to Sutherland I can’t tell you how proud I was when I saw that one of the Lanark images was chosen to be on display – Lanark being my new home town!

Quite a few sketches were made of places close to home here in the Clyde Valley. Recently, I supplied the Post Office in Crossford with a small selection of greetings cards of some of the places on labels within walking distance of home.

I thought I would share some of the sketches of the places nearby starting with Hazelbank, named after all the Hazel trees that once grew along the banks of the River Clyde. Most of the hazels have been cleared over the years but a few healthy hazel saplings are growing in our orchard and hopefully they will thrive.

To read a little bit more about how these labels began – I wrote about it here.

The following images are all places that have become familiar to me, especially Broomhouse the one below, which is really ‘Bill’s House’ which I see every morning from our place a bit further up the hill.

Hope you enjoy this small taste of the Clyde Valley and know that every label that went on those 1976 Speysiders was drawn with the same level of dedication that went into making the whisky!

Thanks for reading!

Ronnie