Highlands and Islands

We took our time on the way up to Skye from Edinburgh, breaking the 250-mile journey into three chunks. The first day we drove through Fife and Perthshire, both very nice, pleasant areas of Scotland, filled with old towns and villages and woodsy lochs and burns. Our first night we spent in St Fillans, a wonderful village at the east end of Loch Earn.

A view west along the length of Loch Earn.

Zoa liked it there too:

The second day, we stopped at Creag Meagaidh (pr. “craig meggie”) for a bit of walking. CM is a rocky, windblown and fog-enshrouded mountain at the western edge of the Cairngorms, measuring a solid 3500 feet or so. There’s a nice trail into the corry (glacial basin) near the peak, and a wee lochan hidden away there at the base of a cliff. All very picturesque. But the weather was hostile to our plans, so we only made it about halfway (“better part of valor” and all that). Here are a few of the pictures.

Looking up the glen toward the corry.

One of those silly self-portraits.

Ian celebrates the ascent.

Zoa stayed pretty warm.

Last notes from Edinburgh

We hauled out of Edinburgh last Monday in our rented Kia (gets 40 miles to the gallon, which is good because gas costs $10/gallon here–no more complaints from Americans about gas!). We were sad to leave our cozy flat and great neighborhood, but the Highlands were calling our name. Before we move on here, though, here are a few snaps of our last days in the big city.

A view of the Castle from the Salisbury Crags (in Holyrood Park).

The new Scottish Parliament building.

The quiet neighborhood of Dean Village is tucked away in a corner of the city.

One of the many cozy “mews” around Edinburgh.

Tobie on the Salisbury Crags.

Along the Water of Leith walkway.

A bit more from Edinburgh

We’re only going to be here in Edinburgh for another couple of days (sigh). One just starts to get used to a place, and one has to move on.

We’ve found our favorite cafè, Maxi’s, where they serve their cake warm with cream:

our favorite deli, our favorite grocery store, and our favorite neighborhood (Stockbridge, where we’re staying now).

There are any number of nice walks to be taken. For instance, to the Botanical Gardens (Zoa likes it there):

along the Water of Leith (a creek running through the city, with 12 miles of green walkway developed along its shore):

Holyrood Park (where we saw a weasel today–no picture, sorry!), an ancient park in the middle of the city, full of wildlife, with brooding basalt crags whence there are amazing views in all directions.

And, we found the best playground ever, by the University:

A short update, I know, but we’ll try to have another up tomorrow. More pictures on the way! And we’ll be in the Highlands soon.

Flat broke and ragged in Edinburgh

We arrived with nothing more than the clothes on our backs. We had one false start out of Durham (cancelled flight) and finally landed in Edinburgh 24 hours later than we planned with no luggage to be found. The bags arrived the next day but it took the delivery service another 2 and half days to get them to us. Not sure why it took longer to move the bags the seven miles from the airport to our flat than it took for them to go from Durham to the UK, but there you go. We all wore the same clothes for 6 days in a row (we have a washer in the flat–hooray!). We were a bit stinky and haggard by the time our bags arrived, but we managed a fun first few days here nevertheless.

Our biggest concern about the trip: flying transatlantic with a one year old. As usual, she utterly exceeded our expectations and slept pretty much throughout all three flights, and was a completely delightful travel companion. We are really proud of her.

The UK is ridiculously expensive, so we’ve been living on lentil soup and cheap cookies (er, biscuits). Our flat has a nice kitchen and a very nice grocery store nearby (with an entire aisle of bacon and another just for treats). We’ve walked miles across the city, avoiding the touristy sections as much as possible and exploring the random neighborhoods. Our favorite spot so far: the royal botanical gardens. The castle is grand. The weather has been lovely. We’re very happy to be here. Some pictures below of the city, the gardens, and our groceries (okay–not just lentil soup; we’re also eating bacon flavored chips and mini carrot cakes and chocolate mousse and other tasty treats). And more details to come, although we have lost our internet access in our flat for now (we were riding on someone else’s wireless), so it may be a few days….

2008

A new journey to Scotland is in the works! (Hence the updated title.) This time, all of us are going–hooray! We will spend two weeks in Edinburgh, and two weeks in the Highlands and islands, mostly on Skye. The nominal goal of all this is for me to run my current experiment, which (I hope) will be central to my dissertation. The real goal is to escape North Carolina before the full onset of The Sponge.

We leave Friday afternoon. A bit trepidatious about Z and the long plane flight, since she’s only one. But I think she’ll be fine. The other passengers may need to consider the virtues of patience.

Sleat and Raasay

Once again, I’ve been delinquent in posting. But I have a good excuse: I’ve been working on my phonetics project. But now I’ve got a little extra time, so I’ll put up some images of Sleat, and also some of Raasay, a smaller island that sits to the north and east between Skye and the mainland.

Sunsets from Skye are pretty amazing. One night I hitch-hiked to the top of the Tarskavaig road in time to catch one. Between running from midges, I got these shots. Looking west, about 8:30 pm.

Just north of the college is Isle Ornsay, or Eilean Iarmain as it’s known in Gaelic. There is a great pub and restaurant here, as well as a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father (the Highlands and their history had quite an effect on RLS; a read through ‘Kidnapped’ will show you how). You’ll encounter a number of Isle Or(o)nsay’s around Scotland: the name always refers to a tidal island, accessible by land only during a low tide.

Not much farther north there is an abandoned village, deserted in 1803 when its occupants boarded ship for Prince Edward Island. Remarkably, they did this of their own accord; the vast majority of Highland and Island emigrants were prised from their homes by fire and force. This is Leitir Fura, “Hillside Oak,” a small community of perhaps 40 people, whose remnants are mostly hidden by bracken, and hollies grow in the corners of the stone houses.

There’s a path through the trees to the village. It’s quite a nice walk, but for the rough clearings where the Forestry Commission is stripping out the timber species planted decades ago when production, not authenticity, was the priority. Now great efforts are being made to restore the native woodland, and the Douglas firs leave on lorries. Meanwhile, the Commission has left poetry on the guideposts for walkers.

On the other side is the translation:

Woodland

held dear by clanland chiefs,

but walled against their people’s

needs and wilful goats;

to tan a nation’s hides,

rich oak and birch were stripped

of bark and dignity.

On Saturday, I visited Raasay with some friends from the college. Joanne is here from Minneapolis studying Gaelic in conjunction with her studies of Scottish drama, and Andrea is a German florist who has plied her trade in Edinburgh for almost a decade.

Raasay is a small island, eight miles in length, forested at the south end, but rugged and rocky at the north. Its dominant feature is a basalt peak called Dun Cana, 1500 feet in elevation. Needless to say, we climbed it.

A view from near the foot of the mountain. Remember that view across the harbor of Portree? This is looking in the opposite direction; you can just barely make out the town hunkered in its bay.

The peak of Duncana fills the background. What you can’t see is the deep gully separating us from it; it’s still a substantial climb.

This gives you some idea: looking from the other direction.

A view from partway up, looking south across to Skye toward Broadford.

And from the top.

Looking the opposite way; the Scottish mainland lies in the distance. We could actually see the hills of Harris from the top of Dun Cana, though they don’t show up particularly well in photographs.

Shortly after we came down from the mountain, the skies opened, and we narrowly missed a soaking. On the Islands, they say it’s a bad sign when the sun is shining, because that means it’s about to rain.

I’ll have another post up before long; there are several cleared villages nearby, and I hope to be able to say something about them.

Beauly

Well, I’m back on the air, after a weeklong hiatus in Beauly, Inverness-shire, under the auspices of the WWOOF program. Through this program, volunteers can connect with hosts throughout the world. The usual deal is a solid six hours or so of work a day in exchange for room and board; most WWOOFers arrange for a week or two, but some do it for months at a whack. Most hosts are connected in some way with organic food production (hence World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms); some might be growers of vegetables, or meat producers, or even organic breweries (Black Isle Brewery, for one). There’s no better way to get to know the people of a place, or to learn first-hand the challenges and intricacies of sustainable food production.

The rail route from the west to the east Highland coast skirts north of Glen Affric and Loch Ness, running from Kyle of Lochalsh through Glen Carron and Strath Bran to Inverness. Kyle of Lochalsh (‘Kyle’ to local residents) is now the principal point of entry to Skye, since the completion of the Skye Bridge a decade ago. After an infamous period during which the bridge’s builders charged five pounds ($9) per car, the government assumed the debt, and now bridge-crossings are free. Meanwhile, people were known to take advantage of an exemption for livestock carriers by carting sheep about with them in their vehicles.

Here is a view of the Kyle waterfront, taken from the train station. The bridge can be seen just beyond the hotel. Incidentally, this is the hotel where Gavin Maxwell serendipitously acquired Edal, his second otter. That’s the town of Kyleakin on the far shore. (One shouldn’t get the idea that Skye weather is always so balmy; I’ve simply had ridiculously good luck on my journeys–so far.)

A view from the train, looking east across Loch Carron into the heart of the Highlands. In two hours, I will be in Beauly.

Helen and Neil Macleod moved from Glasgow several years ago to farm a small croft they inherited from her parents. They have an organic vegetable garden, two hayfields, four hens, four Belted Galloway cattle, and a black cat named Diesel who’s nimble enough to catch bats. The croft is located in Beauly, a small village outside Inverness, in the eastern Highlands. Neil also works as a harbor pilot in Inverness, and is a native Gaelic speaker originally from Harris, in the Outer Hebrides beyond Skye.

Looking SE across the hayfield from the cows’ pasture.

A misty morning soon after my arrival.

The view from my bedroom–apple trees with fruit galore (a word borrowed from Gaelic , by the way: gu leor means ‘enough, plenty’).

The kitchen, with Diesel waiting in the window after a hard night of killing elk in the mountains.

The Macleods have flowers everywhere.

Not the robin North Americans are used to, but instead the Old World chap who gave his name to the thrush we know well.

The back porch, incredibly, features a decades-old grapevine, growing right up through the floor. The best place for napping I know (except for the Wood, maybe).

Helen and Neil grow a variety of produce, ranging from onions to carrots to potatoes to cabbages. My visit coincided with an unusual hotspell for the UK: 36.5 degrees at Gatwick Airport, a record. British climatologists predict a severe shift in the country’s climate in the next fifty years; better get used to sweltering summers. We had to water the garden every day.

Cabbages.

Potatoes.

The black currants were ripening; we spent many hours picking them. Very tart, and intensely flavored.

In the evenings, the cows got a bit of a snack from us. Mira, a heifer calf whose mother rejected her, gets a special treat. She runs mooing to us for her milk bottle.

A large portion of my time with the Macleods was spent helping them to clear a six-hundred foot drainage ditch which protected the fields below from flooding. Here it is, our labor complete.

During this particular chore, I gained a not altogether welcome familiarity with a local perennial. This is Ulex europaeus, better known as gorse. (Thanks to the California government website for this illustration.)

When we weren’t weeding, watering, picking, or excavating, there was time for a little fun. One evening we went into Beauly to watch the local pipe band perform.

Marching down the main street.

A front-row seat!

There was also need for jam-making. Here, Helen has mixed strawberries with elderflower–the blossoms lend a subtle perfume to the finished jam.

A visitor helps assemble jellies for dessert. The treacle scones at lower left didn’t last long.

The week went by quickly, and soon I was on the train, bound for Skye. Maol Chean-dearg looms over Glen Carron.

And the Red Cuillin of Skye wait beyond Loch Carron.

Scottishisms

This category will be a compilation of peculiarities I’ve found in the local breed of English–either completely new words, or deceptively familiar words with somewhat different meanings. For now, I’ll toss up a list of them; if you like, you can offer your theories as to their meaning or signification.

revise (v.)
dreich (adj./adv.)
outwith (prep.)

How are you, hen?

Where are you staying?

Chi mi a-rithist sibh

I will be back in a week. For the next few days, I will be on the eastern coast of Scotland, near Inverness, volunteering on a farm. With any luck, I’ll return with material for an interesting addition to the blog.

This week’s title means, “I’ll be seeing y’all” (xee mee a-reesht shiv).

Loch a’ Ghlinne

There are several lochans, small lakes, within a few miles of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. Only one of has any kind of track leading to it, however: Loch a’ Ghlinne (Lake in the Glen), about five miles distant. This seemed like a good walk to me, so I set out at noon on Sunday to visit the loch, despite a steady drizzle. A heavy mist hung over the hills. For once there was little wind, but the temperature stubbornly refused to rise above 58 degrees or so.

An old croft is tucked away just off the road, about a mile from here. I’m not sure it’s inhabited–I have never seen any sign of life. (But note the skylights on the roof.)

One must walk uphill about two and a half miles to find the track leading down into the glenn.

The track leads for about a mile into the glen. Then you’re on your own. Forging my way through the peaty bog was a formidable task, but well worth it. After an hour or so of walking, the loch came into view. Heather illuminates the foreground.

As I approached, I could see the ocean in the distance, about two miles beyond the loch.

After another twenty minutes of slogging, I found my way to the shore of the loch. There I discovered a ruined bothy, an old crofter’s house, built of stone. A pleasant and mostly dry meadow surrounded it, with a forest of bracken and a solitary tree. Here and there among the ferns, the remains of outbuildings could be seen.

The builder had had little to work with, but was a skillful mason. There is no mortar. Once, a roof of thatch kept the house warm and dry. But dark: a single window occupied this wall, and there was a door opposite.

This waterfall traced the hillside on the other side of the loch.

After I had sat for a minute, poured the water out of my boots, and eaten my sandwich, I returned home. But I found this big guy in the middle of the path. Roughly life-size.

Peat isn’t much to look at, but once upon a time, it was the chief fuel source on the island; it’s still widely used in rural areas of Scotland. Over thousands of years, organic material is compressed into a dense mass. Saturated with water and kept from oxygen, it does not decompose. Once dug up, cut into bricks, and carefully dried, peat produces a smoky but persistent fire. If left for a few million years, it can turn into coal. Here the road cutting has exposed the spongy, saturated layer of peat.

Dark, stony islands float on the water at the mouth of Loch Nevis. The mist has mostly cleared, and the croft is quiet.