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June 7 –
“The
fastest and youngest fleet”
If it were possible
to create the perfect holiday, these eight days in Scotland would have been
it. It started with the smoothest North Sea crossing ever, courtesy of
Superfast Ferries (www.superfast.com).
These are nifty ferries (the one in question runs from Zeebrugge/Belgium to
the docks of Rosyth opposite Edinburgh), but what was even more uplifting
than the glorious sunset above the Channel was the food created by the
Superfast Ten's chef Danny Weiser and his crew. Absolute bliss for the
tastebuds and the eye that I never would have expected on this kind
of vessel.
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June 8 –
welcome to the Kingdom of Fife
Watching these guys
do their job –
painting the Forth Rail Bridge –
makes my knees go weak (I have fear of heights, more about that later), but
they seemed to be having a good time.
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Off the ferry and into the
Highlands. My first stop: The King's House Hotel, which sits in the middle
of nowhere at the edge of Rannoch Moor, my destination for the day. Those
bikers with their mighty machines put a slight dent into my sense of freedom
– but only until I started walking and was finally alone.
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If someone had told me on the day
before I left that the ferry – and hence the whole trip -- had been
cancelled, I wouldn't have blinked. I had maneuvered myself into such a
working frenzy (all fascinating, highly gratifying work, mind, but still)
that I was about to forget how to breathe. That first glimpse, the view from
Rannoch Moor towards Glen Etive, anchored me firmly in the here and now, and
from that moment on, I just enjoyed.
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Of course the view towards Glencoe is
just as spectacular.
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Being me ... I see horses everywhere.
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Doesn't mean other critters can't be
just as photogenic, though.
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Sunset #2
(bear with me, there will be more), this time at Glen Etive.
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I would never have dreamed this, back
in my public-transportation-and-bicycles-only days, but I love
driving in Scotland (almost as much as walking in Scotland). One of the
reasons for this –
the thing Scottish writer Iain Banks (in “Raw
Spirit”)
calls the GWRs or Great Wee Roads, stretches (or curves) of fun that don't
tend to be the fastest way from A to B but make you forget that you're eager
to get to B in the first place. And you don't need expensive wheels
to enjoy them –
something like my trusted Polo does the trick just as well.
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Here's something you don't see every
day: sunset-cum-moonrise, Glen Etive.
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The summer dim
was the light of the Highland night, late in summer. So far to the north,
the sun barely set on Midsummer's Eve; it would disappear below the horizon,
but even at midnight, the sky was pale and milky white, and the air was not
dark, but filled with unearthly mist.
Diana Gabaldon, “The
Fiery Cross”
I took this picture
from the window of my room at Jennifer
Wilson's B&B, half an hour after midnight, two weeks before
Midsummer. As for the unearthly mist, we'll get to that later.
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June 9 --
Tomintoul
Another Great Wee
Road, from Grantown to Tomintoul, where I wanted to walk into Glen Avon. A
lovely stroll through the gorse-strewn foothills, and even though the track
was honest-to-god tarmac, the only sounds were the calls of the
oystercatchers and the murmur of the river. Breathing space.
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Since the days are long in the
Highlands at this time of the year, I left the A9 at Daviot on the way back
to Inverness and paid the Clava Cairns a brief visit. Arrived just in time
for this – thirty seconds later,
the sun was gone.
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Culloden Battlefield.
Remember where it said “unearthly
mist”?
What with all the light, I constantly lost track of the time, and so I
nearly jumped when I got back into my car and the clock on the dashboard
said midnight. But of course I hadn't re-set the car clock, and it still
showed Central European Summer Time. In Inverness, it was only eleven. Still
... there wasn't another soul around there that late –
at least no other living soul – and getting
surrounded by the fast-gathering mist on the Field was one of the stranger
experiences in my life. Just to put it mildly ...
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June 10 –
these boots are made for walking
After thirteen
years, I retired my walking boots and treated myself to a new pair of the
same brand: Brasher Women's Hillmaster. Found it oddly hard to part with the
old ones, though, because they've taken me to so many wonderful places and
provided the necessary foothold for every single picture in the Scotland
section of this site. I hope that the new ones will lead an equally
fulfilled life.
http://www.brasher.co.uk
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Since it's not recommended to start
new boots with a long walk, I took it easy for a day. Followed Hazel, my
landlady's daughter, to her riding lesson at Broomhill farm on the Black
Isle. Kudos to Hilary, her riding instructor; it's not often that you see
someone do such great work with kids ...
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... and the site of the farm, on a
hill overlooking the Moray Firth, is spectacular.
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Beach Art ©
North Sea Tides, Fortrose |
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For thirteen years, people have kept
telling me that there are dolphins in the Moray Firth. After trying hard to
spot them the first couple of times I went to Scotland, I decided that the
likelyhood of seeing Nessie was much greater than that of seeing a dolphin.
Boy, was I wrong –
and when that first fin appeared in the waves at Fortrose, I was glad that
my camera did the focussing for me, because suddenly I had all that water in
my eyes.
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June 11 –
Return to Kintail
The drive from
Inverness via Stratherrick and Loch Garry to Kintail is a single stretch of
bliss. The view at Loch Garry is one of its great roadside
attractions –
and the whisky selection at the Cluanie Inn is definitely another one. It
was on the bookshelf in that bar that I discovered Iain Banks' “Raw
Spirit”,
which is still giving me great chuckles ... and wistful memories.
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Glen
Shiel Battlefield
”Aye,
that was us.”
Arch puffed industriously, smoke wreathing up round his head. “We'd
crept down through the bracken in the night”,
he explained to me, “and
hid among the rocks above the river at Glen Shiel, under the bracken and the
rowans. Ye could have stood a foot away and not seen one of us, so thick as
it was.
“A
bit cramped”,
he added confidentially to Jamie. “Ye
couldna stand up to take a piss, and we'd had our suppers –
with a bit of beer –
before we came up the other side of the mountain. All squatting like women,
we were. Trying like the devil to keep our bowstrings dry in our shirts, too,
what wi' the rain coming down and dripping down our necks through the fern.
“But
come the dawn”,
he went on cheerfully, “and we stood on the
signal and let fly. I will say t'was a bonny sight, out arrows hailing down
from the hills on the poor sods camped there by the river. Aye, your father
fought there, too, a Sheaumais”, he added, pointing
the stem of his pipe at Jamie. “He
was one o' those by the river.”
A spasm of laughter shook him.
Diana Gabaldon, “A
Breath of Snow and Ashes”
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Kintail. This was just ... odd.
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Gleann Lichd, the lovely back yard of
the Five Sisters of Kintail.
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My parents accompanied me for
part of this trip, and my father took this picture of me on the bridge at
Glenlicht House. Thanks!
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The traditional ending to this
particular daytrip: Eilean Donan Castle ...
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... with its lovely
glimpse towards the Cuillins on Skye. |
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I don't know why this is called
Alpenglow when it's just as spectacular in the Highlands, but there you are:
the Five Sisters of Kintail.
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And the last picture of day five: Sunset over Loch Duich.
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June 12 –
Glencoe
I had accidentally passed through
Glencoe already on the first night as the sun was setting (I should have
known that it was so close to Rannoch Moor, but didn't think of it). It is
an immensely recognizable and truly unique place that has now a firm place
on my list of Walks to Do. This time, it was just driving, with a few brief
strolls ...
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... and a stop at the Visitors' Center. Seeing that
bookshelf was another eyes-filled-with-water moment.
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More road joy, from Spean Bridge to Kingussie, and then
back up the A9 to the Black Isle. I had hoped that my parents would be able
to catch a glimpse of the dolphins as well, but I never expected this. While
I felt blessed the first time to see three of them, this time it must have
been two dozen at least. The sea was practically boiling with them, and they
swam up almost to our feet, hunting for salmon, sometimes just catching a
wave and surfing it. Jumping. Riding the waves and disappearing again, half
a dozen at a time, a perfect dolphin ballet.
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There was a photographer from Inverness standing next to
me who comes dolphin-snapping regularly, but even he was at a loss for words
and said he'd never seen a show like this. The fin in the middle may give
you an idea of how heart-stoppingly close they really were.
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June 13
–
Skye
In his despicable
travelogue “The
Kingdom by the Sea”
(despicable because it despises its very subject), Paul Theroux finds
exactly one good thing to say about Great Britain. He says that the Cuillins
on Skye are “a
place I wished to return to ... I wanted to come here again with someone I
loved and say 'Look!'”.
With that, I can only agree.
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In a sense, it ought to make
no difference who makes a whisky, or where it's made; all that should matter
is the taste, and that's it. Yet, part of the reason for visiting a
distillery is that seeing where the stuff is made, meeting the people who
make it –
and often breathing the scent of the place where it rests for umpteen years – undeniably adds to
the experience in the future, just for the simple reason that that is what
we are like; we are connection-making creatures. You might be on the other
side of the world, sweating in a climate Scotland hasn't seen since the
pre-Cambrian, when most of its land mass was somewhere over the Equator, but
the smell of a dram from a distillery you've been to years before will
suddenly whisk you back to a collection of black-walled buildings on a
chilly hillside in Angus.
Iain Banks, “Raw
Spirit”
Talisker ... is like the Black
Cuillin range itself; unique, fiercely intrusive, savagely spectacular, not
for the faint-hearted but wildly rewarding for those prepared to tackle it
... Talisker is the favorite whisky of a quite amazing number of people and
I completely understand why; there really are few better.
Iain Banks, “Raw
Spirit”
(The presence of the beer truck in
this picture is as accidental as its inscription is fitting.)
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The whisky-making had its own cycle, and one that
everyone on the Ridge was subconsciously attuned to, whether directly
involved in it or not. Which was how I knew that the barley in the malting
shed had just begn its germination, and therefore, Marsali would be there,
turning and spreading the grain evenly before the fire was lit.
The grain must be allowed to germinate, to
assure a maximal sweetness –
but must not sprout, or the mash would have a bitter taste and be ruined. No
more than twenty-four hours must pass after germination began, and I had
smelled the fecund damp scent of the grain begin to rise as I foraged in the
woods the afternoon before. The time was here.
Diana Gabaldon, “A
Breath of Snow and Ashes”
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June 14 –
farewell to the Cairngorms
You won't get a good view of Cairn
Gorm if you're standing on top of it, so this time I thought I'd try a hill
that might give me that view ... and stumbled across the recipe for a
perfect circular walk. First, pick a day with a visibility of 120 miles or
more –
a slight haze will do, a high cloud cover with sunny patches can only make
it more spectacular. Pass by Loch Morlich at the foot of Cairn Gorm (or
don't pass by and take a picture instead) and drive on to the Glenmore
Visitors' Center, where you park your car.
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Walk past the Reindeer Center and
Glenmore Lodge and head into the forest, which at this point has all the
makings of a fine cathedral.
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Take the time for a stop at Lochan
Uaine, a tiny turquoise gem in the forest, surrounded by majestic
Caledonian pine trees and startling sandy mini-beaches.
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Ryvoan Bothy, turn left and head for Meall a' Bhuachaille, the 810-meter-”dwarf”
standing opposite the Cairngorm massif on the other side of Loch Morlich.
I've done a lot of walking in this area, and as with each step of the
steep ascent to the top of this insignificant-looking hill, more sparkling
lochans and winding hill tracks come into view, I'm beginning to
appreciate it more and more, despite its bland looks.
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Like I said, I have fear of heights.
Badly. So badly that I feel shaky if I have to stand on a chair. Why I
keep hillwalking ... we'll get to that when I reach the summit. This –
the spot where Lochan Uaine came into view again from above –
was a point where the track was paved with stones (and a giant thanks to
the people who maintain this area). It's way above the treeline, but still
below the height where the heather gives way to the tundra vegetation that
is one of the things that make this area so unique, and so dear to me.
Here I made the mistake of looking back (Lochan Uaine and all that) ...
and realized that the path, and the whole hillside with it, dropped from
view a few feet behind me. No way was I going to be able to return
down that steep, grip-less stony ladder. I sat down, forced myself to
breathe, told myself that the contour lines looked much better on the
other side, swallowed the panic and went on. So much for the
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of the ascent went smoothly; it was only the one bad spot. And the view
from the top almost defies words. All around me, I could see the various
routes I've walked in this area as if someone had unfolded the Ordnance
Survey map (Landranger 36; I may need to retire that as well, because it's
really used) under my feet. Farther away ... everything, from
Kintail and the Cuillins to Ben Nevis. It took my breath away again, but
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The way back down leads down much more
gently through the same change of vegetation, from the tundra of the
summit plateau to a stretch of heather and moor plants, Caledonian pine
and finally into Glenmore forest again, which looks like something from a
fairy tale here, with its ferns and gurgling burns and conifers that seem
to grasp at you from all sides. The walk ends at the Visitors' Center
again. It is only maybe five miles long, but it's the Cairngorms in a
nutshell –
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June 15
A culture shock,
you say as you see this picture? It was, trust me –
the Soccer World Championships had begun while we were in Scotland, and I
watched matches in a pub on Skye, in our B&B's living room (the “we
are Pope”
against “we
were Pope”
match, Germany vs. Poland), on the ferry ... soccer was everywhere. But I
still didn't expect to return into a country that had discovered overnight
that black, red and gold are its colors and that you don't go straight to
hell if you display them. Suddenly, the streets are a sea of flags,
suspended from windows and balconies, waving on newly-erected flag poles,
fluttering on car roofs. If Scotland keeps struggling for its identity and
place (more recommended reading: Ian Rankin, “Rebus's
Scotland”),
so does Germany. But at least
the Scots are proud of their flag and their roots –
maybe we will get there, eventually ... |
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