Category: Wanderings

Our ferry this afternoon was scheduled for 2 pm, which left us with a goodly bit of time to wander round the downtown area in Stornoway.  Had a chance to purchase some Harris Tweed accessories, including a little bag and a new wallet; a little pricey, but nothing like as dear as a coat would have been – and really, what but the single most famous local handicraft should one collect as a souvenir?

We also had a chance to do a little geocaching, and had a couple of interesting encounters.  One of them was a man who happened to live across the street from our B&B and let us in on a little detail of the changed ownership I wouldn’t have guessed: the prior owner was arrested and ejected from the island for…well, um…possession of inappropriate material involving young folk, shall we say.  As this rather extraordinary bit of news sunk in we also happened to encounter a fellow with a chainsaw, who advised us to check out the little church we were standing next to – the only Anglican Church in the Outer Hebrides, believe it or not.  It was rather cute, really: plain white inside for the most part, with some handsome gilded embroidery and a little memorial to the 1919 sinking of a ship just off the harbour.

Eventually it was time to be heading to our ferry for the longest crossing of our trip to date, from Stornoway to Ullapool.  Here things briefly got much TOO exciting; arriving what we thought was just five minutes late for our ferry check-in we found the check in gate shut tight.  Sprinting out to find a warden we were told to park near the check-in gate and wait.

So we waited.  And waited.  And waited.

We waited while all the big heavy goods trucks drove in.

We waited while all the foot passengers entered.

We waited while all the cars loaded themselves on.

I am ashamed to admit I panicked somewhat, having been assailed at once by visions of being shunted to a later ferry or worse, having to stay in Lewis a third night, throwing off our entire vacation plan and possibly ruining the trip.  That I’d contributed to this in some way by shopping didn’t help in the slightest, either.

At long last we were waved forward by a warden, who gave us a bit of a dressing down for how late we were.  (We were sort of baffled, as we were quite sure the ferry had been for two o’clock.). However,  this bit of public shaming out of the way, we were soon able to settle in for our ride, have a bite of lunch, and as I type Mark is catching a much-needed nap next to me as the sea rolls past.

Overall, though Lewis was interesting, I’m glad I don’t live there – and I’m also a bit glad we’re not staying for a third night.

— Much later —

Back on the mainland of Scotland at last.  It’s startling how dramatic the shift in scenery is once you get off the islands – or perhaps it is just the extreme difference between windswept Lewis and the thickly forested mainland; whatever it is that does it, it really drove home how much we’d come to miss trees.

We had a long, long, LONG drive to do, and much of it wasn’t of particular interest, aside from the very green and very steep hillsides of the Scottish glens. (I will say, though: after Lewis, the rest of Scotland’s sheep population seems suddenly really, really sparse.)

We were making our way to Dufftown, in the heart of the Speyside region.  This part of Scotland is known for its whiskey distilleries: fully half of all the distilleries in Scotland are housed here. (Think about that for a moment.  Seriously.  Half the distilleries.  In Scotland.)

On our way, of course, we couldn’t miss at least taking a quick look at the most famous of all Scotland’s lochs – Loch Ness.  This very long and narrow but frighteningly deep lake sits deep in Scotland’s “Great Glen” (there are a lot of glens, but this one gets a capital G) and is of course the purported home of some sort of massive but very elusive cryptid, and a pretty scary-huge cottage industry has sprung up around her.  Would be monster-hunters have a choice of hunting experiences and Nessie-themed adventures to go on.

We visited the ruins of nearby Urquhart Castle to get a better look at the loch.  The castle itself was closed…but the car park permitted some pretty surprisingly decent views.  (Urquhart is another one of those castles, like Eilean Donan, that was blown up by a set of defenders in order to prevent a different set of defenders from taking/holding it; it’s pretty crazy how common this story is in Scottish history.  Unlike Eilean Donan, it doesn’t have a family looking after it, and so it sits by the lakeside in a state of picturesque decay.)

Even if we hadn’t made this small detour I think we would have been quite late at our B&B for check-in; usual check in time was meant to be 5-7, and we were pushing 8:00.  Fortunately, our rooms hadn’t been re-sold, and our hostess, a kind and gregarious English lady, was remarkably welcoming. (Our hosts have almost without exception not been native Scots, and I have to admit I am really starting to wonder why.)

The B&B is really very nice here, with a four star rating instead of the threes we’ve been staying in up to now; we’ve got a king size bed and private bath, though it’s not en suite.  There wasn’t much time to enjoy the room just yet, though; we were also getting perilously close to the time when restaurants here tend to stop serving food, so after dropping our bags we hastily adjourned to the Stuart Arms, a local pub in Dufftown (pronounced “Duffton.”). This is a tiny town with just two major streets, each lined with the brown stone houses that are typical of Speyside.

Despite our arriving just five minutes before the end of serving time, the waitress was able to score us a seat, and soon we were re-fortified to follow up on our new landlady’s intriguing suggestion that we pop round to the local Royal British Legion hall, as there was likely to be music happening there.

And so there was.  In a room full of mismatched tables that probably hadn’t been much updated since 1970 or so – perhaps even earlier – a motley crew of Scots, most over the age of fifty, sat listening to a sizeable crew of musicians up at the front of the room.  There was an accordion, a bevy of fiddlers, and an ancient drummer rattling away with intense, zenlike concentration, while a piano lent backup from the very farthest end of the room. Nearest the door, a pocket-size bar was staffed by a slightly-disreputable-but-cheery-looking bartender, who was happy to recommend a whiskey for Les and Mark (the Balvenie 12-year double wood.  To a whiskey newbie like me that means very little, but when in Rome.)

We were also accosted – er, welcomed – immediately by a small, bright-eyed Scotsman with snow-white hair and a neat, pointed beard.  He was at once keen to bid us pull up a chair and to learn where we were from, where we’d been in Scotland, what we thought of everything, and so on.  He also happened to be a wealth of knowledge on the subject of the Trans-Canada Railway, which has strong Scottish connections – hence all the little towns with Scottish names at every railroading camp from sea to sea.  Dufftown is twinned with a city in Quebec, actually, and residents from one town often make visits to the other in alternating years; the fellow we talked to had visited Canada often enough that he’d been more than once to see the Calgary Stampede.

Our jolly host invited us to take a seat at a table just in time for us to hear the encore of Patrick, a fellow who didn’t seem a day younger than eighty but who led the assembled in a couple of rousing traditional songs about a young lad from Skye with a wandering eye and such.  Nearly all the locals knew the words and many sang/clapped along; informal ceilidhs like this one have apparently been going on in Dufftown every Monday night for fifteen years.

At the moment this is possibly the single most legit cultural experience we’ve had in Scotland.

We were only able to see some of the show, given that it was so late, but I’m still happy we managed to catch it before heading back to our B&B to collapse into bed.  A busy day ahead of us in Whisky Country.

First, a haiku:

Isle of Lewis Day

Wow, that’s old!  What was it for?

Don’t step in sheep poop

It was Sunday in the Isle of Lewis today, which means everything was closed, with the very very few exceptions of a couple of dining establishments that serve tourists.  Other than that we were on our own and out of doors: even the grocery stores were shut on Sundays, so it was definitely a good thing we’d picked up some groceries beforehand.

This said, there was still plenty to see on the isle, so like the good little godless heathens we were we loaded ourselves up and headed out for a little further adventure.

Our first stop was the “Bridge to Nowhere,” a concrete bridge that picturesquely spans a little gorge leading down to one of the broad, sandy beaches.  This one was built by a gentleman by the name of Leverhulme, a soap magnate of some sort who had the brilliant idea of building a road to connect the two long roads that extend from the main highway north to the very ends of Lewis.  The locals didn’t really want to DO roadworks for the rich guy, unfortunately…they wanted land to croft, thank you very little, not industrial jobs. And so they pretty much ignored his grand project, and the bridge that was part of phase 1 is really all that’s left of it.

The beach nearby made for a pleasant walk, as well: the sun was out, making the water a vivid blue-green and turning the sands pale gold.  The route down gave us a ringside seat for a flock of geese – goslings and all – some of whom had run across the road in front of our car as we drove out.  It was obviously a haven for rabbits, as well; an array of beachfront rabbit condos were tucked into the grassy verge near the beach’s lone picnic table, and judging but the sheer number of holes and…er, other signs…the population must have been substantial.

Toward the far end of the beach were some pretty spectacular spires of rock, as well; at least one of them had a natural tunnel of sorts leading right through it.  Too wet to wade through, but pretty to look at, in a sort of mysterious way.  Mark was particularly fond of these beach-megaliths, and seemed to quite enjoy his time wandering around and through them.  (It was a first class brood spot.)  I’m not generally much of a beach person, but the isolatedness of this one was quite appealing, if only it hadn’t been so damned cold whenever the wind blew.

And make no mistake, there’s a lot of wind.  Wind turbines are common on the isle of Lewis, and they seem to be moving at a brisk pace most of the time.  More on this in a moment.

Our next stop was the prosaically named “Butt of Lewis,” the northernmost point of the isle – and, incidentally, of our vacation.  This is, similar to Neist Point, a rocky, craggy tip of the island; huge boulders rise up from the sea here, showing swirling folds along their sides and dozens on dozens of nooks that form havens for seabirds and their nests.

On one of these rocks, quite low to the ocean, a local pointed out a seal, basking in the sunshine.  Not doing a whole hell of a lot, to be sure, but I was happy to see him anyway.  A seal! In the wild!  Something else crossed off the Scottish bingo card.  Selkie country indeed, though the waters here are freezing.  Can’t be that comfortable for them!

The local also told us a tale or two about the lighthouse that keeps vigil on the point.  Vaguely Spanish in flavor, it’s automated now but was manned until a surprisingly short time ago; remember what I said about wind?  In the winter the winds here are so very high that the waves crashing against the rocks would be thrown so high that water would come down the chimneys, putting out the fires in the keeper’s family home.  (We also asked, on a whim, about peat.  Yes, he does cut his own and yes, he does still burn it in fires.  He doesn’t sell it any more, though – too much trouble.)

Aside from wind and peat, the other thing the Isle of Lewis is very rich in is Neolithic sites…or, at least, constructs that long predate the advent of the written word, and whose greater purpose, if any, is long forgotten.  A surprising number of these are unmanned, as well, seemingly trusting to the honor system and the remoteness of the locations to ensure nobody damages the ruins.

The first of these we visited was Steincleat, a circle of stones with what appears to be a collapsed cairn set into the side of it, not unlike a drawing of a moon in its orbit.  Like most things in Scotland, it’s reached by climbing a hill; unlike most things in Scotland, the hill in question is remarkably mucky.  All that grass only LOOKS like grass; it’s actually clumps of sturdier ground surrounded by boggy moorland of varying degrees of wetness.  Got my feet damp here, unfortunately, as that would stay with me for most of the day.

Steincleat’s hill is ALSO heavily covered in shit.  No, literally.  Between the rabbits and the sheep there are pellets of various sizes literally everywhere, and it’s worth watching your step.  This would, sadly, turn out to be the case most places we went that hadn’t explicitly been sheep-gated.

All this said, there is something weirdly interesting about these old ruins.  What were they?  A ritual site?  A burial cairn?  Just a sheep fold?  What motivated people, thousands of years ago, to drag all these big heavy stones up there and arrange them just so?

Pondering this, we made our way to a “Norse mill and kiln” a little way down the road.  This site was also unmanned, situated prettily in a slightly sheltered bit of the hillside where a brisk stream likely represents the remains of the long-ago mill-race.  Two little huts, thatched roofs weighted into place with the same stones that make up the walls, now house the reconstructed kiln and mill.

When I hear “kiln” I think pottery, but not in this case, as it turned out.  Back when there was a working mill here, one would have to sort of lightly toast the grain before grinding it, and the kiln was where that was done.  Once finished, you could take your toasted grain and dump it into the hopper over at the mill, whence your grain would be fed into the holes atop the rotating millstones for grinding and spill out into a bin at the bottom.  A lever allowed you to set the distance between the millstones a little farther apart or a little nearer together to adjust the fineness of your grind.

I’m not sure whether the “Norse” in “Norse mill” means it was actually used BY Norsemen (not unlikely given the Viking tendency to come ransack the place) or whether it just means “in the style of Norsemen”, but it was pretty similar to other mills I’ve seen in my life, albeit much smaller and more remotely-set.  The stones were horizontal, though, and massive.  I found myself staring at the little hopper where your flour was meant to come out, just three slabs of coarse slate, and thinking for about the four millionth time how damned difficult life must have been then.

This theme carried on into our next stop – Dun Carloway Broch.  A “Broch” is a round tower with an unusual double-walled construction, found as far as anyone knows only in Scotland; they look a bit like watchtowers, but may also have served as housing for important folks in the surrounding lands.  This particular one happens to be the best preserved of the lot, and stands on a high, windswept hill (not that everything on Lewis isn’t windswept) that must in its time have been rather lonely, though today there are a couple of crofter’s homes nearby.  As you scale the hill for a look at the tower, you can look down into them – and, if you’re versed in the construction of blackhouses, there are unmistakably the foundations for some in the croft yards, now being used as material storage or sheep folds.  (Some of the sheep were obligingly hanging out in the remnants of the fold where their ancient ancestors probably slept.)

There isn’t much left of the tower itself, of course.  Doors so low that they barely seem to qualify as human-scale let you duck through a low wooden gate and out of the wind, but none of the original floors of the broch survive.  (Interestingly it seems that the stairs may have been nestled into the space between the two walls, though.). Again the impression is one of deep remoteness.

Not so much, of course, as the remoteness embodied by the Callanish Standing Stones, which we returned to as our next stop.  I neglected to mention the broch’s age, but it’s believed that it dates to the time of Christ.  This seemed pretty goddamn old to us, until we considered that the Callanish stones date back to 5000 BC as far as we know.  That would mean that they predate the great pyramid of Giza.  By about, oh, 2500 years, give or take.  I honestly have no capacity to comprehend time on that scale in any meaningful way; these things are so old that their age is literally meaningless.

The obvious parallel here is Stonehenge – but unlike Stonehenge, here you can actually walk up to and around the stones – touch them, even; run your hand, as I did, over a band of pink granite and ponder the site’s purpose.  What could they have been for?  Astronomy?  Ritual?  Burial?  Did they come here to celebrate Beltane, put out all their fires, then light them again from a central flame kindled by a priest?  Did it have something to do with the distant outline of a reclining woman some say you can see in the hills? Did they sacrifice here, as Mark thought, looking on the great central stone and the eye-like nodule in its side?

The new age-y folk have come here, to be sure; remnants of their passing linger in the bouquets and remnants of garlands and such that they leave behind.  I cannot begrudge them; who can say whether any of us are right?  Does it matter?  Are things like the Callanish Stones not a mirror of sorts, reflecting ourselves back to ourselves?

Either way, it’s a wild and mystical sort of spot. (And, like other places of power we’ve visited this trip, it drained Mark’s phone battery instantly, only to have it restored to 75% immediately after returning to the car.  What do the ancients have against the iPhone 4S?  The pagan and the Christian gods both seem to have it in for it, for some reason.)

By this time it was getting quite late in the day, but we had one more stop we wished to make: at least getting a view of the beach where the Lewis Chessmen were found.  This proved easy enough to do, though we did manage to take one wrong turn and found ourselves in the…settlement (“village” seems like too strong a word) of Ard Uig, which seems to consist of…a few houses in poor repair, a handful of battered vehicles, and a general air of desolation.  Even the “shop” some villages on the isles have – a kind of combination post office, general store, laundrette, etc. – was absent, and we were more than happy to turn right around and leave the ill-maintained track of a road behind.

The beach itself is like others on Lewis, and there was not time to hunt for the spot – but Mark did pose for a picture with a “life sized” chessman before we made our way back to Stornoway.

There was still some time before dinner when we made it back to town, so we stopped in at Stornoway’s war memorial.  It seems that, for some reason, the isles suffered heavy losses in the war, heavier than most of the rest of Britain, and the monument was meant to be a grand and somber tower one could climb and reflect.  However, the tower quickly became unsafe to climb, and so it’s barred to visitors, the plaques within relocated to a nearby circle of standing stones for those who wish to pause and reflect.

It was while pausing and reflecting that I heard it: a song, a female voice in a language I didn’t recognize, soft and mournful and plaintive against the cold, ever-present wind.  Curious, I climbed the hill to investigate and soon located its source: the female half of a pair of backpackers, standing at the base of the tower in one of the few sheltered spots. It seemed…rude…to disturb her, and so I simply stood by, waiting and listening.

As she finished, Karen asked what she had been singing (she’d been attracted by the song, too.) It was, the girl said in broken English, a traditional song from her home in the Ukraine.  Something about remembrance, though the language barrier precluded much more information than that.

A somber sort of note on which to move to dinner, but a haunting moment.

It being Sunday, of course, hardly anything was open to serve us food – but we did manage to get reservations at “Eleven,” the buffet restaurant in essentially the island’s answer to Holiday Inn.  This was…more or less exactly what you’d expect in the circumstances; some rather nice pork roast complemented by indifferent mashed potatoes along with some sort of beet business and…cabbage with cheese?…I’m not entirely certain.  Still, there was a light, fluffy mango cheesecake in the offing before we returned to our hotel and collapsed with an episode of something British Detective-ey.  (“Wycliffe,” which I’d never seen before.  Not as fun as “Lewis,” though.  Why are British detectives so craggy, anyway?)

I have never been very good at sleeping on airplanes.

This is pretty deeply unfortunate if you find yourself in the position of having to sleep on one or potentially go 24 hours without rest.  But here we are.

Our flight out was a surprisingly brief seven hours on Brussels Airlines.  As very long flights go it was a pleasant trip; everything about the Brussels Airlines planes is simultaneously rather adorably Euro and rather surprisingly twee.  Safety videos featuring cheery cartoon birds.  Sugar packets that say “Hello, sweetie, here’s some sugar.”  Given that their slogan appears to be “We go the extra smile,” perhaps I should not have been surprised.

Despite the surprisingly pleasant service, I completely failed to get even a bit of sleep.  Thirty minutes perhaps, no more.  The dry, strangely hot plane, the occasional stabbing pains in my hands, and the turbulence that seemed to hit the moment I got comfortable conspired against me, as did the fairly extreme thirst (note to self: buy a damned bottle of water for the flight home.)

Our descent into Brussels prompted Mark to make a quip about how all the people look like meeples from up here, and I can sort of see why – the Belgian countryside is indeed pretty damned reminiscent of an Agricola board or something.  It looked green and damp, a silvery gray sky overhead.

The “damp” is real, to be sure; walking off the plane I was promptly smacked in the face by a wall of still, humid air that clung even as we entered the terminal, which is…surprisingly modest, considering that Brussels is the heart of the EU and all. 70s-ish carpet, molded plastic chairs, that vaguely pinkish granite-look tile I remember from department stores of times gone by.  I’d expected something a bit more grand.  Certainly something with a bit of air conditioning at the very least; I feel I can barely breathe in here.

It’s been nearly impossible to get onto the Internet in the airport, for some reason, but we’ve managed it long enough to learn that during our flight England decided to bail on the EU.

…Idiots.

I really can’t think of much to add, sleep-deprived as I am; the vote was close, and I expect at least some of the 30% or so of people who didn’t turn out will be having regrets about that.  Scotland won’t be leaving though.  Which I suppose means it isn’t really the “UK” any more, is it?  …Ugly.

Ah well.  In the absence of other entertainments, I suppose I shall go for a bit of a walk before the next flight to Edinburgh.

— Much, much later —

Well.  I’ve now been awake for pushing 29 straight hours, so goodness knows if I can stay conscious long enough to finish and send this.  But here goes.

By the time we landed in Edinburgh everyone had been awake far, FAR too long, and this manifested in some interesting ways.  Karen developed a kind of tunnel vision, focusing so intently on our need to locate a taxi that she kind of ignored our need to get money (or mine for a SIM card; I still haven’t got one as of this writing.)  I started to lose the ability to stay conscious if I wasn’t actively doing something.  And Mark got horrifically maudlin and Enid-ish at the same time.  Absolutely none of this was helped, naturally, by the part where three flights arrived at the same time leaving us with a massive lineup in security to go through…or the part where Brussels was having some kind of labor strike, leaving us all in some doubt as to whether our luggage would in fact be there when we went looking for it.

Fortunately, it seems we were spared that particular indignity, and we were soon free to wander about the country.  Our first local was our cabbie – gregarious in ways I don’t often see from his Toronto cousins, and pretty keen to talk about his reaction to the Brexit vote as well, decreeing it a sad day for Scotland.  (This sentiment was shared pretty widely among the Scots we met today, but more on this in a minute.)

The next twenty minutes were a little surreal, as we drove through Edinburgh.  The buildings here are generally made of stone in various shades of gray and brown, though doors and shopfronts are pretty vibrantly colored.  It’s as though someone took the streets of Bath, all Georgian-flavoured, and nestled them into a colorful bed of The Annex.

Our guest house is run by a very helpful woman who is also very much not Scottish; after dropping off our bags, collecting our keys, and changing into fresh underclothes, we set out pretty much immediately to go on an orientation walk.  A few minutes’ argument eventually saw us settling in at a cozy little cafe that would not have been out of place in Toronto for some carrot soup and smoked salmon sandwiches…and then the walk continued.

Edinburgh grew up around the central spine of the Royal Mile, a pretty, steeply-slanted street that links Edinburgh Castle at one end with Holyrood Palace at the other.  Along it, you can stand at pretty much any point, fling a rock, and hit either a site of historical significance, a touristy spot, or both.  In the course of today’s explorations we walked almost from one end to another, including a long side trip to the parallel Princes Street, the city’s major avenue for high-street shopping.

Our initial scouting trip revealed:

• A museum of surgical history.
• A writers’ museum.
• A ghost tour, which came recommended by the travel book I got.  We booked a run for tomorrow night.
• Statues of David Hume and Adam Smith, along with a monument to Sir Walter Scott.
• Kids playing in a bouncy castle thing.
• A busker dressed up as a cowboy.
• St. Giles’s cathedral, which was hosting a textile art exhibition of scenes from the Book of Revelation.
• Some lovely views.

And “close” is indeed how these little streets are known.  You can still see scads of them leading away from the Mile.

For reasons I do not yet fully understand, it was decided at one point to park a brand new shiny administrative building right on top of some existing closes, turning them effectively into cliff dwellings of a sort.  Here, the poor lived twelve to fourteen to a room in houses with ceilings too low to stand fully upright in; era they kept twenty or more cows to a single shed; here they hurled buckets of raw sewage down to the loch below, where today there is a train station.  The presentation was eager and energetic, if a bit tourist trap-y; the girl guiding our tour reminded me of Kate from high school.  Something in all that raw, naked enthusiasm.

It reminded me of something one might see in a Dark Souls game, or a D&D city.  The poor crushed together in a not-quite-underground.

At one point, just before our tour, we walked past St. Giles’s cathedral to find a protest apparently in progress.  Hand-lettered signs read “1 <3 No Borders” and “You are welcome here,” and a series of angry Scots shouted things through bullhorns to an appreciative audience.  Both the audience and the speakers were interestingly mixed; at one point a young mother with a kid sitting on her shoulders got up to speak.

Police were on hand, but the last I saw things were going along peacefully; the crowd began its downhill march down the Royal Mile toward Holyrood Palace as we ducked down into the closes.

Exhausted, we visited a local pub, the Old Bell Inn, for dinner.  A real local spot, this, full of people who were obviously there every Friday and who were settled in apparently for the duration with pints coming plentifully.  The food was hearty – Mark had haggis and I had a steak and ale pie – and maybe a bit heavy on the pepper, but satisfying.  The live music for the evening was starting up just as we left, but I doubt very much we could have stayed conscious much longer; exhausted, we staggered back to the B&B and fell into bed.

I have some patchy memories from walking back: little snails crawling along a long stone wall, nibbling at (?) the edges of some trailing purple flowers.