Friday, November 30, 2007
Episode 24
Episode 24
We travelled south east from Lincoln and passed through Kings Lynn then north past Sandringham House, one of the Queens residences. This is all fairly flat agricultural country. We have seen many fields of cabbages or cauliflower and big stacks of beets in the fields. At Hunstanton there are cliffs about 15m high facing the sea: They are quite unique, the top couple of metres is white chalk, under that is a thin strip about a half metre deep that is red chalk and under that is the deeper red of sandstone. Red chalk is very rare apparently.
Just outside the town we saw a small ruin so I went off to read the notice board beside it. This ruin is all that is left of a 13th century chapel built in memory of St Edmund. This fellow was an Anglo Saxon who was a one time King of East Anglia from 855 to 870AD. He was captured whilst in a battle with the dames and executed by them by means of a barrage of arrows after he was tied to a tree. He was 29 years old. After being executed at Thethford he was then entombed in Bury St Edmund and years later he was canonized. He became to the first patron saint of England.
As we passed through the lovely small villages we noted that the buildings and fences are constructed of small pebbles mortared together, this is the only stone available in this area. Some of them have thatched roofs too. Plenty of pheasants and partridges in this area too, in fact we have seen a great many all over the countryside, and several that have been road tenderized.
The coast around Cromer is a fairly popular holiday area so we stopped for a look at the beach but were sorely disappointed. There are cliffs here too and a narrow strip of murky looking sand lapped by an even murkier looking sea. Every couple of hundred metres along the beach there is a breakwater built out into the sea, for what purpose I cannot say. The coast between the villages is lined with many caravan parks full of demountable mobile homes. These demountables are very popular in the UK and we have seen a great many all over the country from the Outer Hebrides to here.
I must mention that English Beach resorts are not quite like we find at home. Along the shore you will find many amusement arcades, bingo halls, and souvenir shops along with the usual cafes and restaurants. Often there is a long pier with more arcades built on it. I expect this is because often the English weather is not what one really needs to spend a day on the beach so people have to spend their holiday time entertaining themselves in some other way under cover out of the rain.
Spent a while having a look around the Norfolk Broads. This is an area of small lakes, marshes and waterways sandwiched between Norwich and the east coast. It’s not so easy to get a look at the lakes. Most of them are surrounded by privately owned land, houses and farms, and there is also marsh land that is full of tall reeds etc. All the riverbanks are lined with boats of all sizes, mostly quite large, and there are boatyards galore full of even more boats hauled out of the water for the winter. One wonders how they can all possibly fit onto the lakes; it must get awfully crowded out on the water in the summer.
We did preserver and found our way to the shore of a couple of these broads (lakes) and found that they were covered with birds. Mostly sea gulls but there were plenty of black moor hens, a few ducks and some geese, one of which we hadn’t seen before. It was standing room only for the birds and we wondered how they could all exist, there must be plenty of food for them here. There are a lot of woods around these broads and it is a very pretty area and popular holiday destination. Thought of taking a boat trip about here but when I enquired I was told that they only run now where there is a coach load booked; yesterday there was 3, but no more for several days.
After seeing the cathedral at Lincoln we decided that the lesser ones would be somewhat of a let down so we didn’t bother with Norwich or Bury St Edmund. Instead we headed on towards London as our bright sunny day became heavily overcast. We crossed the Thames east of London over the Dartford Bridge; the tunnel is for north bound traffic only. The view was very hazy so couldn’t see much. Took a more scenic route than the motorway that led us through the Kent countryside past orchards and oast houses (used for drying hops) but we didn’t see any hops growing. We passed through the pretty towns of Tonbridge and Royal Tumbridge Wells both chock-a-block with Christmas shoppers. From a couple of high points along the way there were good views over the surrounding area but no where to pull off the road and take it in.
In the fading light well after sunset we arrived back in Arundel at Heathers home. She greeted us with her usual enthusiastic welcome and her warm home is very welcoming. Derek the cat greeted us with some enthusiasm whilst his brother Trevor who is far more reserved rushed for cover.
Seeing as an election was coming up we went up to London one day so that we could go and vote then we spent a few hours wandering about. It had been quite a pleasant morning when we set out to walk to the train station in Arundel, the sun had been shining and the birds singing. By the time we got to London it was tipping with rain and we got quite wet looking for the right bus stop for a bus that would take us to Australia House in the Strand.
When we got there we found a larger area on the pavement where a special security tent had been set up and barricades erected to cater for large masses of Australians rushing along to do their public duty and vote. However, when we came along on this wet Monday, mid morning, not another soul was about and the security people were glad to have someone come and relieve their boredom. Inside it took merely a few minutes to fill out the envelope form and do our voting. A couple of other people came along whilst we were there. This poling station had been open all the previous week too.
Just along from Australia House is the lovely restored church of St Clement Danes. This is the church of the song ‘oranges and lemons’ fame; Oranges and Lemons say the bells of St Clements: After WW11 it was nothing but a burnt out shell but has been restored and is dedicated to the RAF. Inside all the crests representing each airfield are embedded in the floor. Around the walls is a great amount of information relating to the RAF and the names of every member who has died in service right up to the present time.
Back outside on the street we came across a very tiny shop sandwiched between much larger buildings. This is the Twinning’s Tea and Coffee Shop. It was bought by the founder of the company Thomas Twining in 1735 and has been continuously owned by the same family every since. He first started business in 1706. Almost next door to the tea shop is an old pub, dating from a similar time and on the glass in the front there is some interesting embossing; a few animals, especially pigs, and a naked man chasing them: They are only small so you have to look for them.
Walked some way along the Enbankment and for a while the sun came out, then suddenly it started raining again and it kept like that all day. Bought some lunch from a convenience store and was surprised that is wasn’t incredibly expensive, then we sat in Leister Square and ate it while some workmen were preparing to erect a Christmas tree or Christmas lights in the square. Had a wander around Soho and found the Chinese area, a tiny ‘china town’; then we came to Covent Garden. Now it’s really just a town market with stalls selling all the normal market stuff that you can find in any number of places but originally it was the site of the Monks gardens in an abbey or convent. Nearby is the church of St Martins in the Fields; of course the fields are long gone along with the monks gardens, all replaced with tarmac roads, concrete and glass structures with the never ending roar of traffic all about.
With the rain tipping down we took some bus rides. Just hopped on the first bus that came along, got the front seats upstairs and sat there as we made our way along the Strand, then Fleet Street, up past St Pauls where there has been a lot of new building in the vicinity in recent years. At some point we went along Treadneedle Street and ended up at Liverpool Street Railway Station. Caught another bus that took us back over a similar route then through Trafalgar Square, up to Picadilly Circus, then up Regent Street to Oxford Circus and we got off at Marble Arch. This arch was originally constructed to be part of Buckingham Palace but when the Palace was completed it was found that there wasn’t enough room for it so it was decided to use it as another entrance to Hyde Park to compliment the gate at the other side of the Park. Now in stands on a concrete island surrounded by roads at the intersection of Park Lane and Oxford Street: caught another bus back to Victoria Station and the train back to Arundel where we walked back to Heathers in the dark with the rain pouring down and got soaking wet.
Apart from that trip to London we haven’t really done much at all. When the weather was good enough David did some work on the car and got it ready to go off to Spain. It took quite a while as he couldn’t find any place undercover to work. Now it’s ready so we will probably go in the next few days.
© Lynette Regan November 29th 2007
We travelled south east from Lincoln and passed through Kings Lynn then north past Sandringham House, one of the Queens residences. This is all fairly flat agricultural country. We have seen many fields of cabbages or cauliflower and big stacks of beets in the fields. At Hunstanton there are cliffs about 15m high facing the sea: They are quite unique, the top couple of metres is white chalk, under that is a thin strip about a half metre deep that is red chalk and under that is the deeper red of sandstone. Red chalk is very rare apparently.
Just outside the town we saw a small ruin so I went off to read the notice board beside it. This ruin is all that is left of a 13th century chapel built in memory of St Edmund. This fellow was an Anglo Saxon who was a one time King of East Anglia from 855 to 870AD. He was captured whilst in a battle with the dames and executed by them by means of a barrage of arrows after he was tied to a tree. He was 29 years old. After being executed at Thethford he was then entombed in Bury St Edmund and years later he was canonized. He became to the first patron saint of England.
As we passed through the lovely small villages we noted that the buildings and fences are constructed of small pebbles mortared together, this is the only stone available in this area. Some of them have thatched roofs too. Plenty of pheasants and partridges in this area too, in fact we have seen a great many all over the countryside, and several that have been road tenderized.
The coast around Cromer is a fairly popular holiday area so we stopped for a look at the beach but were sorely disappointed. There are cliffs here too and a narrow strip of murky looking sand lapped by an even murkier looking sea. Every couple of hundred metres along the beach there is a breakwater built out into the sea, for what purpose I cannot say. The coast between the villages is lined with many caravan parks full of demountable mobile homes. These demountables are very popular in the UK and we have seen a great many all over the country from the Outer Hebrides to here.
I must mention that English Beach resorts are not quite like we find at home. Along the shore you will find many amusement arcades, bingo halls, and souvenir shops along with the usual cafes and restaurants. Often there is a long pier with more arcades built on it. I expect this is because often the English weather is not what one really needs to spend a day on the beach so people have to spend their holiday time entertaining themselves in some other way under cover out of the rain.
Spent a while having a look around the Norfolk Broads. This is an area of small lakes, marshes and waterways sandwiched between Norwich and the east coast. It’s not so easy to get a look at the lakes. Most of them are surrounded by privately owned land, houses and farms, and there is also marsh land that is full of tall reeds etc. All the riverbanks are lined with boats of all sizes, mostly quite large, and there are boatyards galore full of even more boats hauled out of the water for the winter. One wonders how they can all possibly fit onto the lakes; it must get awfully crowded out on the water in the summer.
We did preserver and found our way to the shore of a couple of these broads (lakes) and found that they were covered with birds. Mostly sea gulls but there were plenty of black moor hens, a few ducks and some geese, one of which we hadn’t seen before. It was standing room only for the birds and we wondered how they could all exist, there must be plenty of food for them here. There are a lot of woods around these broads and it is a very pretty area and popular holiday destination. Thought of taking a boat trip about here but when I enquired I was told that they only run now where there is a coach load booked; yesterday there was 3, but no more for several days.
After seeing the cathedral at Lincoln we decided that the lesser ones would be somewhat of a let down so we didn’t bother with Norwich or Bury St Edmund. Instead we headed on towards London as our bright sunny day became heavily overcast. We crossed the Thames east of London over the Dartford Bridge; the tunnel is for north bound traffic only. The view was very hazy so couldn’t see much. Took a more scenic route than the motorway that led us through the Kent countryside past orchards and oast houses (used for drying hops) but we didn’t see any hops growing. We passed through the pretty towns of Tonbridge and Royal Tumbridge Wells both chock-a-block with Christmas shoppers. From a couple of high points along the way there were good views over the surrounding area but no where to pull off the road and take it in.
In the fading light well after sunset we arrived back in Arundel at Heathers home. She greeted us with her usual enthusiastic welcome and her warm home is very welcoming. Derek the cat greeted us with some enthusiasm whilst his brother Trevor who is far more reserved rushed for cover.
Seeing as an election was coming up we went up to London one day so that we could go and vote then we spent a few hours wandering about. It had been quite a pleasant morning when we set out to walk to the train station in Arundel, the sun had been shining and the birds singing. By the time we got to London it was tipping with rain and we got quite wet looking for the right bus stop for a bus that would take us to Australia House in the Strand.
When we got there we found a larger area on the pavement where a special security tent had been set up and barricades erected to cater for large masses of Australians rushing along to do their public duty and vote. However, when we came along on this wet Monday, mid morning, not another soul was about and the security people were glad to have someone come and relieve their boredom. Inside it took merely a few minutes to fill out the envelope form and do our voting. A couple of other people came along whilst we were there. This poling station had been open all the previous week too.
Just along from Australia House is the lovely restored church of St Clement Danes. This is the church of the song ‘oranges and lemons’ fame; Oranges and Lemons say the bells of St Clements: After WW11 it was nothing but a burnt out shell but has been restored and is dedicated to the RAF. Inside all the crests representing each airfield are embedded in the floor. Around the walls is a great amount of information relating to the RAF and the names of every member who has died in service right up to the present time.
Back outside on the street we came across a very tiny shop sandwiched between much larger buildings. This is the Twinning’s Tea and Coffee Shop. It was bought by the founder of the company Thomas Twining in 1735 and has been continuously owned by the same family every since. He first started business in 1706. Almost next door to the tea shop is an old pub, dating from a similar time and on the glass in the front there is some interesting embossing; a few animals, especially pigs, and a naked man chasing them: They are only small so you have to look for them.
Walked some way along the Enbankment and for a while the sun came out, then suddenly it started raining again and it kept like that all day. Bought some lunch from a convenience store and was surprised that is wasn’t incredibly expensive, then we sat in Leister Square and ate it while some workmen were preparing to erect a Christmas tree or Christmas lights in the square. Had a wander around Soho and found the Chinese area, a tiny ‘china town’; then we came to Covent Garden. Now it’s really just a town market with stalls selling all the normal market stuff that you can find in any number of places but originally it was the site of the Monks gardens in an abbey or convent. Nearby is the church of St Martins in the Fields; of course the fields are long gone along with the monks gardens, all replaced with tarmac roads, concrete and glass structures with the never ending roar of traffic all about.
With the rain tipping down we took some bus rides. Just hopped on the first bus that came along, got the front seats upstairs and sat there as we made our way along the Strand, then Fleet Street, up past St Pauls where there has been a lot of new building in the vicinity in recent years. At some point we went along Treadneedle Street and ended up at Liverpool Street Railway Station. Caught another bus that took us back over a similar route then through Trafalgar Square, up to Picadilly Circus, then up Regent Street to Oxford Circus and we got off at Marble Arch. This arch was originally constructed to be part of Buckingham Palace but when the Palace was completed it was found that there wasn’t enough room for it so it was decided to use it as another entrance to Hyde Park to compliment the gate at the other side of the Park. Now in stands on a concrete island surrounded by roads at the intersection of Park Lane and Oxford Street: caught another bus back to Victoria Station and the train back to Arundel where we walked back to Heathers in the dark with the rain pouring down and got soaking wet.
Apart from that trip to London we haven’t really done much at all. When the weather was good enough David did some work on the car and got it ready to go off to Spain. It took quite a while as he couldn’t find any place undercover to work. Now it’s ready so we will probably go in the next few days.
© Lynette Regan November 29th 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Episode 23
Episode 23
Paid a brief visit to Loch Lomond: We only went up along the eastern shore for a short distance and stopped in one place where there is a National Park office, not open, and did a walk up a hill and got a wonderful view over the lake: It was just about sunset when we got to the top but the sun disappeared behind a cloud before actually setting and we didn’t get any colourful sunset. On the south-western shore there is a large town that is almost a suburb of Glasgow now. Many islands dot the lake but I think that now there are many other lochs around Scotland that are just as nice and certainly less populated.
Went into Edinburgh for a few hours, it was a Saturday and the place was packed. All the locals seemed to be out shopping in the city centre and there were hoards of tourists too. We really didn’t see much just wandered along Princes Street, that’s the main street, there are shops on one side and for the most part parks and gardens on the other that descend the slope. The railway line is at the bottom then the steep slope up the other side that becomes high cliffs topped with the castle battlements. It has a foreboding appearance with the dark rainclouds behind as there was today.
Walked along the Royal Mile that leads to the castle entrance and gave away any idea we might have harboured about visiting there, the queue for tickets was so long it would have taken at least a half hour just to reach the ticket booth. No way was I about to battle that crowd to look around any castle; I’ve seen plenty of them anyway. Goodness knows what it must be like in the summer:
We did however go and see the small state of ‘Greyfriars Bobby’ the little dog that spent all his latter years on his master’s grave. The graveyard is just a few metres from the statue. The only other site we saw of any note was St Giles Church that we passed along the way. After three hours we’d had enough so when we got back to the car we left the city. Far too crowded for me, perhaps a Sunday would be quieter but I somehow doubt it.
We headed south from Edinburgh and came to the small town of Selkirk where Sir Walter Scott spent many years, first as a child when he was recuperation from Polio and later when he was a magistrate and presided over the court here. The courthouse is on the cobbled Market Square in the centre of the town with the bus stop right outside and plenty of roadworks all around. Fortunately for us it was a Sunday morning and no traffic but the bus had just deposited some passengers on the court house steps when we wanted to take a photo.
From here we turned east and somewhere or other we crossed back into England but it was an unmarked crossing. Now we headed to Bamburgh where David spent his childhood summer holidays.
It was quite a bright sunny day with a bitter wind blowing and it had brought out a lot of people to enjoy the sunshine. From a distance we could see Bamburgh castle sitting on a prominent hilly headland with the Farne Islands just offshore. Holey Island where there is another castle was clearly visible too. Just south of Bamburgh there are grass covered sand dunes and wide sandy beaches and it was on these beaches that David used to play in those holidays. He thinks he recognizes the place as there is an old building on top of the dunes that used to be the coast guard lookout.
As we drove down the coast we passed many more castles, it was a popular spot to build one back in the 13th and 14th centuries. The small village of Seahouses is no longer a small village, its quite a large town. Continued on south taking the motorway through Newcastle and Middlesbrough: Then we headed to Whitby the home town of Captain James Cook and also another famous seafarer William Scoresby and his son William Jnr:
William Scoresby explored the east coast of Greenland in the early 1800’s, we had been in Scoresby Sound back in August when we did the cruise on the Polar Pioneer. Both William Senior and William Junior had innovative ideas to help make seamen’s lives safer and better that were soon adopted by others. William Junior did a lot of experiments with magnetic compasses that improved the way they worked.
David and I had last been to Whitby in 1994 when we had my mother with us so we were sort of vaguely familiar with the place but it has grown enormously since then and a new road bypasses the old village centre and takes you straight around to the new car park beside the Abby. A great 6ft high stone fence surrounds the place now so that you can’t see it properly unless you pay to go in and at the time we visited it was closed apparently it would open later in the day.
The old town is much as we remember it with the swing bridge that encloses the small boat harbour crammed with pleasure and fishing craft. Could have taken a 3 hour fishing trip for £15 which we thought was quite good value.
From Whitby we drove up onto the Moors and stopped to take in the brilliant view back over Whitby and the coast, then continued on. Saw some more standing stones in the distance but didn’t bother walking right up to them. We were trying to find something called Mallyn Spout, whatever it was, when we came into the small village of Goathland that looked sort of familiar. Then we saw the Aidensfield Garage and we realized it was the village where Heartbeat had been filmed.
The only place with an Aidensfield sign was the garage and beside it were a few of the old vehicles that were used in the filming; now they are quietly rusting away. The village is making sure its getting some return from its TV fame with a car park that charges £2 whether you park for 10mins or 10 hours. We went and parked outside the village on the grass verge with several other cars. As it turned out Mallyn Spout was just near here too, it’s a small waterfall that you come to after about a 1k walk downhill and along the river. It is quite pretty but no Iguazu.
From another viewpoint a few miles further on we got a terrific panoramic view of much of the moors and they really looked pretty in the bright sunshine. Early in the morning they had been covered with white frost.
Spent some time in the large coastal town of Bridlington south of Scarborough: It has a lovely old Church Priory; although it was closed we had a look around the outside and saw some very odd looking sculptures: They were humans but two looked a bit like clowns and another I though was a lion till I looked more closely and saw it was meant to be human, yet another was a monkey but its head was more like a skul; weird: We didn’t take any photos cause David had left the camera battery on charge in the car. Here too we saw the old Baile Gate, a gate in the old city wall but only the gate is left, no sign of the wall. It too was all closed up.
We walked around the old town and saw that several of the shops had closed down and there were very few people on the streets but later on we drove through the thriving and bustling modern city centre. Came to a small harbour full of boats and a lovely sandy beach with the gently lapping waves; it would have been very inviting except for the temperature. Next time we saw the coast there were cliffs and a very murky looking sea below. The cliffs were soil not rock and look to be eroding badly, the sand was full of soil from the cliffs and the sea appeared to be muddy too.
We crossed the magnificent Humber Bridge from Kingston-on-Hull to the south bank of the Humber River. This bridge is a single span suspension bridge, one of the largest of its kind in the world. Not as large as the Golden Gate but still very impressive. From a view point on the south bank we could appreciate its full size. It has a toll of £2.70 which isn’t too bad really as it would cost more than that in fuel to drive upstream to the next bridge and then back again on the other side.
As we continued south along the coast and came to Grimbsy: This seems to be a big port with no special attractions. It did however, have one of the largest undercover shopping malls we have come across for a long time. Two shopping streets have been made into precincts and roofed over then multi story car parks built with direct access into the precinct.
Further south we came back to better beaches where they were lined with beach huts on a high levee bank. They looked quite pretty, each painted a different colour and all had slightly upturned corners on the roofs that gave them a somewhat oriental look, this was heightened by the presence of a pavilion between some of them with the same oriental shaped roof. A large holiday camp was along here too. The sun was still shining so that helped make things look cheerful too.
Went into the small city of Lincoln: It has a population of around 80,000 and has the third largest cathedral in England, and a very beautiful cathedral it is too: As it isn’t on any of the major roads that cross the country not a great many tourists come here so that there were very few of us in the cathedral for the 11am tour today, just 3 in fact. Our guide was a local man who really seemed to know the building well and pointed out several things that you would never notice on your own.
To start with the first church was built here soon after William the Conqueror invaded England. It was begun in 1072; it burnt down a few years later or at least the roof burnt as it was built of wood. The next church was rebuilt very shortly after then in 1185 most of it was destroyed when it was rocked by an earthquake. The following year a monk named Hugh became the Bishop and he decided to rebuild the church and make it his seat so that it became a cathedral. It was begun in 1192 and Hugh died in 1200 so he didn’t see it completed. Over the following 150 years more was added and that is what we see now. The lower part of the western entrance is the original 11th century part with 3 Norman arches. It is possible that there were earlier churches on this site from around the 5th century AD but any trace of them is under this building.
There are numerous stained glass windows; on the north wall they depict stories from the New Testament whilst those on the south wall it is the Old Testament that is represented. There are several large round windows too. All the stained glass is from Victorian times but two big round windows with coloured glass are earlier than that. There is one at each end of the Transept, on the northern side is the Deans Eye, and it is 13th century and has just been restored at a cost of £2 million. The one on the southern end is the Bishops Eye and is 14th Century. It can be seen from the Bishops Palace.
When they rebuilt the cathedral in the 13th century they built the central transept first and then built the Nave going back 40m to adjoin the original facade that was left standing but somehow it got a bit out of alignment and the vaulting centre is about 600mm (2FT) out of kilter.
During the years of the Civil War when Oliver Cromwell raged about the land much damage was done to the sculptures. The heads of many were broken off. In the 17th or 18th century when some restoration was carried out a new sculptor replaced many of those heads but he just made men’s head and didn’t bother to look if the statue was that of a man or a woman with the result that many of the sculptures have male heads on female bodies. Cromwell had the bronze removed from the grave slabs and this was used to make cannons. In the reformation of 1560 much looting and damage was done too. Originally there would have been much gold and silver and gems used in the decoration but this was taken and destroyed during the this time.
Some of the other sculptures around are two lovely little owls, a man ramming a sword down the throat of a dragon, and out the front are some erotic nude sculptures. In the choir stall there are many wooden sculptures, many added over the centuries and one of them is of Queen Victoria. Also a famous one is the Lincoln Imp that can be seen in the Angles Choir. He became famous when a copy of him was made as an ornament and presented to some famous visitor to the cathedral.
The choir stalls and the Chapter house were both used for the filming of ‘The DiVinci Code a few years ago. Many of the specially made props and some of the false walls that were put in around the Chapter house are still there. There is also a cloister attached but there was never a monastery here.
In a small side chapel there is an area for each of the armed services. Also in that chapel is a special stained glass window depicting the Australian Explorers, it has Banks, Bass, Flinders, and Franklin. All of these people came from around this area.
In the afternoon we had the opportunity to do a roof tour that took us up part of the front tower and out onto the parapet where we could look down 40m to the ground and see where the buttresses were built that support the 4m thick walls at 5m intervals. Where they couldn’t be built right beside the walls there are flying buttresses that adjoin the wall where the support is required. There was once spires atop the three towers. The one central tower that is approximately 80m high had a spire about the same height again that made it the highest structure in Europe, probably the world from 1311 to 1549 when it fell down doing a lot of damage to the north Transept. The two spires on the front towers were taken down later.
Our guide took us inside the roof where we could see the huge oak ‘A’ frame beams that support the roof. Most of them are not standing up vertical as they should be, they have quite a lean and one of the towers has quite a lean too. Many of these wooden beams have been replaces because the ‘death watch’ beetle has been merrily feeding on them for centuries. Bach in the early 20th century there was a lot of shoring up and new buttressing added to the towers to stop them from falling.
At present it costs about £30,000 per week to keep up the maintenance on the place. They certainly aren’t making that from the few visitors who seem to be around at present but of course there are many more in the summer. Most of the materials used in the original construction were local except for the marble that came from Dorset. The limestone for repairs and replacement still comes from the same quarries it did originally.
There are several old gates around this high part of town that were once part of a city wall. Some Roman ruins including a well are visible in one area; they date from the 1st century AD. Going down the very steep hill that leads to the modern city centre there are some more lovely old places. The Jews house and the Norman house both date from the same time in the 12th century. A few old Tudor style buildings that would date from the 15th or early 16th century I expect are along here too. Most of the other buildings in this street would be 18th or 19th century.
We thought we might as well visit the castle too, especially seeing that it has one of the 4 original ‘copies’ of the Magna Charta still in existence.
This castle dates for the latter part of the 11th century though only a very tiny part of the existing structure if from that era. Like most castles it has been altered, added to, and partially destroyed over its lifetime. It has been built on the site of previous fortifications built by the Romans and possibly others over the intervening centuries.
In the 18th and 19th century it was a prison and during the middle part of that century it was decided that prisoners would be more likely to reform if they were in an individual cell and not allowed contact with other prisoners so the place was altered to accommodate all these solitary cells. The solitary cell was quite large and contained a bed, a basin and tap and a latrine. There was a separate area for women prisoners and another area for the debtors prison. Debtors were considered not so bad so they didn’t have solitary cells. This solitary business extended to the chapel too where each seat was separated from the next one by a wooden partition with a little door in it. The prisoner could see the Chaplain at the pulpit but not his neighbour. Those prisoners who were condemned to death could all sit together at the back as they were considered to be beyond redemption. The debtors could sit together in the front.
During the time the prison was in use a great many prisoners were executed. These were public executions on one of the towers where the townsfolk could see the condemned receive his punishment. The body would then be taken down and buried in the unconsecrated ground inside the Lucy Tower. A small stone bearing only the initials of the deceased was then placed at the foot of the grave.
King John agreed to the provisions of the Magna Charta (great charter) in 1215. He placed his seal on 41 copies of it on a day in June of that year after the Barons of England banded together and wrote the charter as they could no longer tolerate the demands of the King. Each copy was written by a different scribe so that they are not identical because the writing is different and sometimes a word is spelt different of a slightly different wording is used. They are written in Latin, the official language of the time. King John didn’t sign the document with a quill but a wax impression of his seal was attached with silk ribbons to each copy. Then they were despatched each to a separate county and to the cinq ports.
The clauses within the charter are really quite basis and it’s a bit of a myth that it’s the basis of our democratic parliamentary system; that was really to come later. The Americans claim that it’s the basis for their constitution and Bill of Rights and certainly many of those things would have had their origins in the Magna Charta.
The real document was there in a glass case together with a translation for us to peruse if we so desired. There are only 3 other copies now in existence, one is in Salisbury Cathedral and two in the British Museum in London.
After this we climbed up the Observatory Tower for a look over the city. It was a cold and bright sunny day and we expected a clear view but were disappointed to see that a thick layer of smog hung over the whole river valley. The cold air has pushed it low and looking back up the valley we believe that it has come from the industrial cities of the Midlands as there is not much heavy industry around here to produce such pollution. We strolled along the top of the wall and got a good view of the Cathedral then went and had a look at the grave yard in the Lucy Tower where the executed prisoners are buried. At least one of them was innocent, a woman accused of poisoning her husband. The lodger, on his own deathbed, admitted to doing the deed.
The last place we visited was the Bishops Palace. This was built at the same time as the Cathedral under the instructions of the same Bishop, Hugh. It too has been added to and altered over the centuries. Some of the rooms still exist though it suffered badly in the civil war years of Oliver Cromwell and his band of merry men. Captain Berry, one of Cromwell’s men lived here for some years and converted some of the rooms into stables for his horses. Still visible are the hearths of the five big ovens that were in the kitchen where all the food was prepared for the Bishops household and any guests that were being entertained. Big feasts were quite common apparently. I read on one sign that each member of the household was given 7 pints, that’s about 4litres of beer and 2 lbs (nearly 1kg) of bread each day as well as the normal meals. They should have been quite fat these people, if they ate all that.
One room downstairs that is in reasonable shape used to be a communal room with a large fireplace and a well. You can see the brick work in the vaulted ceiling but it was once plastered over and the whole room was painted in bright colours. What used to be the gardens still exist but with just some lawn and trees now. A lot of fresh produce used in the kitchen was grown here and herbs for medicinal as well as culinary purposes. All that beer that was consumed was made on the premises too.
© Lynette Regan 16th November 2007
Paid a brief visit to Loch Lomond: We only went up along the eastern shore for a short distance and stopped in one place where there is a National Park office, not open, and did a walk up a hill and got a wonderful view over the lake: It was just about sunset when we got to the top but the sun disappeared behind a cloud before actually setting and we didn’t get any colourful sunset. On the south-western shore there is a large town that is almost a suburb of Glasgow now. Many islands dot the lake but I think that now there are many other lochs around Scotland that are just as nice and certainly less populated.
Went into Edinburgh for a few hours, it was a Saturday and the place was packed. All the locals seemed to be out shopping in the city centre and there were hoards of tourists too. We really didn’t see much just wandered along Princes Street, that’s the main street, there are shops on one side and for the most part parks and gardens on the other that descend the slope. The railway line is at the bottom then the steep slope up the other side that becomes high cliffs topped with the castle battlements. It has a foreboding appearance with the dark rainclouds behind as there was today.
Walked along the Royal Mile that leads to the castle entrance and gave away any idea we might have harboured about visiting there, the queue for tickets was so long it would have taken at least a half hour just to reach the ticket booth. No way was I about to battle that crowd to look around any castle; I’ve seen plenty of them anyway. Goodness knows what it must be like in the summer:
We did however go and see the small state of ‘Greyfriars Bobby’ the little dog that spent all his latter years on his master’s grave. The graveyard is just a few metres from the statue. The only other site we saw of any note was St Giles Church that we passed along the way. After three hours we’d had enough so when we got back to the car we left the city. Far too crowded for me, perhaps a Sunday would be quieter but I somehow doubt it.
We headed south from Edinburgh and came to the small town of Selkirk where Sir Walter Scott spent many years, first as a child when he was recuperation from Polio and later when he was a magistrate and presided over the court here. The courthouse is on the cobbled Market Square in the centre of the town with the bus stop right outside and plenty of roadworks all around. Fortunately for us it was a Sunday morning and no traffic but the bus had just deposited some passengers on the court house steps when we wanted to take a photo.
From here we turned east and somewhere or other we crossed back into England but it was an unmarked crossing. Now we headed to Bamburgh where David spent his childhood summer holidays.
It was quite a bright sunny day with a bitter wind blowing and it had brought out a lot of people to enjoy the sunshine. From a distance we could see Bamburgh castle sitting on a prominent hilly headland with the Farne Islands just offshore. Holey Island where there is another castle was clearly visible too. Just south of Bamburgh there are grass covered sand dunes and wide sandy beaches and it was on these beaches that David used to play in those holidays. He thinks he recognizes the place as there is an old building on top of the dunes that used to be the coast guard lookout.
As we drove down the coast we passed many more castles, it was a popular spot to build one back in the 13th and 14th centuries. The small village of Seahouses is no longer a small village, its quite a large town. Continued on south taking the motorway through Newcastle and Middlesbrough: Then we headed to Whitby the home town of Captain James Cook and also another famous seafarer William Scoresby and his son William Jnr:
William Scoresby explored the east coast of Greenland in the early 1800’s, we had been in Scoresby Sound back in August when we did the cruise on the Polar Pioneer. Both William Senior and William Junior had innovative ideas to help make seamen’s lives safer and better that were soon adopted by others. William Junior did a lot of experiments with magnetic compasses that improved the way they worked.
David and I had last been to Whitby in 1994 when we had my mother with us so we were sort of vaguely familiar with the place but it has grown enormously since then and a new road bypasses the old village centre and takes you straight around to the new car park beside the Abby. A great 6ft high stone fence surrounds the place now so that you can’t see it properly unless you pay to go in and at the time we visited it was closed apparently it would open later in the day.
The old town is much as we remember it with the swing bridge that encloses the small boat harbour crammed with pleasure and fishing craft. Could have taken a 3 hour fishing trip for £15 which we thought was quite good value.
From Whitby we drove up onto the Moors and stopped to take in the brilliant view back over Whitby and the coast, then continued on. Saw some more standing stones in the distance but didn’t bother walking right up to them. We were trying to find something called Mallyn Spout, whatever it was, when we came into the small village of Goathland that looked sort of familiar. Then we saw the Aidensfield Garage and we realized it was the village where Heartbeat had been filmed.
The only place with an Aidensfield sign was the garage and beside it were a few of the old vehicles that were used in the filming; now they are quietly rusting away. The village is making sure its getting some return from its TV fame with a car park that charges £2 whether you park for 10mins or 10 hours. We went and parked outside the village on the grass verge with several other cars. As it turned out Mallyn Spout was just near here too, it’s a small waterfall that you come to after about a 1k walk downhill and along the river. It is quite pretty but no Iguazu.
From another viewpoint a few miles further on we got a terrific panoramic view of much of the moors and they really looked pretty in the bright sunshine. Early in the morning they had been covered with white frost.
Spent some time in the large coastal town of Bridlington south of Scarborough: It has a lovely old Church Priory; although it was closed we had a look around the outside and saw some very odd looking sculptures: They were humans but two looked a bit like clowns and another I though was a lion till I looked more closely and saw it was meant to be human, yet another was a monkey but its head was more like a skul; weird: We didn’t take any photos cause David had left the camera battery on charge in the car. Here too we saw the old Baile Gate, a gate in the old city wall but only the gate is left, no sign of the wall. It too was all closed up.
We walked around the old town and saw that several of the shops had closed down and there were very few people on the streets but later on we drove through the thriving and bustling modern city centre. Came to a small harbour full of boats and a lovely sandy beach with the gently lapping waves; it would have been very inviting except for the temperature. Next time we saw the coast there were cliffs and a very murky looking sea below. The cliffs were soil not rock and look to be eroding badly, the sand was full of soil from the cliffs and the sea appeared to be muddy too.
We crossed the magnificent Humber Bridge from Kingston-on-Hull to the south bank of the Humber River. This bridge is a single span suspension bridge, one of the largest of its kind in the world. Not as large as the Golden Gate but still very impressive. From a view point on the south bank we could appreciate its full size. It has a toll of £2.70 which isn’t too bad really as it would cost more than that in fuel to drive upstream to the next bridge and then back again on the other side.
As we continued south along the coast and came to Grimbsy: This seems to be a big port with no special attractions. It did however, have one of the largest undercover shopping malls we have come across for a long time. Two shopping streets have been made into precincts and roofed over then multi story car parks built with direct access into the precinct.
Further south we came back to better beaches where they were lined with beach huts on a high levee bank. They looked quite pretty, each painted a different colour and all had slightly upturned corners on the roofs that gave them a somewhat oriental look, this was heightened by the presence of a pavilion between some of them with the same oriental shaped roof. A large holiday camp was along here too. The sun was still shining so that helped make things look cheerful too.
Went into the small city of Lincoln: It has a population of around 80,000 and has the third largest cathedral in England, and a very beautiful cathedral it is too: As it isn’t on any of the major roads that cross the country not a great many tourists come here so that there were very few of us in the cathedral for the 11am tour today, just 3 in fact. Our guide was a local man who really seemed to know the building well and pointed out several things that you would never notice on your own.
To start with the first church was built here soon after William the Conqueror invaded England. It was begun in 1072; it burnt down a few years later or at least the roof burnt as it was built of wood. The next church was rebuilt very shortly after then in 1185 most of it was destroyed when it was rocked by an earthquake. The following year a monk named Hugh became the Bishop and he decided to rebuild the church and make it his seat so that it became a cathedral. It was begun in 1192 and Hugh died in 1200 so he didn’t see it completed. Over the following 150 years more was added and that is what we see now. The lower part of the western entrance is the original 11th century part with 3 Norman arches. It is possible that there were earlier churches on this site from around the 5th century AD but any trace of them is under this building.
There are numerous stained glass windows; on the north wall they depict stories from the New Testament whilst those on the south wall it is the Old Testament that is represented. There are several large round windows too. All the stained glass is from Victorian times but two big round windows with coloured glass are earlier than that. There is one at each end of the Transept, on the northern side is the Deans Eye, and it is 13th century and has just been restored at a cost of £2 million. The one on the southern end is the Bishops Eye and is 14th Century. It can be seen from the Bishops Palace.
When they rebuilt the cathedral in the 13th century they built the central transept first and then built the Nave going back 40m to adjoin the original facade that was left standing but somehow it got a bit out of alignment and the vaulting centre is about 600mm (2FT) out of kilter.
During the years of the Civil War when Oliver Cromwell raged about the land much damage was done to the sculptures. The heads of many were broken off. In the 17th or 18th century when some restoration was carried out a new sculptor replaced many of those heads but he just made men’s head and didn’t bother to look if the statue was that of a man or a woman with the result that many of the sculptures have male heads on female bodies. Cromwell had the bronze removed from the grave slabs and this was used to make cannons. In the reformation of 1560 much looting and damage was done too. Originally there would have been much gold and silver and gems used in the decoration but this was taken and destroyed during the this time.
Some of the other sculptures around are two lovely little owls, a man ramming a sword down the throat of a dragon, and out the front are some erotic nude sculptures. In the choir stall there are many wooden sculptures, many added over the centuries and one of them is of Queen Victoria. Also a famous one is the Lincoln Imp that can be seen in the Angles Choir. He became famous when a copy of him was made as an ornament and presented to some famous visitor to the cathedral.
The choir stalls and the Chapter house were both used for the filming of ‘The DiVinci Code a few years ago. Many of the specially made props and some of the false walls that were put in around the Chapter house are still there. There is also a cloister attached but there was never a monastery here.
In a small side chapel there is an area for each of the armed services. Also in that chapel is a special stained glass window depicting the Australian Explorers, it has Banks, Bass, Flinders, and Franklin. All of these people came from around this area.
In the afternoon we had the opportunity to do a roof tour that took us up part of the front tower and out onto the parapet where we could look down 40m to the ground and see where the buttresses were built that support the 4m thick walls at 5m intervals. Where they couldn’t be built right beside the walls there are flying buttresses that adjoin the wall where the support is required. There was once spires atop the three towers. The one central tower that is approximately 80m high had a spire about the same height again that made it the highest structure in Europe, probably the world from 1311 to 1549 when it fell down doing a lot of damage to the north Transept. The two spires on the front towers were taken down later.
Our guide took us inside the roof where we could see the huge oak ‘A’ frame beams that support the roof. Most of them are not standing up vertical as they should be, they have quite a lean and one of the towers has quite a lean too. Many of these wooden beams have been replaces because the ‘death watch’ beetle has been merrily feeding on them for centuries. Bach in the early 20th century there was a lot of shoring up and new buttressing added to the towers to stop them from falling.
At present it costs about £30,000 per week to keep up the maintenance on the place. They certainly aren’t making that from the few visitors who seem to be around at present but of course there are many more in the summer. Most of the materials used in the original construction were local except for the marble that came from Dorset. The limestone for repairs and replacement still comes from the same quarries it did originally.
There are several old gates around this high part of town that were once part of a city wall. Some Roman ruins including a well are visible in one area; they date from the 1st century AD. Going down the very steep hill that leads to the modern city centre there are some more lovely old places. The Jews house and the Norman house both date from the same time in the 12th century. A few old Tudor style buildings that would date from the 15th or early 16th century I expect are along here too. Most of the other buildings in this street would be 18th or 19th century.
We thought we might as well visit the castle too, especially seeing that it has one of the 4 original ‘copies’ of the Magna Charta still in existence.
This castle dates for the latter part of the 11th century though only a very tiny part of the existing structure if from that era. Like most castles it has been altered, added to, and partially destroyed over its lifetime. It has been built on the site of previous fortifications built by the Romans and possibly others over the intervening centuries.
In the 18th and 19th century it was a prison and during the middle part of that century it was decided that prisoners would be more likely to reform if they were in an individual cell and not allowed contact with other prisoners so the place was altered to accommodate all these solitary cells. The solitary cell was quite large and contained a bed, a basin and tap and a latrine. There was a separate area for women prisoners and another area for the debtors prison. Debtors were considered not so bad so they didn’t have solitary cells. This solitary business extended to the chapel too where each seat was separated from the next one by a wooden partition with a little door in it. The prisoner could see the Chaplain at the pulpit but not his neighbour. Those prisoners who were condemned to death could all sit together at the back as they were considered to be beyond redemption. The debtors could sit together in the front.
During the time the prison was in use a great many prisoners were executed. These were public executions on one of the towers where the townsfolk could see the condemned receive his punishment. The body would then be taken down and buried in the unconsecrated ground inside the Lucy Tower. A small stone bearing only the initials of the deceased was then placed at the foot of the grave.
King John agreed to the provisions of the Magna Charta (great charter) in 1215. He placed his seal on 41 copies of it on a day in June of that year after the Barons of England banded together and wrote the charter as they could no longer tolerate the demands of the King. Each copy was written by a different scribe so that they are not identical because the writing is different and sometimes a word is spelt different of a slightly different wording is used. They are written in Latin, the official language of the time. King John didn’t sign the document with a quill but a wax impression of his seal was attached with silk ribbons to each copy. Then they were despatched each to a separate county and to the cinq ports.
The clauses within the charter are really quite basis and it’s a bit of a myth that it’s the basis of our democratic parliamentary system; that was really to come later. The Americans claim that it’s the basis for their constitution and Bill of Rights and certainly many of those things would have had their origins in the Magna Charta.
The real document was there in a glass case together with a translation for us to peruse if we so desired. There are only 3 other copies now in existence, one is in Salisbury Cathedral and two in the British Museum in London.
After this we climbed up the Observatory Tower for a look over the city. It was a cold and bright sunny day and we expected a clear view but were disappointed to see that a thick layer of smog hung over the whole river valley. The cold air has pushed it low and looking back up the valley we believe that it has come from the industrial cities of the Midlands as there is not much heavy industry around here to produce such pollution. We strolled along the top of the wall and got a good view of the Cathedral then went and had a look at the grave yard in the Lucy Tower where the executed prisoners are buried. At least one of them was innocent, a woman accused of poisoning her husband. The lodger, on his own deathbed, admitted to doing the deed.
The last place we visited was the Bishops Palace. This was built at the same time as the Cathedral under the instructions of the same Bishop, Hugh. It too has been added to and altered over the centuries. Some of the rooms still exist though it suffered badly in the civil war years of Oliver Cromwell and his band of merry men. Captain Berry, one of Cromwell’s men lived here for some years and converted some of the rooms into stables for his horses. Still visible are the hearths of the five big ovens that were in the kitchen where all the food was prepared for the Bishops household and any guests that were being entertained. Big feasts were quite common apparently. I read on one sign that each member of the household was given 7 pints, that’s about 4litres of beer and 2 lbs (nearly 1kg) of bread each day as well as the normal meals. They should have been quite fat these people, if they ate all that.
One room downstairs that is in reasonable shape used to be a communal room with a large fireplace and a well. You can see the brick work in the vaulted ceiling but it was once plastered over and the whole room was painted in bright colours. What used to be the gardens still exist but with just some lawn and trees now. A lot of fresh produce used in the kitchen was grown here and herbs for medicinal as well as culinary purposes. All that beer that was consumed was made on the premises too.
© Lynette Regan 16th November 2007
Episode 22
Episode 22
Aberdeen, a city of gray granite buildings often described as very bleak and forbidding but I found it not bad at all. Perhaps we were lucky in the fact that the sun was shining even though the breeze was bitterly cold.
The centre of the city seems mainly to be around the area of Union Street, quite a long street lined with these gray granite structures all roughly of a uniform height about 4 to 6 stories. Didn’t see any really tall concrete and glass 20th century monstrosities, thank goodness! There are a number of streets that run off Union Street and some interesting tiny side streets and pedestrian walkways.
We wandered about a bit generally just admiring the architecture and getting a feel for the place. The oldest building in the city is a large stone house dating from 1545, known as Provost Skene’s house . It is hidden in between much more modern larger buildings but some kind soul led us to it. Wonder of wonders a few rooms are furnished with 17th and 18th century furniture and they are open to the public free of charge.
One room is a dining room and the antique furniture, china, glassware and cutlery would be worth a fortune. A beautifully carved wooden cabinet, extremely heavy and probably oak stands at one end of the room, late 18th century. Then there is a 17th century bedroom and dining room, this one had more basic furniture. The real gem though is upstairs where a long room that was once a chapel has a wooden plank ceiling that is painted in panels with religious paintings that are distinctly catholic from the time the house was built and they survived the reformation of 1560 when many such things were destroyed. In fact these paintings only came to light again in 1951 when the place was being renovated, the room had been divided into smaller rooms and a false ceiling had been installed. Since they were rediscovered the paintings have been restored and now visitors can see them. They are very dark though and not easy to see what they are. The last room we saw had a display of evening wear from the 20th century but not a particularly good one, mainly women’s gowns but also a couple of men’s outfits.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the city is Old Aberdeen. For many centuries this was a separate town, and is the older of the two. The oldest area is around the lovely St Machars Cathedral and the street known as The Chanonry where the church Canons once lived. There is also a hospital here that was built in 1801. The first church here became a cathedral when the seat of the bishop was transferred here in the 11th or 12th century but the current Cathedral dates from the late 13th century being built in stages from that time over the next 2 centuries.
There are some lovely gardens here too along the edge of the River Don and a lovely arched bridge from the early 17th century. The arch in this is like that of a church window with a point in the middle and that makes it very unusual indeed. By the time we made it to here our lovely sunny day had disappeared into thick cloud and light rain.
Also in Old Aberdeen is the university centred around Kings College. This college is also very old, the 3rd oldest University in Scotland from the early 16th century. Only a couple of bits of those earliest buildings still exist. We wondered about the place a bit and had a look around. There were students everywhere, in fact in the whole of this Old Aberdeen area I think we saw nothing but students and a couple of other tourists taking photos like ourselves.
The streets of the old city are all cobbled and with the fallen autumn leaves spread all over the pavement it proved quite treacherous in places. The council was making an attempt to clean up the leaves with sweepers and blowers at work but one good stiff breeze would bring down another avalanche of leaves and the place would be just the same again.
On the water front the harbour was very busy with several large ships in dock including a large cruise ship. Off shore from here are a great many oil platforms and this city is the major service centre for them so much of that sea traffic would in some way be connected to the oil industry. Despite all the adverse publicity I had seen about the city, and we nearly didn’t bother coming here, I really quite liked it. Though I do think that perhaps on a dismal day those gray building might be a bit depressing.
On our way towards the Caingorns, and actually within the National Park boundary, (not national parks as we know them in Aussie) we came to one of the old railway stations on an old line that used to service this area, the valley of the Dee river. The line was built in the mid 1800’s soon after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought the Balmoral Estate that is just a few miles further on up the river. The line is closed now and the old route is a walking and cycling track, the station building that we came to Cambus O May is now a private home. Just a few metres upstream from it is an old suspension bridge that was also built around the same time as the railway to provide a safe crossing for people over the river as some had been drowned whilst crossing at the ford not far from here. The bridge that we see now is actually a replica of the original and crosses only the river whilst the original had also provided a crossing over the railway tracks. That is no longer necessary; the tracks having been removed. In 1988 it was decided that the old bridge needed substantial repairs and it was cheaper to rebuild the bridge in the same style than to repair the existing one, so that is what they did. We walked across it and it’s quite wide while the river below is flowing very rapidly and looks quite deep. A little girl was drowned here a couple of years ago.
Queen Victoria always used the train whenever she visited Balmoral and Queen Elizabeth used the train right up until the time the line was closed in the mid 1960’s.
Some way further on we came to the Balmoral Estate. We didn’t see the castle though it may be possible to do so from some other vantage point. We did come across the whiskey distillery that seems to belong to the estate. Royal Balmoral Distillery: If we had been around on Saturday we could have visited the castle for £8 each.
This valley has quite lot of woods and pine forests but as soon as we turned north and left it we passed into an area almost totally devoid of trees. The rounded but often steep hills are covered with heather and grass. To look at the hillsides from a distance it looks as if the heather has been cut in swathes. Sharp edged geometric patterns, curves and straight lines, cover the hillsides; its most strange. The heather is a brownish/tan colour, the grass a straw colour and then there are gray patches too that appear to be dead heather.
Passed through some pretty little villages: We stopped and had a look around at a couple of them though each is different they are also quite alike too. From Grantown-on-Spey we followed the Spey River up to Aviemore. Here we came across the Cairngorm brewery where we tried a few of the local brews. With names like Nessy’s Monster Mash, Santa’s Sledge Hammer, Wild Cat, Witches Cauldron, and Sheep Shaggers Ale it had to be worth a visit. We tried a few of these brews and bought 4 different ones to take back to Heathers. Just a short way further on as we were heading up Cairngorm mountain we came to the Reindeer farm and there we came across another few brews on display; one was called Reinbeer: We had a close up look at the 9 reindeer in the pen here. The rest of the herd are out grazing somewhere. These few very in age from this years calves to the oldest one, Comet, who is 12. That is about 96 in human years. These are the ones that will be working in the Christmas sleigh rides later on. They all still have their antlers and one still had the velvet on its antlers. All seemed totally disinterested in the tourists and ignored us.
The road went on up the mountain and came to an end by the funicular railway station. Its maintenance month this month so the funicular is not running but we could walk on up to the top of the mountain if we wanted. It was extremely cold with a fierce, bitter wind blowing and I decided against the idea. It was just too cold to contemplate. A small Christmas market is set up here selling all the usual Christmas junk and there is a shop selling some warm clothes at horrendous prices and a cafe. They were all lovely and warm inside so we lingered here for a while and looked about.
Last year they got heavy snow late November, it soon melted and they didn’t get any more till February so that sort of stuffed a large amount of the Ski season. This year snow is predicted for this coming weekend and they are hoping that they get a better overall season than last year.
Back down off the mountain we came to the old Ruthven barracks. They have lost their roof and a few of the walls have fallen somewhat but overall they are in reasonable shape. Built in 1721 after the Jacobite uprising they consist of two buildings facing each other with a parade ground in between. Sixty men in each building, ten to a room and two to a bed, they had to cook and clean for themselves. The officers’ quarters were separate in a watch tower. Some years later a stable was built and some cavalry were stationed here to patrol the roads the military built.
The barracks successfully defended themselves against a band of Jacobites in 1745 but surrendered to them when attacked again early in 1746 before the battle of Culloden.
For someone who doesn’t even like whiskey I’ve been to an awful lot of distilleries, the latest one being Dewars ‘world of Whiskey’ in the small town of Aberfeldy not far from Perth. As tours go this was by far the best as it not only included a tour of the working distillery but also a good museum on the history of this distillery and the family that developed it.
Unlike the others we visited Dewars primarily produce blended whiskeys. The business was started by John Dewar in 1846 when he opened his own shop in Perth after working and learning about whiskeys in a relatives shop. He actually pioneered the blending of whiskeys to produce a more subtle taste that would appeal to the upper classes more, those who normally drank wine, port, brandy, etc. A few years later he brought his son John into the business then died a year later. Son John brought brother Tommy into the business, and this was the best thing that could happen as Tommy was a born salesperson and he sold it everywhere he went. He spent 2 years travelling around the world in the late 1800’s selling and promoting their whiskey while John managed the business at home and with the help of a blender by the name of Cameron developed several award winning blends.
It was to supply themselves with a supply of consistent basic whiskey for their blends that they built this distillery in the late 1800’s. This distillery now produces between two and three million litres of malt whiskey a year, most in used in their own blends but they do sell to other blenders too. Their blends are also made up of wheat based whiskey and that from a wide range of other distilleries. Originally the malting was done here too but now, like nearly all the other distilleries the malting is done at places that specialize in it, doing each batch to the specifications of each separate distillery. No two are the same apparently. I hope none of the dispatchers get the consignments mixed up and send one to the wrong place, would be ten years later possibly before the mistake was discovered, what a bummer!!!!
In the museum we saw a film made in 1927 of the making of whiskey; Tommy had the film made as a promotion. It showed the growing and harvesting of the barley, the malting process, the milling, the making of the wort and the distilling process, then onto the storing, bottling and packaging, then the shipping of the end product. I was quite surprised at how automated the bottling and packaging was even then. In some things we haven’t progressed all that fast.
Also in the museum we saw that Dewars had won a medal at some Queensland international exhibition in Brisbane in 1897. There was also a photo of Bert Hinkler and the Dewar’s and in the article it said that Bert had delivered some of their whiskey that he’d carried with him on the flight from here. Dewars had been one of his sponsors.
The company is no longer owned by the Dewar family, it is now owned by the Bacardi family, but there has been another owner in between.
All these distilleries we’ve visited and we still haven’t bought a bottle of whiskey:
We sat in a picnic area, in the car as the wind was bitterly cold, on the side of a hill with a view of hills and mountains all around. Cairngorm was off in the distance and another mountain beside it, both of them had a very faint dusting of snow that wasn’t there yesterday. As we sat and watched another very heavy cloud passed over and dumped some more snow on them. When we drove off and over the hill that cloud caught up with us and we saw a few snowflakes in the air but nothing was settling this low down. Earlier in the day the wind blowing the leaves off the tress was creating flurries of swirling colour like large colourful snowflakes.
Time for another castle: This time its Stirling Castle the one time seat of the Royal House of Stuart. It sits atop a high bluff overlooking the town of Stirling and a large expanse of countryside. In ages past it must have been quite a strategic location not only for the defensive position but also because many roads crossed here. It is believed that there has been a fort here at least since Roman times and most likely earlier.
What we see of the castle now dates mainly from the 16th century, although there is one small section from the 14th century. In the early 14th century Robert the Bruce destroyed all the existing fortifications after he won a decisive battle near here when he engaged English troops who were on their way to relieve the garrison that occupied the castle. The first part of the present castle was built later that some century.
Probably the most attractive building in the complex is the French Renaissance style palace that was built during the time of James V (hope I’ve got the right James). He married Mary of Guise and her fathers wedding present to them was the building of this palace. Sadly all the remains for us to see is the outside with its sculptures, ornate windows and decorative style and the gutted interior. For several hundred years the castle has been a military barracks until the 1960’s and all the lavish furnishings and fittings of the Royal households have long since disappeared. At present it is in the process of being restored but this has been going on for a long time and will continue for many more years. We could wander around inside this palace; it is built around a central courtyard. In each room there is a notice telling us what its purpose used to be and pointing out things in the overhead beams or special stonework in the walls and some of the fireplaces. With the roof beams in one room the current architects cannot work out how the original ceiling was connected to it. There were some tapestries that used to hang in the Queens bed chamber and currently new ones are being made. Three of the completed ones are presently hanging in the chapel.
When we went into the chapel we had a look at these tapestries: One of them depicts the hunting and killing of a unicorn. In the top part the poor unicorn is being stabled and is surrounded by soldiers attaching it, in the lower part the unicorn is dead and slung over a horse. Apart form the tapestries there is nothing much to see in the chapel.
The other really big building in this castle is the Great Hall: It is now open after about 30 years of restoration though there isn’t much to see in it either. It was here that great banquets were held. One special one was the Christening of the son of Mary Queen of Scotts, can’t remember his name, may have been Charles, anyway Mary borrowed £12,000 from the merchants of Edinburgh to hold a banquet after the Christening. Imagine how much that is in present financial terms. That was the 16th or 17th century. The only things to be seen here really are the 5 huge open fire places that must have consumed a forest at a time, or a complete peat bog, and the oak beams in the roof that are all new and David says that many of them are splitting. There were no nails used, oak pegs were made and used to hold it together as it did in the original one.
The battlements that we stood on to look down onto the lawns below and the city are the most recent additions, 17th and early 18th century: The towers by the entrance arch are older but there were also two more towers beside them but only one base is still visible. All were much taller than what they are now.
A short distance down the road from the castle is a large town house, Argyle Lodgings, and as our castle ticket also covered a visit here we went for a look. This house, or at least a small part of it was in existence at the beginning of the 16th century and had additions built onto it over the next century or so. It is believed that the original owner was probably a wealthy merchant as this would have been a very desirable address so near the Castle.
At one time it was going to be made into a “Poor House” to house the cities homeless but then it was sold to the Duke of Argyle instead and he made some extensions to it. Later it became a military hospital so it too suffered a similar fate as the castle and all the furnishings etc disappeared. In the 1960’s it became a Youth Hostel, but now it too is slowly being restored. Probably the old kitchens are the part that has survived best. The big old ovens where a whole beast could be roasted on a spit can still be seen, so too a small domed bread oven inside one of those big ovens. Over the front door is the coat of arms of one of the owners of the house. It has an American Indian and a mermaid on it.
© Lynette Regan 10th November 2007
Aberdeen, a city of gray granite buildings often described as very bleak and forbidding but I found it not bad at all. Perhaps we were lucky in the fact that the sun was shining even though the breeze was bitterly cold.
The centre of the city seems mainly to be around the area of Union Street, quite a long street lined with these gray granite structures all roughly of a uniform height about 4 to 6 stories. Didn’t see any really tall concrete and glass 20th century monstrosities, thank goodness! There are a number of streets that run off Union Street and some interesting tiny side streets and pedestrian walkways.
We wandered about a bit generally just admiring the architecture and getting a feel for the place. The oldest building in the city is a large stone house dating from 1545, known as Provost Skene’s house . It is hidden in between much more modern larger buildings but some kind soul led us to it. Wonder of wonders a few rooms are furnished with 17th and 18th century furniture and they are open to the public free of charge.
One room is a dining room and the antique furniture, china, glassware and cutlery would be worth a fortune. A beautifully carved wooden cabinet, extremely heavy and probably oak stands at one end of the room, late 18th century. Then there is a 17th century bedroom and dining room, this one had more basic furniture. The real gem though is upstairs where a long room that was once a chapel has a wooden plank ceiling that is painted in panels with religious paintings that are distinctly catholic from the time the house was built and they survived the reformation of 1560 when many such things were destroyed. In fact these paintings only came to light again in 1951 when the place was being renovated, the room had been divided into smaller rooms and a false ceiling had been installed. Since they were rediscovered the paintings have been restored and now visitors can see them. They are very dark though and not easy to see what they are. The last room we saw had a display of evening wear from the 20th century but not a particularly good one, mainly women’s gowns but also a couple of men’s outfits.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the city is Old Aberdeen. For many centuries this was a separate town, and is the older of the two. The oldest area is around the lovely St Machars Cathedral and the street known as The Chanonry where the church Canons once lived. There is also a hospital here that was built in 1801. The first church here became a cathedral when the seat of the bishop was transferred here in the 11th or 12th century but the current Cathedral dates from the late 13th century being built in stages from that time over the next 2 centuries.
There are some lovely gardens here too along the edge of the River Don and a lovely arched bridge from the early 17th century. The arch in this is like that of a church window with a point in the middle and that makes it very unusual indeed. By the time we made it to here our lovely sunny day had disappeared into thick cloud and light rain.
Also in Old Aberdeen is the university centred around Kings College. This college is also very old, the 3rd oldest University in Scotland from the early 16th century. Only a couple of bits of those earliest buildings still exist. We wondered about the place a bit and had a look around. There were students everywhere, in fact in the whole of this Old Aberdeen area I think we saw nothing but students and a couple of other tourists taking photos like ourselves.
The streets of the old city are all cobbled and with the fallen autumn leaves spread all over the pavement it proved quite treacherous in places. The council was making an attempt to clean up the leaves with sweepers and blowers at work but one good stiff breeze would bring down another avalanche of leaves and the place would be just the same again.
On the water front the harbour was very busy with several large ships in dock including a large cruise ship. Off shore from here are a great many oil platforms and this city is the major service centre for them so much of that sea traffic would in some way be connected to the oil industry. Despite all the adverse publicity I had seen about the city, and we nearly didn’t bother coming here, I really quite liked it. Though I do think that perhaps on a dismal day those gray building might be a bit depressing.
On our way towards the Caingorns, and actually within the National Park boundary, (not national parks as we know them in Aussie) we came to one of the old railway stations on an old line that used to service this area, the valley of the Dee river. The line was built in the mid 1800’s soon after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought the Balmoral Estate that is just a few miles further on up the river. The line is closed now and the old route is a walking and cycling track, the station building that we came to Cambus O May is now a private home. Just a few metres upstream from it is an old suspension bridge that was also built around the same time as the railway to provide a safe crossing for people over the river as some had been drowned whilst crossing at the ford not far from here. The bridge that we see now is actually a replica of the original and crosses only the river whilst the original had also provided a crossing over the railway tracks. That is no longer necessary; the tracks having been removed. In 1988 it was decided that the old bridge needed substantial repairs and it was cheaper to rebuild the bridge in the same style than to repair the existing one, so that is what they did. We walked across it and it’s quite wide while the river below is flowing very rapidly and looks quite deep. A little girl was drowned here a couple of years ago.
Queen Victoria always used the train whenever she visited Balmoral and Queen Elizabeth used the train right up until the time the line was closed in the mid 1960’s.
Some way further on we came to the Balmoral Estate. We didn’t see the castle though it may be possible to do so from some other vantage point. We did come across the whiskey distillery that seems to belong to the estate. Royal Balmoral Distillery: If we had been around on Saturday we could have visited the castle for £8 each.
This valley has quite lot of woods and pine forests but as soon as we turned north and left it we passed into an area almost totally devoid of trees. The rounded but often steep hills are covered with heather and grass. To look at the hillsides from a distance it looks as if the heather has been cut in swathes. Sharp edged geometric patterns, curves and straight lines, cover the hillsides; its most strange. The heather is a brownish/tan colour, the grass a straw colour and then there are gray patches too that appear to be dead heather.
Passed through some pretty little villages: We stopped and had a look around at a couple of them though each is different they are also quite alike too. From Grantown-on-Spey we followed the Spey River up to Aviemore. Here we came across the Cairngorm brewery where we tried a few of the local brews. With names like Nessy’s Monster Mash, Santa’s Sledge Hammer, Wild Cat, Witches Cauldron, and Sheep Shaggers Ale it had to be worth a visit. We tried a few of these brews and bought 4 different ones to take back to Heathers. Just a short way further on as we were heading up Cairngorm mountain we came to the Reindeer farm and there we came across another few brews on display; one was called Reinbeer: We had a close up look at the 9 reindeer in the pen here. The rest of the herd are out grazing somewhere. These few very in age from this years calves to the oldest one, Comet, who is 12. That is about 96 in human years. These are the ones that will be working in the Christmas sleigh rides later on. They all still have their antlers and one still had the velvet on its antlers. All seemed totally disinterested in the tourists and ignored us.
The road went on up the mountain and came to an end by the funicular railway station. Its maintenance month this month so the funicular is not running but we could walk on up to the top of the mountain if we wanted. It was extremely cold with a fierce, bitter wind blowing and I decided against the idea. It was just too cold to contemplate. A small Christmas market is set up here selling all the usual Christmas junk and there is a shop selling some warm clothes at horrendous prices and a cafe. They were all lovely and warm inside so we lingered here for a while and looked about.
Last year they got heavy snow late November, it soon melted and they didn’t get any more till February so that sort of stuffed a large amount of the Ski season. This year snow is predicted for this coming weekend and they are hoping that they get a better overall season than last year.
Back down off the mountain we came to the old Ruthven barracks. They have lost their roof and a few of the walls have fallen somewhat but overall they are in reasonable shape. Built in 1721 after the Jacobite uprising they consist of two buildings facing each other with a parade ground in between. Sixty men in each building, ten to a room and two to a bed, they had to cook and clean for themselves. The officers’ quarters were separate in a watch tower. Some years later a stable was built and some cavalry were stationed here to patrol the roads the military built.
The barracks successfully defended themselves against a band of Jacobites in 1745 but surrendered to them when attacked again early in 1746 before the battle of Culloden.
For someone who doesn’t even like whiskey I’ve been to an awful lot of distilleries, the latest one being Dewars ‘world of Whiskey’ in the small town of Aberfeldy not far from Perth. As tours go this was by far the best as it not only included a tour of the working distillery but also a good museum on the history of this distillery and the family that developed it.
Unlike the others we visited Dewars primarily produce blended whiskeys. The business was started by John Dewar in 1846 when he opened his own shop in Perth after working and learning about whiskeys in a relatives shop. He actually pioneered the blending of whiskeys to produce a more subtle taste that would appeal to the upper classes more, those who normally drank wine, port, brandy, etc. A few years later he brought his son John into the business then died a year later. Son John brought brother Tommy into the business, and this was the best thing that could happen as Tommy was a born salesperson and he sold it everywhere he went. He spent 2 years travelling around the world in the late 1800’s selling and promoting their whiskey while John managed the business at home and with the help of a blender by the name of Cameron developed several award winning blends.
It was to supply themselves with a supply of consistent basic whiskey for their blends that they built this distillery in the late 1800’s. This distillery now produces between two and three million litres of malt whiskey a year, most in used in their own blends but they do sell to other blenders too. Their blends are also made up of wheat based whiskey and that from a wide range of other distilleries. Originally the malting was done here too but now, like nearly all the other distilleries the malting is done at places that specialize in it, doing each batch to the specifications of each separate distillery. No two are the same apparently. I hope none of the dispatchers get the consignments mixed up and send one to the wrong place, would be ten years later possibly before the mistake was discovered, what a bummer!!!!
In the museum we saw a film made in 1927 of the making of whiskey; Tommy had the film made as a promotion. It showed the growing and harvesting of the barley, the malting process, the milling, the making of the wort and the distilling process, then onto the storing, bottling and packaging, then the shipping of the end product. I was quite surprised at how automated the bottling and packaging was even then. In some things we haven’t progressed all that fast.
Also in the museum we saw that Dewars had won a medal at some Queensland international exhibition in Brisbane in 1897. There was also a photo of Bert Hinkler and the Dewar’s and in the article it said that Bert had delivered some of their whiskey that he’d carried with him on the flight from here. Dewars had been one of his sponsors.
The company is no longer owned by the Dewar family, it is now owned by the Bacardi family, but there has been another owner in between.
All these distilleries we’ve visited and we still haven’t bought a bottle of whiskey:
We sat in a picnic area, in the car as the wind was bitterly cold, on the side of a hill with a view of hills and mountains all around. Cairngorm was off in the distance and another mountain beside it, both of them had a very faint dusting of snow that wasn’t there yesterday. As we sat and watched another very heavy cloud passed over and dumped some more snow on them. When we drove off and over the hill that cloud caught up with us and we saw a few snowflakes in the air but nothing was settling this low down. Earlier in the day the wind blowing the leaves off the tress was creating flurries of swirling colour like large colourful snowflakes.
Time for another castle: This time its Stirling Castle the one time seat of the Royal House of Stuart. It sits atop a high bluff overlooking the town of Stirling and a large expanse of countryside. In ages past it must have been quite a strategic location not only for the defensive position but also because many roads crossed here. It is believed that there has been a fort here at least since Roman times and most likely earlier.
What we see of the castle now dates mainly from the 16th century, although there is one small section from the 14th century. In the early 14th century Robert the Bruce destroyed all the existing fortifications after he won a decisive battle near here when he engaged English troops who were on their way to relieve the garrison that occupied the castle. The first part of the present castle was built later that some century.
Probably the most attractive building in the complex is the French Renaissance style palace that was built during the time of James V (hope I’ve got the right James). He married Mary of Guise and her fathers wedding present to them was the building of this palace. Sadly all the remains for us to see is the outside with its sculptures, ornate windows and decorative style and the gutted interior. For several hundred years the castle has been a military barracks until the 1960’s and all the lavish furnishings and fittings of the Royal households have long since disappeared. At present it is in the process of being restored but this has been going on for a long time and will continue for many more years. We could wander around inside this palace; it is built around a central courtyard. In each room there is a notice telling us what its purpose used to be and pointing out things in the overhead beams or special stonework in the walls and some of the fireplaces. With the roof beams in one room the current architects cannot work out how the original ceiling was connected to it. There were some tapestries that used to hang in the Queens bed chamber and currently new ones are being made. Three of the completed ones are presently hanging in the chapel.
When we went into the chapel we had a look at these tapestries: One of them depicts the hunting and killing of a unicorn. In the top part the poor unicorn is being stabled and is surrounded by soldiers attaching it, in the lower part the unicorn is dead and slung over a horse. Apart form the tapestries there is nothing much to see in the chapel.
The other really big building in this castle is the Great Hall: It is now open after about 30 years of restoration though there isn’t much to see in it either. It was here that great banquets were held. One special one was the Christening of the son of Mary Queen of Scotts, can’t remember his name, may have been Charles, anyway Mary borrowed £12,000 from the merchants of Edinburgh to hold a banquet after the Christening. Imagine how much that is in present financial terms. That was the 16th or 17th century. The only things to be seen here really are the 5 huge open fire places that must have consumed a forest at a time, or a complete peat bog, and the oak beams in the roof that are all new and David says that many of them are splitting. There were no nails used, oak pegs were made and used to hold it together as it did in the original one.
The battlements that we stood on to look down onto the lawns below and the city are the most recent additions, 17th and early 18th century: The towers by the entrance arch are older but there were also two more towers beside them but only one base is still visible. All were much taller than what they are now.
A short distance down the road from the castle is a large town house, Argyle Lodgings, and as our castle ticket also covered a visit here we went for a look. This house, or at least a small part of it was in existence at the beginning of the 16th century and had additions built onto it over the next century or so. It is believed that the original owner was probably a wealthy merchant as this would have been a very desirable address so near the Castle.
At one time it was going to be made into a “Poor House” to house the cities homeless but then it was sold to the Duke of Argyle instead and he made some extensions to it. Later it became a military hospital so it too suffered a similar fate as the castle and all the furnishings etc disappeared. In the 1960’s it became a Youth Hostel, but now it too is slowly being restored. Probably the old kitchens are the part that has survived best. The big old ovens where a whole beast could be roasted on a spit can still be seen, so too a small domed bread oven inside one of those big ovens. Over the front door is the coat of arms of one of the owners of the house. It has an American Indian and a mermaid on it.
© Lynette Regan 10th November 2007
Episode 21
Episode 21
Whilst in the Wick area we also visited the old castle Sindair Girnigoe that stands right on the shore of a wide bay north of the town. It was once the seat of the Earl of Sindair. At present it’s a crumbling ruin with enough still standing to get a good idea of how it must have looked in times gone by. It was begun in the 14th century with a defensive wall around the land side and a sea gate. Over the centuries it was added to and modified and ended up by being quite large; I could find no date for when it was abandoned. Some scaffolding has been put up around some parts and I read that there is some plan to stabilize it and perhaps restore some parts, though it doesn’t appear as if much has been done at this stage. In fact it looks as if some parts may well have fallen into the sea. The rough winter sea and storms are its worst enemy:
One of the earls of Sindair got it into his head that his son wanted to murder him so he imprisoned the son in the dungeon and let him starve to death; charming family!
Off shore from Wick we could see 2 oil platforms one much larger than the other. Near the larger one we also saw two wind turbines. I wonder how the hell you would anchor them to the sea floor as they looked just the same as their land based counterparts.
So we finally come to John O’groats on the north-eastern tip of the Scottish mainland, its not the most northerly, that distinction belongs to Dunnet Head a few miles to the west on a big peninsula. David and I were here back in 1971 and its grown a bit since then. Back then there was only the old hotel with its rounded towers looking like a pretend castle and a couple of farm houses and sheds. Now that hotel is closed up and decaying rapidly but there are number of tourist shops that have sprung up, a post office and general store, a new hotel and a couple of reasonably priced bed and breakfast places, even a couple of new houses, its beginning to look like a big village. Down on the beach there is a small boat harbour from which there is a ferry to the Orkney Islands in the summer.
All this though is a good mile or so from the real point where the lighthouse stands. There has been a lighthouse here for around 200 years but its only be automated since 1993. It overlooks the Pentland Firth a very hazardous stretch of water. Just down the coast a short way from the lighthouse there are some sea stacks just off the cliffs. These cliffs, like so many around Scotland are alive with birds in summer when Puffins, guillemots, awks, and kittiwakes are nesting on them.
Drove out to Dunnet Head, the most northerly point where there is another lighthouse standing atop the cliffs there. It was built by Robert Stevenson, the grandfather of author Robert Louis Stevenson in 1831 and was automated in 1989. The glass in front of the light is 105 metres above the sea yet it has been broken several times by stones tossed up by the waves. From a lookout above the lighthouse we got a great view out of the islands and the whole of this northern area as it is relatively flat, with gently rolling hills.
Came to the town of Thurso, this town, like Wick and the village of Reay are all old Norse villages dating from around the 9th century, the names have become corrupted from the original Norse over the ensuing centuries. This town has some rather nice old Victorian buildings and is a pleasant place to stroll around for a while. A few nice churches are dotted about the town. Its only small but seems to be growing despite the fact that the nuclear power station at Dunreay just a few miles away was decommissioned in 1994. There is some restoration work being done there now we saw when we passed.
Near the old power station there are a few big wind turbines that I expect supply electricity to some of the area. I also noticed that on the roof of a new large supermarket in Wick there were 5 small wind generators all whizzing like mad. I did read or hear somewhere not long ago that these large ones cause the death of a great many sea eagles, an already highly endangered species.
Went looking for some burial cairns that were marked on the map but didn’t find them, nothing unusual in that and they all look much the same so I don’t suppose I missed a lot, its just annoying with they aren’t well signposted.
Came across a herd of deer, don’t know if they were red deer, roe deer or fellow deer, but I don’t thing they were red deer. They had the big light coloured patch of their backsides, apart from that light faun patch they are a similar colour to the dead bracken they were amongst. They were mostly females with some fawns; one of them was still suckling her fawn even though it was nearly as big as she was. There was just one stag amongst them so they must have been his harem though I thought the rut would be over by now. They just stood there and watched us watching them; perhaps if we’d got out of the car they might have gone off in fright but they didn’t seem nervous. The males antlers weren’t very big. A short way further on we saw just two stags on a hillside, they both had larger antlers than the fellow with the females, one of these chaps antlers were very large but they don’t get the big ‘racks’ like the reindeer do.
Apart from the usual hazards of sheep and cows on the road we also had ducks. Some were mallards, but they were all domestic ones. They didn’t want to move out of the road just stood directly in front of the car and wouldn’t move. We finally got around them then pulled off to one side and called them and they waddled over to us. On these very narrow roads it’s a wonder they haven’t been skittled.
Came to Smoo cave on the north coast; That name is another corruption from the original Norse name: This is a very large cave and the road actually goes over the top of the cavern. It sits at the end of an 800metre long 30m deep and narrow sea chasm with sheer sided cliffs. Possibly the whole length of it was a cave at some long ago point in time. Now the mouth of the cave is 10 to 12 metres wide and about 4 or 5 m high. The cave goes back a long way and high up on one side lit by artificial lighting are some ferns. The most striking feature though is the 21metre high waterfall that drops into the cave. A wooden walkway and viewing platform allows you to get a good view of the bottom of the falls. To see the top you climb back to the top, cross the road and take the little walkway and the bridge over the stream is really over the top of the waterfall, you see it drop away immediately below. About 80m after exiting the cave the stream enters the sea in the chasm.
There are some fine golden sandy beaches along this northern coast and when we came to Durness we saw a sign ‘award winning beach’; now what the heck is that supposed to mean: The tourist office is closed for the season so we couldn’t ask there. Anyway, out there in the surf, and it was quite a good surf we saw two fellows on surfboards and one on a boogy board. They were wearing wet or dry suits: I don’t know what the water temperature would have been, I didn’t go down and try it but the air temp was about 11˚C and the chilly wind would have lowered it to around 6˚C so it was a tad chilly you could say.
A great many of the sea lochs all around Scotland have fish farms in them and as we drove around this part of the coast we saw many of those farms.
Now we started heading back south across moorland with peat bogs and bracken and heather covered hills, here and there are some areas of deep green where there is a pine forest usually with a cluster of golden larch amongst them. Followed a long glen leading from loch to loch with fishing being a popular pastime along the way; one long loch, loch Shin is really a dam and has a hydro electric station below the wall. You’d think that in this country with so many lochs that they wouldn’t want to build more water storage but they do. Took a long walk around the Balblair forest and met lots of people walking their dogs and other out riding their mountain bikes on the specially built trails. From a high point we got a great view over the glen and the lochs.
Went into the little town of Edderton to see yet another standing stone, this one is supposed to have a Pictish (from the time of the Picts before the Norse) inscription on it, and we did find it in the middle of a field with high sheep proof fencing all around and no stile or kissing gate to provide access so we didn’t get a close look at it. Some way further on we found ourselves back in Tain, we had passed this way on the northbound trip but hadn’t gone into the town. This time we went and had a look at the old toll house that stands right in the town centre. It’s a lovely old building but being a Sunday nothing was open for us to find any information about it.
On the peninsular between Dornoch Firth and Cromarty Firth we came to a RSPB hide in a wetlands area. This is a nature reserve for the migrating birds, mainly wetlands species. It covers 1600 hectares and this hide provides a good opportunity to watch some of them. Overhead we had seen large flocks of swans passing and even larger flocks of geese. We had thought that they were graylag geese but according to the posters in the hide they were more likely to be pink footed geese. The swans are whooping swans. With the aid of the telescope provided in the hide we could also see thousands of other birds, some we could identify whilst others were too far away to see properly. Spent at least an hour here probably much longer watching these birds many of which have come from their summer breeding grounds in Russia but others like the lapwing live here permanently:
In this same area we came across a church where there is a grave slab with an early Pictish carving. It’s a Christian carving from the 8th Century and it’s kept inside the locked church so we only got a glimpse of it through a dirty window.
In the town of Invergordon we looked a lot at the murals that decorate the sides and fronts of many of the buildings in the business centre. Each one has a different theme, one is a bagpipe band, another the fire service, yet another has all the birds from the reserve. It was something different to standing stones. At Beauly we had a look at the old Abby. This ruin is really in quite good shape, you can see the black from a fire that must have destroyed the roof and other parts, and there is no glass in the windows but most of the red sandstone block work is in good condition It was a very large Abby:
We came back into Inverness and spent a short while looking around again. St Andrews Cathedral was the main object of our attention. It has square towers now but from a painting inside we see that it once had tall spires. In the front it has a magnificent stained glass window. The city seemed just as busy on a Sunday afternoon as it did on a weekday; we’d thought it might be a bit quieter:
Had a look at the old battlefield at Culloden when German George’s forces soundly defeated Catholic Charley’s and brought to an end the Jacobite rebellion on the 16th April 1746. It’s just an ordinary field like most others in Scotland; an old cottage on one side is said to have survived the battle, its called Leanach cottage. There is a large stone in one place saying that the English are buried in that area and a large cairn says that the Scottish fatalities are listed under their clan names. Little signs say that a certain place is where the front line was, and I wonder who marked that place, surely no-one came back the next day and marked it thinking that in 250 years time people will want to know this. Probably some one 100 years after the even decided that’s where it should have been. Gee I’m a cynical B----, am I not.
Also visited the old Pluscardan Abby: This Abby is now occupied by Benedictine monks and part of it is open to visitors. These monks have only been there since 1948, before that for many centuries it was abandoned. It has been restored and is quite like the one we saw at Beauly in design. The chapel has some lovely stained glass windows. It is situated out in the countryside on the side of a ridge covered in dense woodland, and took quite a bit of finding. Some historical sites are well marked while others are not.
Forres has a nice town centre with a building that looks like another toll gate in the centre, and in Elgin we saw the old ruined Cathedral. It must have been a huge building, much larger that many I’ve seen, or so it appears to me.
There are also many castles but we haven’t bothered to visit any more. We did however, see another stone slab. This one is just on the edge of Forres and stands in a glass enclosure. It is of Pictish origin from the 9th or 10th centuries and very elaborately carved on all 4 sides. One side depicts a battle in several panels; no one knows what battle it was but believe it must have been very important to have been immortalized in this manner. The stone stands 6m high and was found lying in a field but it didn’t say when.
In this area east of Inverness we have seen a lot of whiskey distilleries. Nearly every decent sized village has one and we saw the Glenfiddick, Glenlivit and Dewars distilleries all within a few miles, there were others too.
©Lynette Regan 5th November 2007
Whilst in the Wick area we also visited the old castle Sindair Girnigoe that stands right on the shore of a wide bay north of the town. It was once the seat of the Earl of Sindair. At present it’s a crumbling ruin with enough still standing to get a good idea of how it must have looked in times gone by. It was begun in the 14th century with a defensive wall around the land side and a sea gate. Over the centuries it was added to and modified and ended up by being quite large; I could find no date for when it was abandoned. Some scaffolding has been put up around some parts and I read that there is some plan to stabilize it and perhaps restore some parts, though it doesn’t appear as if much has been done at this stage. In fact it looks as if some parts may well have fallen into the sea. The rough winter sea and storms are its worst enemy:
One of the earls of Sindair got it into his head that his son wanted to murder him so he imprisoned the son in the dungeon and let him starve to death; charming family!
Off shore from Wick we could see 2 oil platforms one much larger than the other. Near the larger one we also saw two wind turbines. I wonder how the hell you would anchor them to the sea floor as they looked just the same as their land based counterparts.
So we finally come to John O’groats on the north-eastern tip of the Scottish mainland, its not the most northerly, that distinction belongs to Dunnet Head a few miles to the west on a big peninsula. David and I were here back in 1971 and its grown a bit since then. Back then there was only the old hotel with its rounded towers looking like a pretend castle and a couple of farm houses and sheds. Now that hotel is closed up and decaying rapidly but there are number of tourist shops that have sprung up, a post office and general store, a new hotel and a couple of reasonably priced bed and breakfast places, even a couple of new houses, its beginning to look like a big village. Down on the beach there is a small boat harbour from which there is a ferry to the Orkney Islands in the summer.
All this though is a good mile or so from the real point where the lighthouse stands. There has been a lighthouse here for around 200 years but its only be automated since 1993. It overlooks the Pentland Firth a very hazardous stretch of water. Just down the coast a short way from the lighthouse there are some sea stacks just off the cliffs. These cliffs, like so many around Scotland are alive with birds in summer when Puffins, guillemots, awks, and kittiwakes are nesting on them.
Drove out to Dunnet Head, the most northerly point where there is another lighthouse standing atop the cliffs there. It was built by Robert Stevenson, the grandfather of author Robert Louis Stevenson in 1831 and was automated in 1989. The glass in front of the light is 105 metres above the sea yet it has been broken several times by stones tossed up by the waves. From a lookout above the lighthouse we got a great view out of the islands and the whole of this northern area as it is relatively flat, with gently rolling hills.
Came to the town of Thurso, this town, like Wick and the village of Reay are all old Norse villages dating from around the 9th century, the names have become corrupted from the original Norse over the ensuing centuries. This town has some rather nice old Victorian buildings and is a pleasant place to stroll around for a while. A few nice churches are dotted about the town. Its only small but seems to be growing despite the fact that the nuclear power station at Dunreay just a few miles away was decommissioned in 1994. There is some restoration work being done there now we saw when we passed.
Near the old power station there are a few big wind turbines that I expect supply electricity to some of the area. I also noticed that on the roof of a new large supermarket in Wick there were 5 small wind generators all whizzing like mad. I did read or hear somewhere not long ago that these large ones cause the death of a great many sea eagles, an already highly endangered species.
Went looking for some burial cairns that were marked on the map but didn’t find them, nothing unusual in that and they all look much the same so I don’t suppose I missed a lot, its just annoying with they aren’t well signposted.
Came across a herd of deer, don’t know if they were red deer, roe deer or fellow deer, but I don’t thing they were red deer. They had the big light coloured patch of their backsides, apart from that light faun patch they are a similar colour to the dead bracken they were amongst. They were mostly females with some fawns; one of them was still suckling her fawn even though it was nearly as big as she was. There was just one stag amongst them so they must have been his harem though I thought the rut would be over by now. They just stood there and watched us watching them; perhaps if we’d got out of the car they might have gone off in fright but they didn’t seem nervous. The males antlers weren’t very big. A short way further on we saw just two stags on a hillside, they both had larger antlers than the fellow with the females, one of these chaps antlers were very large but they don’t get the big ‘racks’ like the reindeer do.
Apart from the usual hazards of sheep and cows on the road we also had ducks. Some were mallards, but they were all domestic ones. They didn’t want to move out of the road just stood directly in front of the car and wouldn’t move. We finally got around them then pulled off to one side and called them and they waddled over to us. On these very narrow roads it’s a wonder they haven’t been skittled.
Came to Smoo cave on the north coast; That name is another corruption from the original Norse name: This is a very large cave and the road actually goes over the top of the cavern. It sits at the end of an 800metre long 30m deep and narrow sea chasm with sheer sided cliffs. Possibly the whole length of it was a cave at some long ago point in time. Now the mouth of the cave is 10 to 12 metres wide and about 4 or 5 m high. The cave goes back a long way and high up on one side lit by artificial lighting are some ferns. The most striking feature though is the 21metre high waterfall that drops into the cave. A wooden walkway and viewing platform allows you to get a good view of the bottom of the falls. To see the top you climb back to the top, cross the road and take the little walkway and the bridge over the stream is really over the top of the waterfall, you see it drop away immediately below. About 80m after exiting the cave the stream enters the sea in the chasm.
There are some fine golden sandy beaches along this northern coast and when we came to Durness we saw a sign ‘award winning beach’; now what the heck is that supposed to mean: The tourist office is closed for the season so we couldn’t ask there. Anyway, out there in the surf, and it was quite a good surf we saw two fellows on surfboards and one on a boogy board. They were wearing wet or dry suits: I don’t know what the water temperature would have been, I didn’t go down and try it but the air temp was about 11˚C and the chilly wind would have lowered it to around 6˚C so it was a tad chilly you could say.
A great many of the sea lochs all around Scotland have fish farms in them and as we drove around this part of the coast we saw many of those farms.
Now we started heading back south across moorland with peat bogs and bracken and heather covered hills, here and there are some areas of deep green where there is a pine forest usually with a cluster of golden larch amongst them. Followed a long glen leading from loch to loch with fishing being a popular pastime along the way; one long loch, loch Shin is really a dam and has a hydro electric station below the wall. You’d think that in this country with so many lochs that they wouldn’t want to build more water storage but they do. Took a long walk around the Balblair forest and met lots of people walking their dogs and other out riding their mountain bikes on the specially built trails. From a high point we got a great view over the glen and the lochs.
Went into the little town of Edderton to see yet another standing stone, this one is supposed to have a Pictish (from the time of the Picts before the Norse) inscription on it, and we did find it in the middle of a field with high sheep proof fencing all around and no stile or kissing gate to provide access so we didn’t get a close look at it. Some way further on we found ourselves back in Tain, we had passed this way on the northbound trip but hadn’t gone into the town. This time we went and had a look at the old toll house that stands right in the town centre. It’s a lovely old building but being a Sunday nothing was open for us to find any information about it.
On the peninsular between Dornoch Firth and Cromarty Firth we came to a RSPB hide in a wetlands area. This is a nature reserve for the migrating birds, mainly wetlands species. It covers 1600 hectares and this hide provides a good opportunity to watch some of them. Overhead we had seen large flocks of swans passing and even larger flocks of geese. We had thought that they were graylag geese but according to the posters in the hide they were more likely to be pink footed geese. The swans are whooping swans. With the aid of the telescope provided in the hide we could also see thousands of other birds, some we could identify whilst others were too far away to see properly. Spent at least an hour here probably much longer watching these birds many of which have come from their summer breeding grounds in Russia but others like the lapwing live here permanently:
In this same area we came across a church where there is a grave slab with an early Pictish carving. It’s a Christian carving from the 8th Century and it’s kept inside the locked church so we only got a glimpse of it through a dirty window.
In the town of Invergordon we looked a lot at the murals that decorate the sides and fronts of many of the buildings in the business centre. Each one has a different theme, one is a bagpipe band, another the fire service, yet another has all the birds from the reserve. It was something different to standing stones. At Beauly we had a look at the old Abby. This ruin is really in quite good shape, you can see the black from a fire that must have destroyed the roof and other parts, and there is no glass in the windows but most of the red sandstone block work is in good condition It was a very large Abby:
We came back into Inverness and spent a short while looking around again. St Andrews Cathedral was the main object of our attention. It has square towers now but from a painting inside we see that it once had tall spires. In the front it has a magnificent stained glass window. The city seemed just as busy on a Sunday afternoon as it did on a weekday; we’d thought it might be a bit quieter:
Had a look at the old battlefield at Culloden when German George’s forces soundly defeated Catholic Charley’s and brought to an end the Jacobite rebellion on the 16th April 1746. It’s just an ordinary field like most others in Scotland; an old cottage on one side is said to have survived the battle, its called Leanach cottage. There is a large stone in one place saying that the English are buried in that area and a large cairn says that the Scottish fatalities are listed under their clan names. Little signs say that a certain place is where the front line was, and I wonder who marked that place, surely no-one came back the next day and marked it thinking that in 250 years time people will want to know this. Probably some one 100 years after the even decided that’s where it should have been. Gee I’m a cynical B----, am I not.
Also visited the old Pluscardan Abby: This Abby is now occupied by Benedictine monks and part of it is open to visitors. These monks have only been there since 1948, before that for many centuries it was abandoned. It has been restored and is quite like the one we saw at Beauly in design. The chapel has some lovely stained glass windows. It is situated out in the countryside on the side of a ridge covered in dense woodland, and took quite a bit of finding. Some historical sites are well marked while others are not.
Forres has a nice town centre with a building that looks like another toll gate in the centre, and in Elgin we saw the old ruined Cathedral. It must have been a huge building, much larger that many I’ve seen, or so it appears to me.
There are also many castles but we haven’t bothered to visit any more. We did however, see another stone slab. This one is just on the edge of Forres and stands in a glass enclosure. It is of Pictish origin from the 9th or 10th centuries and very elaborately carved on all 4 sides. One side depicts a battle in several panels; no one knows what battle it was but believe it must have been very important to have been immortalized in this manner. The stone stands 6m high and was found lying in a field but it didn’t say when.
In this area east of Inverness we have seen a lot of whiskey distilleries. Nearly every decent sized village has one and we saw the Glenfiddick, Glenlivit and Dewars distilleries all within a few miles, there were others too.
©Lynette Regan 5th November 2007
Episode 20
Episode 20
Some blue sky and sunshine finally arrived as we came to the small village of Gairloch on the loch of the same name. Here at the small jetty we saw a cruise boat docked. It was called the Hebridean Princess and was about the same size as the Polar Pioneer. While we were there a few of the passengers got off and went for a walk around the village.
This is a very pretty village with the calm loch waters and many small islands. The mainly white painted houses were spread over a long way close to the shore. It probably looked even better than normal to us as there was blue sky and sunshine after so much wet weather.
A short way further on we came to another small village called Poolewe, on Loch Ewe. This area was a high security Naval area during WW11 when it was used as the base for the sending of conveys that went through the Barents Sea to Murmansk and Archangel in Russia carrying vital supplies to the besieged Russians. Nineteen conveys left from here:
It is a well sheltered deep water loch and at times was filled with ships. It was bombed by the Germans on at least one occasion but the bombs missed the 2 ships that were in harbour at the time. A submarine net was places across the entrance to the harbour and two launches stood by to open it when boats needed to pass in or out. In recent times an unexploded bomb has been found on the sea floor. Its still there:
All around the shore most of the old gun encampments and watch towers can still be seen. It was said to be a lonely life, a posting here, for those that came from the city as the villages here were really tiny. The winters were bitterly cold and it wasn’t unusual for the men to have to break the ice on a stream to get water to have a shave. I also read that one fellow said, and I quote “after 6 months you started talking to yourself, after 1 year you started talking to the sheep, after 18 months the sheep started talking to you.
It was a Sunday when we drove around this part of the country and it was just as well we hadn’t needed any supplies or fuel as we didn’t see one shop or fuel place open. This is the only Sunday we have found absolutely everything closed. There were plenty of people out fishing:
We came to the Corriehalloch Gorge. Its only a small gorge and you don’t even realize its there until you walk down the path through the waste ground that is cleared pine forest then suddenly the ground opens up in front of you and a 30m deep chasm is between you and the other side. Pine trees and oak trees cling precariously to the vertical grey, moss and fern covered rocky sides of the gorge and a stream boosted by recent rain tumbles over a waterfall then rushes off towards the sea. A small suspension bridge spans the gorge directly over the top of the waterfall, it was built in the 1880’s, and a cantilevered observation platform juts out over the chasm further downstream offering a great view of the falls and the bridge. Overhead we watched some birds of prey, don’t know what, perhaps buzzards, as they rode an air current circling higher and higher eventually disappearing into the wreaths of misty cloud that were forming overhead. There were 3 of them:
There was a great lot of pine forest around this area, some big area had been cleared, don’t know if they replant of let the self sewn ones come up, but we saw no sign of young trees emerging.
We passed a big dam that was very low and remembered that someone had told us that the summer and spring had been fairly dry, pity it hadn’t lasted into October. The dam was down a good 15m. I expected to see a hydro station below it but there wasn’t one. We had seen one earlier in the day on a much smaller dam, loch Kerry.
We circled back into Wester Ross and visited the little town on Ploctown; this is where the TV series Hamish Macbeth was filmed in the early 90’s. It’s much bigger than it first appears and is said to be ‘postcard pretty’ but it was raining heaving again when we arrived so it looked merely dreary. We stayed the night in the area and had a look at it again the next morning when there was some blue sky and sunshine about. It certainly looked much better with all the prettily painted houses clustered about the shore and plenty of colourful little boats bobbing on the water in the bay.
We took the bridges and crossed back to the Isle of Skye and went down to a place I had found marked on the map as ‘Otter Haven’; it seemed from the name that it might be a place to see some otters. A drive down a dead-end road and a walk of a mere kilometre brought us to a specially constructed hide from which to view any wildlife that cared to show itself: Some information charts were pinned to the walls showing all sorts of creatures that we might see both in the sea and on land. There was also a visitor’s book for people to fill out and include what they saw. Of those that had written in the book, not many of them had seen otters. The last person to write had been two days ago.
We settled down to watch, each with a pair of binoculars. Almost immediately David thought he spotted one, but if he did it vanished very quickly. For around two hours we sat there and scanned the water till our eyes felt like sandpaper from looking through the binoculars. We saw a lovely grey heron, a curlew, black backed gulls, shags, cormorants and a whole range of other birds, but no otters, nor seals for that matter. Some of the visitors had seen seals and otters. Several showers passed over while we watched, the tide went out quite a way and left the little lighthouse immediately below the hide high and dry, but not an otter did we see.
The only thing that gave me some satisfaction about the whole exercise was that we finally found out what sort of trees we’d seen that looked like pines but turned yellow and lost their needles. I had suggested a larch but wasn’t sure, but in the hide we saw some information on the trees and learnt that I had been right, it was a larch but it’s a hybrid; a cross between the European and Japanese larch. They are often planted in clusters in amongst the pine forests so that you get the effect of a deep green of the pine then this large area of bright gold on a hillside or in a gully that is the larch.
Drove around the Sleat peninsula and saw a couple more piles of rock that were once castles. One had a couple of walls still standing and two brick archways but not much more. Then we took the ferry from Armadale to Mailaig back on the mainland. This is a bigger town than I was expecting, and another one that is clustered around the shore of the bay and backed by high hills all covered in the golds and russets of autumn foliage. Continuing in a southerly direction for a while we followed the railway line and admired the lovely old stone arched viaducts and bridges along the line. One was small foot bridge over the line, some were one or two arch bridges over streams or a road and one had several arches.
In a glen we saw 5 beech trees that are all that is left of 7 that were planted to honour 7 prominent people who assisted the Bonny Prince in 1745/46. Two have been damaged in the bad storms of 1988 so 7 new ones have been planted but are still only small. Here too we saw an old lime kiln where the farmers used to burn the limestone to make fertilizer for the fields. Much of the old woodland all around these parts were destroyed to make charcoal for smelting iron or burning lime, it’s the only thing that will burn hot enough for such things.
We came to several more places where otters were supposed to live and spent much more time searching beaches and in another hide but still have not seen one, and now we will be out of their habitat from here onwards.
Now we were heading up through the central part of Scotland following a series of lochs and rivers that cut the country in half from North Sea coast to Atlantic coast. Soon we came to the start of the Caledonian Canal at its southern end. Here a series of 9 lochs lifts the level from that of the sea loch to that of the canal that passes through this lower end of the Glen. This place is called Neptunes Staircase. There are also 2 swing bridges here, one for the road the other for the railway line.
The Caledonian Canal was designed by Thomas Telford at the beginning of the 19th Century. It was completed in 1822 by which time many of the ships then in use were too big to pass through the canal. It is 96.4K’s (60miles) long, of which 35.6k’s (22miles) is man made canals. There are 29 lochs and 10 swing bridges. We crossed at least 3 of those swing bridges as we made our way northward toward Inverness at the northern end of the Canal and Glen Ness.
A monument to the Commandos was something we came across along the way. These elite forces were formed in 1940 made up of volunteers from all the services of the British and Allied forces. They were trained in the Highlands around this area then sent to undertake special assignments in all theatres of the War. The most noticeable part of their uniform was their Green Beret.
Just off the present road there is an old suspension bridge not used any more. It’s called the ‘Bridge of Oich’ and crosses the river of the same name. Opened in 1854 after its predecessor got washed away in a flood it is of a special design that even if it wasn’t joined in the middle neither side should fall down, its called ‘double cantilever’ and was designed by one James Dredge.
Then we came to Loch Ness: This famous loch is 38k’s long and up to 230m deep. Apart from the famous monster that nobody ever gets a good look at it is also a favourite place for seals and ospreys that come to feed off the trout and salmon. Along the shore there are a few small villages with plenty of hotels and souvenir shops trading of “Nessy’s popularity. Apparently one of the first recorded sightings of Nessy was by St Columba in the 6th Century, so poor old Nessy is getting a bit long in the tooth so to speak. Definitely didn’t put in any appearance for us.
While in Inverness I just happened to be passing the town hall when I was stopped by security and asked to wait a minute before passing as someone ‘important’ was about to come out and get into a car. It turned out to be Princess Ann. Of course I didn’t have the camera with me.
Inverness is rather a nice place. It has some lovely old 19th century buildings in the city centre and along facing the river bank. There is a narrow strip of parkland either side of the river and all is overlooked by the Castle atop the hill built of pink sandstone and recently sandblasted so that it really shows the colour well. It is now the Inverness Sheriff Court House. There was first a fort on this site in the 12th century, then a castle that was destroyed just after Bonny Prince Charleys defeat at Culloden in 1746; this present castle dates from 1834. Culloden is just outside of Inverness.
Went looking for a place called Black Rock Gorge; managed to find a caravan park of the same name but couldn’t find the gorge so we gave up and headed on north again. A couple of caves along the coast were something else we thought of going to see but the rain was tipping down still and all the tracks are just so waterlogged that we gave the idea a miss and kept on. Kept looking for signs to some of the ruins that were marked on the map, several castles and brochs, but mostly they were unmarked so we missed them.
In the little town of Dornoch on the north shore of the firth with the same name we stopped to have a look at the Cathedral and found a few other interesting sites too. As cathedrals go this is a vey small one built on the cruciform style.
Gilbert de Moravia was bishop of Caithness in 1222 when he decided to move his diocese from Halkirk to Dornoch and to build a cathedral there on the site of a very early Christian church. The Irish priest Finnibar, he became St Bar, had built a church here in the 6th century, this is the same St Bar that had founded the little church ruin we had visited on the island of Barra. Gilbert financed the building of this cathedral himself and used local stone and glass in the building. It was consecrated in the year 1239. More modern stained glass windows have replaced older ones and the organ is from the 18th century though it was completely rebuilt a few years ago.
In the tipping rain we walked around the small town, the bishop’s palace across the road from the cathedral is now a hotel and there is a museum nearby too but it wasn’t open. A short walk to the outskirts of the town and we found the ‘witches stone’; it marks the site of the last ‘burning at the stake’ of a witch in Scotland in 1772. We were a day late in find this, a day after Halloween.
Also found the old town well that became so polluted with seeping sewerage that cholera became common. It was in the late 19th century that reticulated water from a loch in the hills brought clean fresh water into the town. One area is called Littletown. This is where many of the families came to live after the big land clearances of the late 18th and early part of the 19th century. They came here and built tiny sod houses with turf roofs, but later when things improved many replaced them with small stone houses and several can still be seen around here.
When we visited the tourist info office here I asked the girl what people did for a living in this area. It is a much better agricultural area than most other parts of the highlands with plenty of rich green pastures and great stacks of plastic wrapped silage rolls. It’s not as mountainous here, more rolling farmland with open fields and patches of woodland. The girl told me that farming and tourism are the main things along with some fishing. In the summer it gets very busy with tourists but for about 6 months it’s very quiet, from now till Easter there is only the odd straggler like us. In the high mountains there are some winter sports areas but not around here.
Some way further north we passed the heap of rocks that was Skelbo castle, nothing much to look at there, then later we came upon the more impressive Dunrobin castle. Although not a really pretty castle from the outside it does boast 189 lavishly furnished rooms and lovely gardens and a falconry. A drive of 500 metres through a beech wood dressed in the bright gold leaves of autumn brought us to the castle. However, it was closed for the season and the falconry master was off on holiday too. Of all those rooms only 17 are open to the public on a tour. This is the home of the Duke of Sutherland, at one time the biggest landowner in Europe with 1.3 million acres of land. It was one of the dukes that ordered much of the clearing of the crofters in this area and there are a few other places like Littletown where they settled. A great many migrated to America and Canada back in the 18th century then in the later clearances of the 19th century many went to Australia and New Zealand and well as the US and Canada. They were moved off the land owned by the big landlords so more sheep and cattle could be grazed and to provide better hunting opportunities for guests to hunt deer and pheasant or fish for salmon and trout.
There were some good cairns and more standing stones to see but they all involved walking over very soggy ground in pouring rain for a mile or so and we didn’t really feel that we needed to do that so we gave them a miss. Same thing happened too when we went to see where the old gold mine used to be at Baile de Or. This is 8 miles inland from Helmsdale and is where some Scott’s man who had returned from the Australian gold fields found gold in 1869. Not much gold was ever found here but fossickers still try their hand at panning in the stream every summer and some manage to find just a little.
At Wick we went in search of the castle and found just another pile of stones quite near the shore. The shore here is a rock shelf that stretches out 50 metres or more to where the waves bash themselves against it and throw up large plumes of spray. This is a very grey and dismal looking North Sea.
© Lynette Regan 1st November 2007
Some blue sky and sunshine finally arrived as we came to the small village of Gairloch on the loch of the same name. Here at the small jetty we saw a cruise boat docked. It was called the Hebridean Princess and was about the same size as the Polar Pioneer. While we were there a few of the passengers got off and went for a walk around the village.
This is a very pretty village with the calm loch waters and many small islands. The mainly white painted houses were spread over a long way close to the shore. It probably looked even better than normal to us as there was blue sky and sunshine after so much wet weather.
A short way further on we came to another small village called Poolewe, on Loch Ewe. This area was a high security Naval area during WW11 when it was used as the base for the sending of conveys that went through the Barents Sea to Murmansk and Archangel in Russia carrying vital supplies to the besieged Russians. Nineteen conveys left from here:
It is a well sheltered deep water loch and at times was filled with ships. It was bombed by the Germans on at least one occasion but the bombs missed the 2 ships that were in harbour at the time. A submarine net was places across the entrance to the harbour and two launches stood by to open it when boats needed to pass in or out. In recent times an unexploded bomb has been found on the sea floor. Its still there:
All around the shore most of the old gun encampments and watch towers can still be seen. It was said to be a lonely life, a posting here, for those that came from the city as the villages here were really tiny. The winters were bitterly cold and it wasn’t unusual for the men to have to break the ice on a stream to get water to have a shave. I also read that one fellow said, and I quote “after 6 months you started talking to yourself, after 1 year you started talking to the sheep, after 18 months the sheep started talking to you.
It was a Sunday when we drove around this part of the country and it was just as well we hadn’t needed any supplies or fuel as we didn’t see one shop or fuel place open. This is the only Sunday we have found absolutely everything closed. There were plenty of people out fishing:
We came to the Corriehalloch Gorge. Its only a small gorge and you don’t even realize its there until you walk down the path through the waste ground that is cleared pine forest then suddenly the ground opens up in front of you and a 30m deep chasm is between you and the other side. Pine trees and oak trees cling precariously to the vertical grey, moss and fern covered rocky sides of the gorge and a stream boosted by recent rain tumbles over a waterfall then rushes off towards the sea. A small suspension bridge spans the gorge directly over the top of the waterfall, it was built in the 1880’s, and a cantilevered observation platform juts out over the chasm further downstream offering a great view of the falls and the bridge. Overhead we watched some birds of prey, don’t know what, perhaps buzzards, as they rode an air current circling higher and higher eventually disappearing into the wreaths of misty cloud that were forming overhead. There were 3 of them:
There was a great lot of pine forest around this area, some big area had been cleared, don’t know if they replant of let the self sewn ones come up, but we saw no sign of young trees emerging.
We passed a big dam that was very low and remembered that someone had told us that the summer and spring had been fairly dry, pity it hadn’t lasted into October. The dam was down a good 15m. I expected to see a hydro station below it but there wasn’t one. We had seen one earlier in the day on a much smaller dam, loch Kerry.
We circled back into Wester Ross and visited the little town on Ploctown; this is where the TV series Hamish Macbeth was filmed in the early 90’s. It’s much bigger than it first appears and is said to be ‘postcard pretty’ but it was raining heaving again when we arrived so it looked merely dreary. We stayed the night in the area and had a look at it again the next morning when there was some blue sky and sunshine about. It certainly looked much better with all the prettily painted houses clustered about the shore and plenty of colourful little boats bobbing on the water in the bay.
We took the bridges and crossed back to the Isle of Skye and went down to a place I had found marked on the map as ‘Otter Haven’; it seemed from the name that it might be a place to see some otters. A drive down a dead-end road and a walk of a mere kilometre brought us to a specially constructed hide from which to view any wildlife that cared to show itself: Some information charts were pinned to the walls showing all sorts of creatures that we might see both in the sea and on land. There was also a visitor’s book for people to fill out and include what they saw. Of those that had written in the book, not many of them had seen otters. The last person to write had been two days ago.
We settled down to watch, each with a pair of binoculars. Almost immediately David thought he spotted one, but if he did it vanished very quickly. For around two hours we sat there and scanned the water till our eyes felt like sandpaper from looking through the binoculars. We saw a lovely grey heron, a curlew, black backed gulls, shags, cormorants and a whole range of other birds, but no otters, nor seals for that matter. Some of the visitors had seen seals and otters. Several showers passed over while we watched, the tide went out quite a way and left the little lighthouse immediately below the hide high and dry, but not an otter did we see.
The only thing that gave me some satisfaction about the whole exercise was that we finally found out what sort of trees we’d seen that looked like pines but turned yellow and lost their needles. I had suggested a larch but wasn’t sure, but in the hide we saw some information on the trees and learnt that I had been right, it was a larch but it’s a hybrid; a cross between the European and Japanese larch. They are often planted in clusters in amongst the pine forests so that you get the effect of a deep green of the pine then this large area of bright gold on a hillside or in a gully that is the larch.
Drove around the Sleat peninsula and saw a couple more piles of rock that were once castles. One had a couple of walls still standing and two brick archways but not much more. Then we took the ferry from Armadale to Mailaig back on the mainland. This is a bigger town than I was expecting, and another one that is clustered around the shore of the bay and backed by high hills all covered in the golds and russets of autumn foliage. Continuing in a southerly direction for a while we followed the railway line and admired the lovely old stone arched viaducts and bridges along the line. One was small foot bridge over the line, some were one or two arch bridges over streams or a road and one had several arches.
In a glen we saw 5 beech trees that are all that is left of 7 that were planted to honour 7 prominent people who assisted the Bonny Prince in 1745/46. Two have been damaged in the bad storms of 1988 so 7 new ones have been planted but are still only small. Here too we saw an old lime kiln where the farmers used to burn the limestone to make fertilizer for the fields. Much of the old woodland all around these parts were destroyed to make charcoal for smelting iron or burning lime, it’s the only thing that will burn hot enough for such things.
We came to several more places where otters were supposed to live and spent much more time searching beaches and in another hide but still have not seen one, and now we will be out of their habitat from here onwards.
Now we were heading up through the central part of Scotland following a series of lochs and rivers that cut the country in half from North Sea coast to Atlantic coast. Soon we came to the start of the Caledonian Canal at its southern end. Here a series of 9 lochs lifts the level from that of the sea loch to that of the canal that passes through this lower end of the Glen. This place is called Neptunes Staircase. There are also 2 swing bridges here, one for the road the other for the railway line.
The Caledonian Canal was designed by Thomas Telford at the beginning of the 19th Century. It was completed in 1822 by which time many of the ships then in use were too big to pass through the canal. It is 96.4K’s (60miles) long, of which 35.6k’s (22miles) is man made canals. There are 29 lochs and 10 swing bridges. We crossed at least 3 of those swing bridges as we made our way northward toward Inverness at the northern end of the Canal and Glen Ness.
A monument to the Commandos was something we came across along the way. These elite forces were formed in 1940 made up of volunteers from all the services of the British and Allied forces. They were trained in the Highlands around this area then sent to undertake special assignments in all theatres of the War. The most noticeable part of their uniform was their Green Beret.
Just off the present road there is an old suspension bridge not used any more. It’s called the ‘Bridge of Oich’ and crosses the river of the same name. Opened in 1854 after its predecessor got washed away in a flood it is of a special design that even if it wasn’t joined in the middle neither side should fall down, its called ‘double cantilever’ and was designed by one James Dredge.
Then we came to Loch Ness: This famous loch is 38k’s long and up to 230m deep. Apart from the famous monster that nobody ever gets a good look at it is also a favourite place for seals and ospreys that come to feed off the trout and salmon. Along the shore there are a few small villages with plenty of hotels and souvenir shops trading of “Nessy’s popularity. Apparently one of the first recorded sightings of Nessy was by St Columba in the 6th Century, so poor old Nessy is getting a bit long in the tooth so to speak. Definitely didn’t put in any appearance for us.
While in Inverness I just happened to be passing the town hall when I was stopped by security and asked to wait a minute before passing as someone ‘important’ was about to come out and get into a car. It turned out to be Princess Ann. Of course I didn’t have the camera with me.
Inverness is rather a nice place. It has some lovely old 19th century buildings in the city centre and along facing the river bank. There is a narrow strip of parkland either side of the river and all is overlooked by the Castle atop the hill built of pink sandstone and recently sandblasted so that it really shows the colour well. It is now the Inverness Sheriff Court House. There was first a fort on this site in the 12th century, then a castle that was destroyed just after Bonny Prince Charleys defeat at Culloden in 1746; this present castle dates from 1834. Culloden is just outside of Inverness.
Went looking for a place called Black Rock Gorge; managed to find a caravan park of the same name but couldn’t find the gorge so we gave up and headed on north again. A couple of caves along the coast were something else we thought of going to see but the rain was tipping down still and all the tracks are just so waterlogged that we gave the idea a miss and kept on. Kept looking for signs to some of the ruins that were marked on the map, several castles and brochs, but mostly they were unmarked so we missed them.
In the little town of Dornoch on the north shore of the firth with the same name we stopped to have a look at the Cathedral and found a few other interesting sites too. As cathedrals go this is a vey small one built on the cruciform style.
Gilbert de Moravia was bishop of Caithness in 1222 when he decided to move his diocese from Halkirk to Dornoch and to build a cathedral there on the site of a very early Christian church. The Irish priest Finnibar, he became St Bar, had built a church here in the 6th century, this is the same St Bar that had founded the little church ruin we had visited on the island of Barra. Gilbert financed the building of this cathedral himself and used local stone and glass in the building. It was consecrated in the year 1239. More modern stained glass windows have replaced older ones and the organ is from the 18th century though it was completely rebuilt a few years ago.
In the tipping rain we walked around the small town, the bishop’s palace across the road from the cathedral is now a hotel and there is a museum nearby too but it wasn’t open. A short walk to the outskirts of the town and we found the ‘witches stone’; it marks the site of the last ‘burning at the stake’ of a witch in Scotland in 1772. We were a day late in find this, a day after Halloween.
Also found the old town well that became so polluted with seeping sewerage that cholera became common. It was in the late 19th century that reticulated water from a loch in the hills brought clean fresh water into the town. One area is called Littletown. This is where many of the families came to live after the big land clearances of the late 18th and early part of the 19th century. They came here and built tiny sod houses with turf roofs, but later when things improved many replaced them with small stone houses and several can still be seen around here.
When we visited the tourist info office here I asked the girl what people did for a living in this area. It is a much better agricultural area than most other parts of the highlands with plenty of rich green pastures and great stacks of plastic wrapped silage rolls. It’s not as mountainous here, more rolling farmland with open fields and patches of woodland. The girl told me that farming and tourism are the main things along with some fishing. In the summer it gets very busy with tourists but for about 6 months it’s very quiet, from now till Easter there is only the odd straggler like us. In the high mountains there are some winter sports areas but not around here.
Some way further north we passed the heap of rocks that was Skelbo castle, nothing much to look at there, then later we came upon the more impressive Dunrobin castle. Although not a really pretty castle from the outside it does boast 189 lavishly furnished rooms and lovely gardens and a falconry. A drive of 500 metres through a beech wood dressed in the bright gold leaves of autumn brought us to the castle. However, it was closed for the season and the falconry master was off on holiday too. Of all those rooms only 17 are open to the public on a tour. This is the home of the Duke of Sutherland, at one time the biggest landowner in Europe with 1.3 million acres of land. It was one of the dukes that ordered much of the clearing of the crofters in this area and there are a few other places like Littletown where they settled. A great many migrated to America and Canada back in the 18th century then in the later clearances of the 19th century many went to Australia and New Zealand and well as the US and Canada. They were moved off the land owned by the big landlords so more sheep and cattle could be grazed and to provide better hunting opportunities for guests to hunt deer and pheasant or fish for salmon and trout.
There were some good cairns and more standing stones to see but they all involved walking over very soggy ground in pouring rain for a mile or so and we didn’t really feel that we needed to do that so we gave them a miss. Same thing happened too when we went to see where the old gold mine used to be at Baile de Or. This is 8 miles inland from Helmsdale and is where some Scott’s man who had returned from the Australian gold fields found gold in 1869. Not much gold was ever found here but fossickers still try their hand at panning in the stream every summer and some manage to find just a little.
At Wick we went in search of the castle and found just another pile of stones quite near the shore. The shore here is a rock shelf that stretches out 50 metres or more to where the waves bash themselves against it and throw up large plumes of spray. This is a very grey and dismal looking North Sea.
© Lynette Regan 1st November 2007
Episode 19
Episode 19
On a dreary wet day when I had bought a book detailing the walks on the island and had plans to do some of them we found ourselves visiting Dunvegan Castle the ancestral home of the Macleod’s. The current Chief of Clan Macleod is the 30th and they have lived in this castle since about the 13th or 14th Centuries. As castles go its not very impressive, not even an attractive building really and there isn’t much to see inside though the grounds are quite nice: For the entrance fee of £6 each it is very poor value, but it was something to do on a wet and windy afternoon.
The curtain wall, that’s the rock wall built just above the shore was the first thing to be built here and was done so by the Norse in around 1200, then part of the tower and some other parts of the castle were built around 1300, but just about all of what you see dates from the first half of the 19th century. There is a beautiful oak dresser in the dining room with a carved front, and a couple of lovely Chinese lacquered tables, bit of silverware and some other bits and pieces but not very much.
Just a few items that belonged to Flora Macdonald who married one of the Macleod’s; and a couple of items that belonged to the Bonny Prince himself: The Macleods though, did not support the Bonny Prince in his attempt to gain the English throne.
It was one of these Macleod chiefs whose tomb we had seen in St Clements church on the Island of Harris just a week or so ago.
Outside, when it wasn’t raining we wandered about the gardens. There were some hydrangeas in bloom in a colour blue that I have never seen before, almost a turquoise. In the centre of the round garden is a blue leaf gum tree of some sort that has been cut off several times so now has many trunks. It is one of three such gum trees we saw in the garden. Nearby were two araucaria trees, one a massive old tree, the other a young seedling.
A walled garden had some herb gardens but no vegetable garden as I had expected. Did have a few fruit trees growing against the wall: In the fern house all we could see were geraniums and pelargoniums: Two 8m high waterfalls fed a stream along which a water garden was growing. A woodland area up on the hillside overlooked the round garden and the shore line. When it started raining again we headed back to the car.
We also came upon the ruin of a small church where the MacDonald Clan had massacred the Macleod clan in retaliation of a previous massacre. This was a place where we were going to do some walking but the rain was tipping down.
By chance we passed a sheep skin tannery. It is just a small building and they buy sheep skins from a meat works, mostly they are lamb skins and the lambs have never been shorn. All the equipment used is from early 20th Century except for the tanning acid that is a modern product. Most jobs are done by hand and some are quite messy like cleaning the fat off the skins after they have been soaked. It is scraped off with a large scraper that’s a bit like a machete.
The skins are soaked, and scraped, and soaked and washed and dried, then put through a carding machine after which they are trimmed and ironed. Takes about 2 to 3 weeks to complete one batch: Upstairs is the showroom and we could see the finished product. They sell them at quite a reasonable price too, cheaper than those I have seen in New Zealand. One of their nice woolly hats would have kept my ears warmer in the Arctic.
On yet another wet and windy day we did a short walk to the Neist Point lighthouse. The Bed and Breakfast place that is part of the lighthouse has closed for the season and so to the coffee shop still there was quite a lot of people doing the walk, it surprised us how many. We set out wrapped up in all our water and wind proof gear. It wasn’t all that cold but the wind was ferocious trying to blow us backwards, sideways, or forwards depending on the twists in the track. It was only a short walk to the cliff edge just below the light. Here we could see some very thick basal columns, vertical ones that formed the edge of the cliff with some broken off ones forming a bit of a giant stairway.
With this wind blowing the sea had some mighty swells and troughs and was throwing itself hard against the rocks below or onto the pebbles of a small beach in the bay on the other side. In the distance we could see the hills on the other side of the bay and also some waterfalls tumbling their way over the edge into the sea. There were at least three such waterfalls, one was quite high, probably 150m at least. Another one in front of us in the car park was catching the full brunt of the wind and the spray was being blown well back up onto the land just to run down the stream and do it all again. The grazing sheep seemed totally unperturbed by the gale force wind and the procession of tourists dressed in all sorts of weird and colourful clothes passing their way.
For want of something better to do on another wet and windy afternoon we visited another whiskey distillery, this time it was the Talisker distillery at Colbost not Talisker, that village is 4 mile down the road. This distillery was started by two brothers in 1830 at a cost of around £3,000. Ten to twenty years later it was only worth £1,000 but by the end of the century when the remaining brother sold it £25,000 was the settlement price.
Here they produce around 2,000,000 litres of whiskey per year. But by the time it’s sat in the barrels for 10 years, (that’s the minimum here, just as it is in Oban), and lost 2% per year through evaporation, well, I’ll let you work out how much is left. Several kids on this tour so there must be some other schools on mid term holidays now. In fact it was quite surprising just how many people there were waiting to do a tour here. The brochure had said that at this time of year the tours were by appointment only and that nothing went after 3.30pm, however, we were the last to get on the 3.15 tour, and after we finished it looked as if the 4.15pm tour had even more people on it. Think that it must have had something to do with the weather.
This is a much larger distillery with five stills altogether, and they are a little different in shape to the Oban ones. The stream that passes right by the door is the source of the water for the whiskey; it comes from a natural spring a little further up the hill. Malting barley from the mainland is used as hardly any is grown on Skye now. There are no more people employed in the distillery here than there was at Oban, only 8, but there are many more employed in the administration area and as tour guides.
Went down Glen Brittle with the intention of doing a bit of walking, weather permitting, and we were lucky enough that, although overcast it wasn’t raining. The camp site had closed for the season so with no alternative a few motorhomes and some campers had set up on the foreshore area where there was some nice short grass and no charge.
The one walk that was supposed not to be too boggy was out along the southern shore of the lock to a point. So we set off along the track. It was ok, bit boggy in places but easily avoided. Had a few small burns (creeks) to cross, the biggest one had a little bridge, when we found it. After then we followed a 4wd track that we came too so that was easy going for around 3k’s, but then that veered off the wrong way and we were left with a multitude of sheep tracks. After about another 700m we came to one very wet peat bog and couldn’t find a path that wasn’t sodden so we gave up only a few hundred metres from the end of the point.
When we got back nearly back we took a short cut down to the beach and came to a deep ravine and little waterfall, then a scramble down some rocks onto the sand. The last lot of rocks that get covered by water at high tide were also covered with small muscles, billions of them clinging onto whatever bit of rock they could. There are also a few periwinkles and some cockles. One part of the beach was white sand streaked with black, but on the northern end it was just black sand, especially above the high tide mark. The high mountains beside us and what we’d hoped to get a decent view of are the black Cullins. High, nearly 1000m and rugged, they are favourites with rock climbers. They were living up to their reputation of being shrouded in mist and cloud despite the fact that day had begun fairly clear and the sun had been shining.
As we passed Lock Sligachan we could see the old stone wall on the sea floor, the tide being quite low at the time. This stone wall was built long ago as a fish trap by local villages. It worked well catching herring and salmon. The local landlord though took exception to it and partly destroyed it as he wanted to save the fishing for his rich paying clients. Judging by the number of sea birds swooping around it, it still works to some extent trapping fish.
Another side road we took led us down the other side of the Cullins mountains, the Red Cullins this time. These two ranges of mountains were formed at two different times. The red ones are more volcanic, but I can’t remember which are the older. The red Cullins are mainly granite with a red shading, not that I can see the difference, they both look dark to me.
I did a walk up into these mountains: David had hurt his foot somehow a wasn’t up to it so I set off on my own. It was a good path but getting a bit late in the day. I walked about 3k’s climbing past 2 small waterfalls and up a steep slope until I came out onto the shoulder of the mountain with a terrific view back the way I’d come and straight into the full force of the wind that was being funnelled between the mountains. This was a sheep field but I honestly don’t know how they weren’t blown away, I could not possibly walk against the wind so I turned around, took a photo, the sun was shining and it looked really lovely with blue sky, the loch and the village on the other side, then stated back down. I had a great deal of trouble with the gusting wind nearly blowing me over. Took me ages to get down that zigzag path to the stream, after that I was out of the worst of the wind and it was an easy walk back to the car:
Since then its rained heavy almost continuously; it had been an almost full moon the evening after the climb with bright moonlight most of the night then around 6am it started raining and just got heavier. Although we have a ticket for the ferry from Armadale to Malaig we drove over the two bridges that now connect Skye to the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh, our plan, if you could call it such, being that we look around this north west part of the country then head over to Skye again and take that ferry and have a look around there.
We stopped and had a look at the outside of Eilean Donan Castle on Lochalsh. It is said to be the most photographed castle in Scotland, though it really isn’t much to look at. It gets lots of tourists now because of the tour busses heading for Skye passing this way. The original castle dates from the 13th century, like a lot of others around here, but it was blown up by King George’s troops at the time Spanish forces had been there supporting the 1719 Jacobite uprising. It was not rebuilt until 1912 to 1932, so one can hardly call it old; it doesn’t even look all that impressive either. It sits on a small island that it completely covers and is connected to the mainland by a arched bridge, that’s the nicest thing about it. From what I’ve read there’s not much to see inside either so we didn’t bother battling the coach loads and going in.
We did drive over some pretty hills with a brilliant view of Loch Duich at a time with the cloud lifted and some blue sky and sunshine made a brief appearance and gave false hope that the weather may clear somewhat. Ha Ha!! Came to Glenelg and looked for some old barracks that should be there but didn’t find them but up a small valley from there we did find some old Iron Age Brochs. One is in quite good condition considering its 2000 years old. With about ½ of it still standing we could get a really good idea of how it looked. It is almost identical in shape to the one I described that we say on Lewis. This one was about 6.2m (20ft) high with the outside wall sloping inward but the inside wall vertical so that the chamber between the walls gradually narrowed with almost no gap at the top. The stairs in the chamber probably didn’t go right to the top. This one too is thought to have had a second storey. The stone work is a bit different because the stone here is more flat and slate like, on the islands it was a more rounded stone.
The bit that really amuses me is that much of the structure has been reinforced with steel so that it won’t collapse onto the unsuspecting public whilst they are scramble over it, but the thing has stood there for 2000 years, how long will the steel last???? The stone slabs don’t go rusty:
Saw two more of these brochs further up the same valley and there was also supposed to be a chambered burial cairn that I couldn’t find.
In the Applecross peninsula we took a narrow, twisting, steep road that climbed up past a couple of waterfalls in a series of switchback hairpin bends and reached a height of 632m above sea level according to our SatNav, the highest road in Scotland, so I read somewhere. From the top we should have had a great view out over Skye to the Cullin Mountains but all we saw was rain. Someway further along the coast we stopped and when I opened the car door the wind ripped it out of my grasp and damn near off its hinges.
On yet another wet afternoon we called into the visitors centre of the Beinn Eighe Nature Reserve and had a look at their display. Its the oldest nature reserve in Britian having been set up in 1951. At that time there was just a little of the pine forest left most having been logged during WW11 for use as ammunition boxes. Some re-aforestation has been done here and there is a diverse range of insects, animals, birds etc that live here. With the help of a hidden camera, a feed box, binoculars, a bird book and a monitor we could watch some birds at the feeder. Chaffinch, Green Finch and Great Tits were having a great time eating peanuts. Hardly their natural food I would have thought. There are some lovely walks in this area but not in this weather, it’s just too wet.
We had also read about a tree planting scheme on the Applecross peninsula where 1500 hectares had been planted with 1.5million trees over the last few years. It has been fenced to keep out the deer and sheep because both types of animals will kill the young trees. The species chosen are all native to the area and the seeds have come from trees that are growing there.
Much of the original forest has disappeared with the formation of the peat beds; the peat holds too much water and most trees can’t grow in it. Trees from the rest of the land have been harvested over the centuries for their timber for many different uses, from boat building and houses to making charcoal for industry.
At Strathcarron we got talking to the fellow who runs the shop and post office there, I asked him about Otters. He has lived here for 14 years and only twice seen otters, so I don’t fancy my chances.
©Lynette Regan 27th October 2007
On a dreary wet day when I had bought a book detailing the walks on the island and had plans to do some of them we found ourselves visiting Dunvegan Castle the ancestral home of the Macleod’s. The current Chief of Clan Macleod is the 30th and they have lived in this castle since about the 13th or 14th Centuries. As castles go its not very impressive, not even an attractive building really and there isn’t much to see inside though the grounds are quite nice: For the entrance fee of £6 each it is very poor value, but it was something to do on a wet and windy afternoon.
The curtain wall, that’s the rock wall built just above the shore was the first thing to be built here and was done so by the Norse in around 1200, then part of the tower and some other parts of the castle were built around 1300, but just about all of what you see dates from the first half of the 19th century. There is a beautiful oak dresser in the dining room with a carved front, and a couple of lovely Chinese lacquered tables, bit of silverware and some other bits and pieces but not very much.
Just a few items that belonged to Flora Macdonald who married one of the Macleod’s; and a couple of items that belonged to the Bonny Prince himself: The Macleods though, did not support the Bonny Prince in his attempt to gain the English throne.
It was one of these Macleod chiefs whose tomb we had seen in St Clements church on the Island of Harris just a week or so ago.
Outside, when it wasn’t raining we wandered about the gardens. There were some hydrangeas in bloom in a colour blue that I have never seen before, almost a turquoise. In the centre of the round garden is a blue leaf gum tree of some sort that has been cut off several times so now has many trunks. It is one of three such gum trees we saw in the garden. Nearby were two araucaria trees, one a massive old tree, the other a young seedling.
A walled garden had some herb gardens but no vegetable garden as I had expected. Did have a few fruit trees growing against the wall: In the fern house all we could see were geraniums and pelargoniums: Two 8m high waterfalls fed a stream along which a water garden was growing. A woodland area up on the hillside overlooked the round garden and the shore line. When it started raining again we headed back to the car.
We also came upon the ruin of a small church where the MacDonald Clan had massacred the Macleod clan in retaliation of a previous massacre. This was a place where we were going to do some walking but the rain was tipping down.
By chance we passed a sheep skin tannery. It is just a small building and they buy sheep skins from a meat works, mostly they are lamb skins and the lambs have never been shorn. All the equipment used is from early 20th Century except for the tanning acid that is a modern product. Most jobs are done by hand and some are quite messy like cleaning the fat off the skins after they have been soaked. It is scraped off with a large scraper that’s a bit like a machete.
The skins are soaked, and scraped, and soaked and washed and dried, then put through a carding machine after which they are trimmed and ironed. Takes about 2 to 3 weeks to complete one batch: Upstairs is the showroom and we could see the finished product. They sell them at quite a reasonable price too, cheaper than those I have seen in New Zealand. One of their nice woolly hats would have kept my ears warmer in the Arctic.
On yet another wet and windy day we did a short walk to the Neist Point lighthouse. The Bed and Breakfast place that is part of the lighthouse has closed for the season and so to the coffee shop still there was quite a lot of people doing the walk, it surprised us how many. We set out wrapped up in all our water and wind proof gear. It wasn’t all that cold but the wind was ferocious trying to blow us backwards, sideways, or forwards depending on the twists in the track. It was only a short walk to the cliff edge just below the light. Here we could see some very thick basal columns, vertical ones that formed the edge of the cliff with some broken off ones forming a bit of a giant stairway.
With this wind blowing the sea had some mighty swells and troughs and was throwing itself hard against the rocks below or onto the pebbles of a small beach in the bay on the other side. In the distance we could see the hills on the other side of the bay and also some waterfalls tumbling their way over the edge into the sea. There were at least three such waterfalls, one was quite high, probably 150m at least. Another one in front of us in the car park was catching the full brunt of the wind and the spray was being blown well back up onto the land just to run down the stream and do it all again. The grazing sheep seemed totally unperturbed by the gale force wind and the procession of tourists dressed in all sorts of weird and colourful clothes passing their way.
For want of something better to do on another wet and windy afternoon we visited another whiskey distillery, this time it was the Talisker distillery at Colbost not Talisker, that village is 4 mile down the road. This distillery was started by two brothers in 1830 at a cost of around £3,000. Ten to twenty years later it was only worth £1,000 but by the end of the century when the remaining brother sold it £25,000 was the settlement price.
Here they produce around 2,000,000 litres of whiskey per year. But by the time it’s sat in the barrels for 10 years, (that’s the minimum here, just as it is in Oban), and lost 2% per year through evaporation, well, I’ll let you work out how much is left. Several kids on this tour so there must be some other schools on mid term holidays now. In fact it was quite surprising just how many people there were waiting to do a tour here. The brochure had said that at this time of year the tours were by appointment only and that nothing went after 3.30pm, however, we were the last to get on the 3.15 tour, and after we finished it looked as if the 4.15pm tour had even more people on it. Think that it must have had something to do with the weather.
This is a much larger distillery with five stills altogether, and they are a little different in shape to the Oban ones. The stream that passes right by the door is the source of the water for the whiskey; it comes from a natural spring a little further up the hill. Malting barley from the mainland is used as hardly any is grown on Skye now. There are no more people employed in the distillery here than there was at Oban, only 8, but there are many more employed in the administration area and as tour guides.
Went down Glen Brittle with the intention of doing a bit of walking, weather permitting, and we were lucky enough that, although overcast it wasn’t raining. The camp site had closed for the season so with no alternative a few motorhomes and some campers had set up on the foreshore area where there was some nice short grass and no charge.
The one walk that was supposed not to be too boggy was out along the southern shore of the lock to a point. So we set off along the track. It was ok, bit boggy in places but easily avoided. Had a few small burns (creeks) to cross, the biggest one had a little bridge, when we found it. After then we followed a 4wd track that we came too so that was easy going for around 3k’s, but then that veered off the wrong way and we were left with a multitude of sheep tracks. After about another 700m we came to one very wet peat bog and couldn’t find a path that wasn’t sodden so we gave up only a few hundred metres from the end of the point.
When we got back nearly back we took a short cut down to the beach and came to a deep ravine and little waterfall, then a scramble down some rocks onto the sand. The last lot of rocks that get covered by water at high tide were also covered with small muscles, billions of them clinging onto whatever bit of rock they could. There are also a few periwinkles and some cockles. One part of the beach was white sand streaked with black, but on the northern end it was just black sand, especially above the high tide mark. The high mountains beside us and what we’d hoped to get a decent view of are the black Cullins. High, nearly 1000m and rugged, they are favourites with rock climbers. They were living up to their reputation of being shrouded in mist and cloud despite the fact that day had begun fairly clear and the sun had been shining.
As we passed Lock Sligachan we could see the old stone wall on the sea floor, the tide being quite low at the time. This stone wall was built long ago as a fish trap by local villages. It worked well catching herring and salmon. The local landlord though took exception to it and partly destroyed it as he wanted to save the fishing for his rich paying clients. Judging by the number of sea birds swooping around it, it still works to some extent trapping fish.
Another side road we took led us down the other side of the Cullins mountains, the Red Cullins this time. These two ranges of mountains were formed at two different times. The red ones are more volcanic, but I can’t remember which are the older. The red Cullins are mainly granite with a red shading, not that I can see the difference, they both look dark to me.
I did a walk up into these mountains: David had hurt his foot somehow a wasn’t up to it so I set off on my own. It was a good path but getting a bit late in the day. I walked about 3k’s climbing past 2 small waterfalls and up a steep slope until I came out onto the shoulder of the mountain with a terrific view back the way I’d come and straight into the full force of the wind that was being funnelled between the mountains. This was a sheep field but I honestly don’t know how they weren’t blown away, I could not possibly walk against the wind so I turned around, took a photo, the sun was shining and it looked really lovely with blue sky, the loch and the village on the other side, then stated back down. I had a great deal of trouble with the gusting wind nearly blowing me over. Took me ages to get down that zigzag path to the stream, after that I was out of the worst of the wind and it was an easy walk back to the car:
Since then its rained heavy almost continuously; it had been an almost full moon the evening after the climb with bright moonlight most of the night then around 6am it started raining and just got heavier. Although we have a ticket for the ferry from Armadale to Malaig we drove over the two bridges that now connect Skye to the mainland at Kyle of Lochalsh, our plan, if you could call it such, being that we look around this north west part of the country then head over to Skye again and take that ferry and have a look around there.
We stopped and had a look at the outside of Eilean Donan Castle on Lochalsh. It is said to be the most photographed castle in Scotland, though it really isn’t much to look at. It gets lots of tourists now because of the tour busses heading for Skye passing this way. The original castle dates from the 13th century, like a lot of others around here, but it was blown up by King George’s troops at the time Spanish forces had been there supporting the 1719 Jacobite uprising. It was not rebuilt until 1912 to 1932, so one can hardly call it old; it doesn’t even look all that impressive either. It sits on a small island that it completely covers and is connected to the mainland by a arched bridge, that’s the nicest thing about it. From what I’ve read there’s not much to see inside either so we didn’t bother battling the coach loads and going in.
We did drive over some pretty hills with a brilliant view of Loch Duich at a time with the cloud lifted and some blue sky and sunshine made a brief appearance and gave false hope that the weather may clear somewhat. Ha Ha!! Came to Glenelg and looked for some old barracks that should be there but didn’t find them but up a small valley from there we did find some old Iron Age Brochs. One is in quite good condition considering its 2000 years old. With about ½ of it still standing we could get a really good idea of how it looked. It is almost identical in shape to the one I described that we say on Lewis. This one was about 6.2m (20ft) high with the outside wall sloping inward but the inside wall vertical so that the chamber between the walls gradually narrowed with almost no gap at the top. The stairs in the chamber probably didn’t go right to the top. This one too is thought to have had a second storey. The stone work is a bit different because the stone here is more flat and slate like, on the islands it was a more rounded stone.
The bit that really amuses me is that much of the structure has been reinforced with steel so that it won’t collapse onto the unsuspecting public whilst they are scramble over it, but the thing has stood there for 2000 years, how long will the steel last???? The stone slabs don’t go rusty:
Saw two more of these brochs further up the same valley and there was also supposed to be a chambered burial cairn that I couldn’t find.
In the Applecross peninsula we took a narrow, twisting, steep road that climbed up past a couple of waterfalls in a series of switchback hairpin bends and reached a height of 632m above sea level according to our SatNav, the highest road in Scotland, so I read somewhere. From the top we should have had a great view out over Skye to the Cullin Mountains but all we saw was rain. Someway further along the coast we stopped and when I opened the car door the wind ripped it out of my grasp and damn near off its hinges.
On yet another wet afternoon we called into the visitors centre of the Beinn Eighe Nature Reserve and had a look at their display. Its the oldest nature reserve in Britian having been set up in 1951. At that time there was just a little of the pine forest left most having been logged during WW11 for use as ammunition boxes. Some re-aforestation has been done here and there is a diverse range of insects, animals, birds etc that live here. With the help of a hidden camera, a feed box, binoculars, a bird book and a monitor we could watch some birds at the feeder. Chaffinch, Green Finch and Great Tits were having a great time eating peanuts. Hardly their natural food I would have thought. There are some lovely walks in this area but not in this weather, it’s just too wet.
We had also read about a tree planting scheme on the Applecross peninsula where 1500 hectares had been planted with 1.5million trees over the last few years. It has been fenced to keep out the deer and sheep because both types of animals will kill the young trees. The species chosen are all native to the area and the seeds have come from trees that are growing there.
Much of the original forest has disappeared with the formation of the peat beds; the peat holds too much water and most trees can’t grow in it. Trees from the rest of the land have been harvested over the centuries for their timber for many different uses, from boat building and houses to making charcoal for industry.
At Strathcarron we got talking to the fellow who runs the shop and post office there, I asked him about Otters. He has lived here for 14 years and only twice seen otters, so I don’t fancy my chances.
©Lynette Regan 27th October 2007
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