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