The Sum of All Things Scottish

Here's the recap post which summarises my trip. First, here's the gallery of photos posted:

A geo map of photo locations is available on the "Map This" button in that gallery.

Abbeys and Churches Visited:

• Jedburgh Abbey
• Rosslyn Chapel
  
• Kelso Abbey
• Melrose Abbey
• Dryburgh Abbey
• Skipness Chapel
• Keills Chapel
• Iona Abbey and Nunnery

Castles and Lighthouses Visited:

• Hermitage Castle
• St Abb's Head Lighthouse
• Caerlaverock Castle
• Threave Castle
• Skipness Castle
• Kilchurn Castle
  
• Ardnamurchan Lighthouse
• Dunstaffnage Castle
• Duntulm Castle
• Kisimul Castle

Distilleries Visited:

• Isle of Arran Distillers, Lochranza
• Talisker Distillery, Carbost
  
• Dalwhinnie Distillery, Dalwhinnie
  
• Aberfeldy, Perthshire
  

Scotch Whiskies Purchased:

• Isle of Arran Single Cask Sherry 1996
• Isle of Arran Pinot Noir Cask 10yo
• Talisker 57 North
  
• Mortlach 16yo Special
  

Places of Lodging:

• Meadhon House, Jedburgh (2 nights)
• Travelodge, Kilmarnock (1 night)
• The Horseshoe Inn, Kilmichael Glassary (3 nights)
• The Argyll Hotel, Iona (1 night)
• The Ben Nevis Hotel, Fort William (1 night)
• The Cruachan Hotel, Fort William (2 nights)
• The Dunollie Hotel, Broadford (3 nights)
• The Gun Lodge Hotel, Ardersier (1 night)
• Isle of Barra Beach Hotel, Barra (1 night)
• Travelodge, Livingston (1 night)

Local Beers Consumed:

• Fraoch Heather Ale
• Hebridean Brewery: Clansman, Islander, and Celtic Black
• Isle of Skye Brewery: Red Cuillin, Black Cuillin, and Tarasgeir
• Cairngorn Brewery: Stag Ale
  

Distance Covered:

• 2317 miles or 3730km
• 194L or 51 gallons of Diesel
• 5.2L/100k or 45 MPG US

Expenses:

• $1300 airfare
• $1100 car, gas, ferries, and parking
• $1500 lodging
• $800 groceries, restaurants, whisky and beer
• $300 miscellaneous (postage, site fees, etc.)
  

All Things Scottish, Days 15-16

The original plans for the trip had me staying in Edinburgh for the last two days, but early on I decided to forego the citiy visits, to extend the opportunity for better weather in those parts of the country where I wanted to be outside.

So for the last days, I skipped the Big City, instead arranging a trip out to the small Isle of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides (see it at http://goo.gl/maps/j1F8.) A few things in Barra interest me:

• Its airport (code BRR) is the only airport in the world that uses a beach as the runway, and operates scheduled flights.
• The isle is the seat of Clan MacNeil, which represents that patrilineal Scottish heritage I do have
• It's a remote, out-of-the-way place, on the far western tip of Scotland

To get there, I had booked the daily flight from Glasgow, which flies direct to Barra on a small de Havilland DHC6 Twin Otter plane, which is designed for short and rugged operations on beaches, gravel landing strips, frozen lakes, and similar. These planes run two flights a day to Barra, on the Glasgow-Benbecula-Barra triangle.

The flight times are of course aligned with low tide at Barra, so the flights can actually land. On Monday, this corresponded to a 2PM arrival. The flight to Barra was through nice weather with broken and scattered cloud, so I got a very good look at western Scotland and the Inner Hebrides as I flew the 55 minute hop.

Arriving in Barra it was windy and overcast, but the cloud cover was high enough to get a good view of the airport and beaches coming in. For some interesting videos from the flight, landing, and takeoff, see my SmugMug gallery:


While in Barra I visited Kisimul Castle , the stronghold of the clan, but the weather had turned rainy and nasty. Plans for a evening climb of Heavel, the highest point on the isle at around 380M, were cancelled, and I walked to the west side of the isle to spend the night at the Isle of Barra Beach Hotel.

This hotel is one of those idealistic designs from the late 70s but is a nice facility, with direct access to a nice beach and dunes. I went for a long stroll (in the rain) and then came back for a nice dinner of local seafood.

In morning the weather had not improved so there was little opportunity to go out and walk the inland of the island (which is very similar terrain to Iona.) What I did do was backtrack to the dune area, and recover the fleece hat I had lost the previous evening. This is the 2nd item I have lost on this trip, and been able to recover by backtracking to where I had been previously (not along a path.)

Hat recovered, weather worsening, I stayed the morning reading in the seaside (indoor, dry, heated, wifi-enabled) lounge of the hotel. Around 1PM I headed out to catch the bus back to the airport -- two busses run a loop around the island every two hours, so you just need to wait and flag one of them down. So I wandered up to the north end of the island, walked around the beaches there (Eoligarry on the west side, and of course the airport beach on the east side) and eventually caught the 4:20PM flight back to Glasgow.

The bad weather seemed isolated to Barra since, again, the flight was clear and scenic. Back in Glasgow, there was nothing left to do but head to the chain motel in Edingburgh for the night, and catch the midday flight back to London and Toronto the next day.

All Things Scottish, Days 13-14

A lot of time spent moving around over the last few days, first running around the Isle of Skye, then over to Inverness for the night, then down to Glasgow for a Monday flight over to the west end of the British Isles, the Isle of Barra.

Skye truly is a spectacular place -- at least distinct parts of it are. The eastern end, where you arrive by road or by ferry, has the Red Hills which are prominent and uniform conical mountains, made of a distinctive red granite. The southern end is the Cuillin "Hills", which are jagged Rockies-esque shattered mountains of dark granite. The north end is dominated by an erroded uplift/landslip ridge that exposes shattered layers of rocks, crags, and other geologic features without trying being "mountains".

The middle part, roughly encompasing Portree to Broadford (where I was staying for three consecutive nights) is rolling midland hills consisting mainly of farming and timber operations. There are bays and lochs intruding here and there, as well as significant "hills", but only the cardinal points of the island are of the rugged style for which the isle is famous.

The weather held out very well for the three days, so much time was spent hill-walking. First, almost an entire day was spent in that jagged north section, the Quiraing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiraing) and the Storr area. On Sunday, time was spent at the far southern end, rushing first to Elgol to catch some early morning photo ops, then to Glen Brittle for some actual hiking up into the hills.

The Cuillin hills are very peculiar. Approach them from the north down the single track to Glen Brittle, there are views that could be taken straight out of the approach from Calgary to the Canadian Rockies: rolling lower hills with exposed rangeland, a middle band of conifer forests, and an upper layer of craggy, shattered jagged grey mountains. Except in this case the top peaks are under 1000M.

So it's a bit deceptive to have a "Rockies" perspective and realize that a hike from the ocean, that's only 3KM long and 500M in elevation gain, gets you half way up the mountains. On these hikes, that's where "normal ability" gets you, and the trails beyond led up to knife-edge walks and quasi-vertical scrambling. Being alone and with a bum knee, I stopped short of where on a more daring day I would love to have ventured.

To finish off the stay in Skye, I had booked a night near Inverness, allowing a scenic drive up along the northern highlands. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate, so there wasn't much to see. In the end I arrived mid-evening to my room, the smallest wee room on this trip (I would say "so far" but I'm pretty sure it can't be topped) -- a 8x5 foor room with a single bed, and a 3x5 foot ajoining ensuite bathroom. If it weren't for the comfort and the free wifi, I would think it perhaps a "Minimum Security" type abode...

All Things Scottish, Day 12

For the next two days, the destination is The Isle of Skye, the third most populat tourist destination in Scotland after Edinburgh and Loch Ness. Given that I'm skipping both of those first two, I can't really avoid Skye now can I?

What Skye has going for it, is dramatic scenery in a relatively compact form. The weather on Friday was perfect, with sunny periods, broken clouds, a light breeze, and absoltely no rain. I had plans of doing some walking today as well, but unfortunately yesterday's Ben Nevis caused my right kneecap to become severly inflamed (this is from the descent, not the ascent.) So while walking flat or even up is fine, walking downhill is extremely painful -- I guess this is perhaps what arthritic pain is like?

Anyway I hope another day's rest makes it better, or at least more tolerable (perhaps with some Ibuprofen). So today was merely a scenic tour of the island with very limited excursions at the main pull-out/viewpoints. And the island is small enough that I did end up driving pretty much every scenic road and roadside viewpoint. And I also managed another visit to a distillery, this time the Talisker brand -- the only whisky produced (officially) on the isle.

I haven't had a chance to filter things yet but I'm hoping some good pictures turn out from today's effort -- the clouds, sun and mist were finally cooperating.

And driving through Portree for a quick stroll around lunchtime (as well as lunch itself) I observed a notice that said the Isle of Skye Pipe Bands was having their 50th Anniversary public performance at 8PM. So I made it a point to wander back to Portree in time for that, a distinctly Scottish experience!

In the end, it was over an hour of 4 bands peforming standards together -- over 70 pipers and drummers, two leaders, and a dozen Scottish girls dancing traditional dance as well. All awesome, and the perfect way to end the day...

I'm still not used to the fact that it stays light so late here -- so an 8PM concert was really still in bright light. In fact, it's past 11PM here right now, and it's still light enough to read by -- I'm sitting here on the roadside with my laptop, writing these updates, since only this little bit of the island seems to have data coverage for my mobile SIM card. The hotel in Broadford (which is the first dud of the trip so far) unfortunately doesn't have wifi. So things might be silent for few more days, unless I stop here again!

All Things Scottish, Day 11

Today the weather forecast finally cooperated -- It's B-Day, the day to tackle Ben Nevis. Though it is in fact the highest peak in the United Kingdom, at around 1350M, over 100,000 people summit it each year. How is that possible? Are Scots natural gazelles?

No, there's something varyingly called "The Pony Track", the "Tourist Track" or "The Main Path" to get to the top -- it leads a well-defined (but not EASY) ascent starting at the base in Glen Nevis, winding around and up to the very top, and was created originally for the staffed meteorological observatory at the top, which was staffed 24/7 for 20 years starting in 1883.

"Path" is a bit generous. It's not an easy walk, by any means. The flattish parts are in fact very nice and pathlike. The steep and high parts, on the other hand, are either jaggedly carved out of the shear rock, or made by "paving" with way with the jagged carvings, blocks and rough talus. The entire path up is 8.1KM and rises just under 1300M (4300 feet). About 35% of that is relatively easy strolling, 30% steep "staircase" rough cobblestone, about 30% through talus and scree, and atthis time of year, 5% through snow at the upper levels.

I was able to climb in just over 3 hours, using my normal slow, plodding trudge -- about the same rate as most other people (who went faster but they took more breaks.) Was passed on the way up by people jogging to the top... and they passed me again jogging on the way down. One person was on his second ascent of the day as part of his hill running training. I did the round trip in about 6 hours, including 45 minutes at the top. The current record stands at 1h27 rountrip. Wow...

In the end, despite the official forcast being for a "dull day" with the mountian locked into cloud (but no rain and not much wind) the weather turned out ideal. The cloud was low enough that the peak popped in and out of the sun as the cloud bank drifted past. But the time I got back to the bottom, things were downright warm, and I'm glad I didn't start later in the day.

Conveniently at the foot of the Achintree Farm access point, there is a B&B/Inn that serves beer and meals. I had the me excellent mid-afternoon lunch yet -- A butternut squash tort, covered in sun-dried tomatoes, and then re-baked with wedges of goat cheese on top -- accompanied by assorted roasted rootstock vegetables, and some sort of sweet dipping chutney. It was awesome.

All Things Scottish, Day 10

Another grey, rainy, windy day with nothing much interesting available to do. So in the end it was a pretty light day, with an excursion to the Westernmost Point on the British Mainland, and its lighthouse (Ardnamurchan Point.) It was... meh.

I grew up in a village called Scotstown in Quebec -- completely unrelated to anything Scottish -- but I needed to feed my curiosity. So, just because, and just because it was 3 miles off my route, I stopped in a small hamlet (as indicated on the Road Atlas) called Scotstown. It turns out it's three houses along a rural road, but they conveniently had signs out front, so a photograph was taken for posterity.

All Things Scottish, Day 9

Turns out my trip to the Carsaig Arches yesterday gave me a pretty good sunburn and was rather draining, so today was an off-day, the "weekend" of my vacation. After a good relaxing sleep and a few hours of generic web surfing in the hotel reception area, I decided to merely drive a scenic loop through highland country.

The route was clockwise from Fort William into the Cairngorms National Park to Pitlochy, stopping at The Queen's View (overrated) then back through Aberfeldy, the waterfall at Killin, and up through Glen Coe Pass back into Fort William.

Luckily the weather was sporadic cloud so the scenery was very good. One interesting thing of note that as a tourist you never "expect" is that there is a very significant logging/forestry industry in Scotland. The timber in the glens is actually quite massive (Caledonian pine, etc.) and they are actively logged and managed. Many a "beautiful vista" is marred by the fact that the lower hills are completely clear-cut of forest. In other views, you realize that all the tree canopies are in a fixed pattern -- ie it's regrowth.

So it's a bit detracting, but despite the fact that most of these would be Million Dollar Views in North America, it's just working countryside in Scotland. Of course, it's much more "interesting" navigating the Scottish roads when there are frequent logging trucks! The upper hills are scarred by peat harvesting as well, but at least that's mostly less apparent than clear-cutting.

Another interesting thing is the BBC. It's fun being able to just drive around appreciating all the views, and alternate between a live studio discussions with classical violinists, a full treatise of the ceremonial Balaphone of Mali, and similar enlightening discourse...

The intent is to summit Ben Nevis tomorrow -- however the weather does not look good, with a forecast of consistent gale-force winds at all altitudes, heavy rain, and no visibility. Too bad I was singed today, as today's forecast for Ben Nevis was excellent (breezy, a few clouds, frequent clear summit) -- http://www.bennevisweather.co.uk/weather.asp

All Things Scottish, Day 8

After enjoying a nice fine breakfast at the Argyll, I headed out to the ferry for the trip back to Mull. Rooms aren't always cheap in Scotland, but they almost always include a fine breakfast -- in this case, homemade yoghurt, excellent oatmeal, and a selection of local animal-based fats and proteins; I don't think the pineapple juice was local, though!

The incoming ferry had two transport trucks, and it looks like someone's entire New House was on those trucks ready to go. It's interesting to realize that on these isles, *everything* comes over by ferry... Pianos, roof trusses, appliances, etc.

Back on Mull, the goal for the day was the Carsaig Arches, natural sea arches in a layer of columnar basalt (http://www.explore-isle-of-mull.co.uk/carsaig-arches-walk.htm). The weather started out grey but quickly turned sunny. The walk is certainly as challenging as the website describes -- in fact I avoided the final segment that leads you "over" the arch to the other side -- a path on a narrow goat track a few meters from the cliff edge down to the rocky sea -- and the path is on a 50 degree lateral hill.

By the time got back to the car area, the place was crowded -- the arches are mentioned in The Lonely Planet and this was a Bank Holiday weekend, and the weather was beautiful. I had to warn a few tourists who didn't seem like seasoned walkers that the trip was *long* and challenging -- 8 miles round trip but half of that walking on very rough basalt and granite talus -- 4-6 hours if you keep a decent pace.

Given that the walk took longer than expected -- it was a mad rush back to the north of Mull to catch the car ferry back to the mainland. Two of us were rushing back at rates of speed probably not recommended for the roads we were travelling on. But in the end we made it, and ultimately I made it to Fort William in time for the night, as planned at The Cruachan Hotel.

Despite reading up on Gaelic, Norse and Scottish pronounciations, I still don't know for sure how to pronounce a lot of these places. Usually the things I get wrong are the syllabic accentuation, which is almost never on the first part of the word. Except here is CREW-aCH-ahn.

All Things Scottish, Day 7

Today was a beeline from central Argyll & Bute, to the far reaches of the Isles of Mull and Iona. So a lot of time was spent driving and on the ferry from Oban.

Up until now, all the ferries have been small things (at most a dozen cars, perhaps.) In contrast, the ferries and ferry terminal at Oban are industrial things, designed to move lots of people and transport between the mainland and the large isles. So while the smaller ferries bounced around like rubber duckies in some of the winds we've had recently, the large Isle of Mull ferry just casually plowed through the waves. The wind on the top passenger sun deck were around 90kph sustained.

The Isle of Mull itself doesn't have a lot of "stuff" on it but is quite scenic. The two main roads are the usual single-track style with lots of pull-outs. Of course this being Sunday there were a lot of tour busses plying the way, so it was slow going.

Given the weather, I decided to pass on a plan to hike at Carsaig and defer that until tomorrow, and continued straight on to the Isle of Iona. This small island at the tip of Mull houses the historic Iona Abbey, first founded in around the year 600 as from Ireland, St. Columba descended upon the early Scottish kingdom of Dalriada to Spread The Light. It's been updated and rebuilt many times, the latest incarnation from the the early 20th century.

By mid afternoon the weather had cleared up, so I visited the Abbey first before closing time. I managed to sit in on a professional recording session for a choir making a recording in the Abbey. Nice, but I heard about 5 takes of the same piece!

Then, using a cartographic postcard of the island, I set off on foot (the only ferry passage to the island unless you're a resident) to explore the hills of the north half, including the "high point" of Dun I. The island is taken up with crofting, and visitors can freely explore any of the hills and valleys and see some of the historic sites. This season is rather wet so a lot of the pasturage is boggy and muddy, but it was still fun to walk around for a few hours.

Finished off the day with a gourmet dinner at The Argyle Hotel (also my room for the night) which uses locally-sourced food from nearby farms and their own vast organic garden. It was very good, and the evening finished off with a few pours of Single Malt Whisky (which is as cheap as a beer, generally speaking) and a selection of Scottish Cheeses.

Alltold quite civilized for being the edge of the world!