Rugged Scotland

Scotland

This was one of those spontaneous trips for the Easter weekend. In the UK, we have a four day weekend from Good Friday through to Easter Monday. We talked about the idea on Wednesday evening, looked up on the net and by midnight we had bought the National Express coach tickets for the overnight trip starting Thursday evening from London to Edinburgh, tickets for the Scottish Link coaches within Scotland, local sight seeing tours and hotel bookings. By the time we had printed the Highland Munrobagger bus timetable, maps, sight seeing guides and some restaurant menus, it was early morning.

I had bought a bright blue haversack the previous weekend – a sort of a trekker’s bag with lots of bag-pockets. Himani made some delicious omelette and vegetable sandwiches for Friday morning breakfast and I packed the bags. We reached the Maidenhead British Rail station which was literally across the street from where we live comfortably, minutes before the train to London Victoria. All we had to do was board the train at 9:02 p.m. from Platform 4 for London Paddington, then take the tube to London Victoria and board the coach leaving for Edinburgh at 10:30 p.m. sharp.

In our excitement and congratulating each other for the impeccable last minute planning, we didn’t realise that we were chatting merrily on platform 2 as we watched the train depart from platform 4. It finally dawned on us (it can dawn on you in the evening!) that we had missed the train and without blaming each other (we were only married for two years then…) we looked up the timetable. The next train wasn’t due until 9:40 p.m. We would be ten minutes late for our Coach even if we got all the connections right. So I took an expensive executive decision! We got into a cab for £60 to London Victoria. To put things in perspective, our return ticket from London to Edinburgh for both of us was £78. Himani showed her presence of mind and sold our train tickets. (This is the last time I am praising my wife in this travelogue. I have done it twice and we haven’t even started our journey…)

Our resourceful and talkative Maidenhead local cabbie wasn’t exactly inspiring us with a great deal of confidence. He quipped from time to time with remarks such as (a) he had never been to London Victoria (b) he usually didn’t go to London as he often missed Motorway exits, which is why he preferred to drive locally (c) that his London A-to-Z map was in the car boot which he couldn’t get to as we were already on the motorway! Himani added to the excitement with unsolicited remarks such as, “If we miss the coach Sachin, we should just go home and forget about the whole trip!”, whereas I was working hard on Plan B in case we did miss the coach. I was determined to reach Edinburgh by whatever means, after all that planning.

I convinced our cab driver to pull over and get the map out from the boot. My earlier London stay, navigation skills and sense of direction at night were put to test and we reached the coach station with ten minutes to spare. It took us another six to go to the gate where the coach would depart from. Now that we had paid a premium to get here just in time, a cynical thought crossed my mind. I was looking for someone else running late, struggling to board the coach it as it sped past. I was ashamed of myself.

Nothing of that sort happened of course. The station platform was in chaos. The crowds bobbed towards the coaches, as the husky traffic police pushed them back or as the coaches honked at them leaving the station. Half the crowd was drunk and smelling. I didn’t blame them. It was their Easter weekend and they had an overnight journey ahead of them in a non-smoking, no alcohol coach. There was confusion over which coach leaves for Edinburgh. As everyone was getting desperate, I suddenly felt at home in a situation every Indian identifies himself with. From the land of the second most populous country, I grew up dealing with large crowds. Finally, we boarded and Himani managed to grab the front seats behind the driver, with excellent views and larger leg space. (sorry… couldn’t keep the promise) We also realised that there were half a dozen coaches leaving for Edinburgh all scheduled for 10:30 p.m. We left at 10:50 p.m. exhausted and relieved.

The coach traveled North to cover the 450 miles between London to Edinburgh. We stopped once at Birmingham at about two in the morning. It was chilly outside, must be just above freezing. When we woke up at dawn, the fairy-tale images of the well-known Scottish countryside were unfolding in front of us. We were about 30 miles south of Edinburgh. The motorways had ended into dual carriageways and then merged into single lane roads. The sheep farms, egg ranges, strawberry farms, cylindrical bales of hay dotting the fields, it was all there.

We reached Edinburgh at quarter past seven in the morning. It was sunny and stayed that way throughout the day. Not a speck of cloud! This is remarkable by Scottish standards, especially given that it wasn’t officially the spring yet. I grew up in India in the sun that was crimson red at sunrise and which turned into a white ball of fire by noon. The Scottish sun started off as baby pink and became a pale yellow by noon. From the lawns by the high street, the Edinburgh castle looked beautiful. The sun was out but hadn’t risen above the castle walls. So the castle’s silhouette was a light grey with a golden edge.

We collected our tickets for onward journey from the tourist centre and settled for breakfast in the garden near the Scottish monument.  As we sat on the bench, a bag-piper played famous Scottish tunes in his traditional chequered kilt. Bright red and yellow Edinburgh sight seeing buses were starting their first tour of the day. It has to be said that I was impressed with the Scottish youth. A lot of golden hair swayed in the fresh breeze, above bright woollen scarves, that emphasised skimpy tops declaring spring was in the air.

The next few hours were spent at the ‘Deep Sea World’. North of Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth, at the shores of the Queen’s ferry port, they have built a water reservoir using the firth’s waters (and so forth.) They plant bait that attracts fish. You go under glass tunnels and see the fish swimming around you in their natural habitat. The tunnel has a slow speed conveyor belt with pictures of fish on either side. There is also an artificial aquarium and a shark video show.

After lunch, we went to see a museum called the ‘Camera Obscura’. They use a camera to project live images of the Edinburgh city onto a wooden dish, the size of a dining table. You can see about 2 square miles of area on a miniature scale. They gave Himani a white post card and she lifted up the image of a running car off the high street. The museum also had a display of three dimensional holograms. The view of the old city from the rooftop was spectacular. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to see the Castle. So we spent the rest of our time window shopping expensive single malt vintage Scotch priced upwards of £4,000 a bottle.

Scotland is divided into Lowland and Highland. The big cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow are in Lowland, nearer the Scottish borders. Highland is sparsely populated and has hardly any industry, other than whiskey or wool making and tourism. Scotland has a bloody history of wars with the English and shall we say an interesting relationship with the English to the present day. Although constitutionally part of the UK, Scotland has a different parliamentary system. In football, they play against England and rejoice when the Aussies take away the ashes from England. The Scots used to speak Gaelic but English is now the common business language, albeit spoken in the characteristic, broad Scottish accent.

In the highlands, several places keep their names of Gaelic origin like Ardnamurchan or Drumnadrochit. Our hotel’s address was Cyberfeidh, Fassifern Road, Fort William.  Like the French, many of the words, have a different pronunciation to how they are spelt. E.g. Ballaschulish is pronounced Balla hoolish. (so if you don’t get it right, you feel foolish)  

Our journey from Edinburgh to Fort William could have been better. Himani and I got a seat right at the back of the coach among a dozen teenagers who were drunk, smoking, singing and shouting wild. I enriched my vocabulary of English swear words and colloquialisms but Himani was spared as she couldn’t understand a word of the drunken Scottish babble. Luckily, they got down an hour before Fort William. We reached late in the evening. Our fatigue melted away as our landlady, Mrs. Paula Hopkins showed us to our bedroom. The room was spacious but fairly basic with a king size bed, a TV, Phone, chairs, table and en suite facilities. It overlooked Loch (Gaelic for lake) Linnhe.

The following morning, breakfast was sumptuous. We had cereals, milk and orange juice. I had baked beans on toast and Himani had scrambled eggs followed by coffee and mint. Like most B&Bs in Fort William, ours was a family house where the landlords stayed on the ground floor, with 3 rooms on the first floor. So you had that warm, cosy feeling of staying as a guest with a family, rather than the dry, formal Hiltons or Marriott’s of London. Paula was from Yorkshire and was evidently pleased when I recognised that her accent wasn’t native Scottish. She sounded similar to Geoffrey Boycott. She had moved with her second husband Bob Hopkins to Fort William three years ago to take advantage of the opportunity tourism presented. Bob did all the cooking and Paula dealt with the customers. While we were having breakfast, another couple requested some more toast. Paula looked at Bob and said, “Whoosh… in you go Bob and fetch some toast,” then winked at us and said, “See this is how I get things done.” I sighed and poured some more coffee for Himani!

Fort William is at the base of Britain’s tallest mountain Ben Nevis embraced by two beautiful and deep salt-water lakes Lock Linnhe and Lock Eil. Highland’s romantic and tragic history rides over their waves. The infamous massacre of Glencoe in 1692 as the Campbells killed their Macdonald hosts, the 1745 Jacobian uprising for the British throne led by Prince Bonnie Charlie and crushed by England’s William the conqueror, the Highland clearances where over 50,000 Scots were evacuated on ships in abominable conditions… We were staring at the reflection of the town in the Loch’s serene, deep blue waters. The grotesque images of that history just did not add up!

The Hopkins’ helped us plan our day. It was cloudy but dry and we took the Highlander bus to the base of the Nevis Range. A cable car (Gondola) took us up to 2130 feet in fifteen minutes to the top station on the Aonach Mor. (In Gaelic, Aonach means high and Mor means a mountain) If you carry your skiing equipment, you can go further up in a chair lift towards the peak, 4006 feet high. Ben Nevis is adjacent to Aonach Mor and stands at 4406 feet high. (Nevis comes from the Gaelic word for heaven or clouds, so Ben Nevis means a mountain with its head in the clouds.) It is covered with snow for about 300 days in a year. The skiing season was still on and we could hire the ski at the base station. As luck would have it, the sun came out just as we reached the top station and the thick slab of snow glistened as we played and rolled in it. We walked for about thirty minutes to get some awesome views of the snow-clad Ben Nevis!

The scenic road from Fort William to the western port of Mallaig is called the ‘Road to the Isles’. It took us to the golden beach of Arisaig and the silver beach of Mallaig via Lock Shiel, Lock Nan Uamh and Lock Morar along the way. Ferries leave from Mallaig in the Irish sea towards the beautiful Isles of Skye, Eigg, Rum etc.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t hire a car, as none was available on Easter Sunday. So we went to see the Neptune staircase in the Caledonian Canal, near village Banavie. The staircase is a series of 8 artificial water gates that lower or lift the ships by 64 feet to allow them to pass from one Loch to another. (Very similar to the Suez canal action except on a much smaller scale.) It is an amazing engineering feat especially given that it was built in 1822. Caledonian canal joins up several lakes between Fort William and Inverness and forms a 62 kilometre passage for thoroughfare. The clouds broke as we walked over a mile into the village of Corpach near Loch Eil. At Corpach we saw the ‘Jewels of the Earth’ exhibition. It’s a must see for a student of Geology with hundreds of precious stones and fossilised plants and animals several hundred million years old. The gift and souvenir shop was wonderful.

The journey from Fort William to Inverness was like reading an Enid Blyton book. The route was along Loch Locky, Loch Oich, Lock Ness, the Caledonian canal, Drumnadrochit and finally along the River Ness into the city. En route, we saw the Kinlochmoidart Castle (the first picture above), an old Baronian house that stands on the private estate of 2,000 acres. Just behind Loch Locky is the famous Glen Gerry hotel. (the second picture above)

Inverness is a big city but none of its churches have spires. When they built them several centuries ago, they ran out of money. To the present day, the rule is, if the town’s church does not have spires, it cannot be called a city. As a result, you have several big ‘towns’ and tiny ‘cities’! However, in the year 2000, her majesty the Queen awarded Inverness ‘city’ status. The city has a natural slope upwards in either direction of the riverbanks. I told Himani, “Be careful, you don’t want to land in the river Ness.” She said, “Yes, there is no happy Ness in doing that!”. We bought some coffee and as we sipped on it standing on the Ness bridge, it tasted just like Nescafé. J (sorry… couldn’t resist)

On Easter Monday, we went on a ‘Discover Loch Ness’ tour with Tony Harmsworth. Tony looked like the captain of the Titanic. Loch Ness is 700 feet deep and 24 miles long by the way. The major attraction was a boat tour on the Loch Ness and views of the Urquhart Castle remains from the boat. River Ness was light amber, the colour of tea. Loch Ness was greenish blue, with dark brown Larch trees and deep green Spruce tree forests surrounding it. Along the banks of the lake were the violet wild bush called Heather plant. Sometimes we wished we could switch off Tony’s commentary and just enjoy the nature, which hardly needed any explaining.

The local legend is that there’s a monster in the Loch Ness called Nessie. In general, Inverness is full of legends and folklore around monsters, witchcraft, spells and prophecies. I have my personal theory on why that is. The weather is often foggy and cloudy in these parts, days very short indeed during the winter months. The lifestyle is laid back and people have lots of free time on their hands. Besides they drink a lot of Scotch. So there you are, all perfect ingredients for all kinds of hallucinations.

That evening we started our journey back via Aviemore, Pitlochry and Perth to Edinburgh. We were looking forward to getting back to London. Scotland is endowed with nature. However, the one thing that remained on our minds was the great affection the Scots have for their country. They care and caress her beauty. They beam with pride as they talk about her heritage, present an exhibition or show you around a loch. Its an inspiring attitude.

by Sachin Kulkarni, London UK.