High in the Highlands

He Says (Expletives deleted): Three *** hours of work on the perfect blog entry and the whole *** thing is wiped out! I refuse to rewrite the *** thing! I hate this ***stupid computer and refuse to ***touch it ever again. The ***blog is now your responsibility.

She says (expletives deleted): *** ***** ***** **** ******* ***** * ****. ****** ****** ****!

Much later, She Says: Due to-um- unforeseen circumstances, it looks as if our blog will be written from one perspective only for the rest of the trip. As I type, a grumpy little voice in the background says, “Don’t forget to say that Richard thinks that…”, and “mention how the scenery is just like a Gainsborough painting”, and it may even be telling me how to spell Gainsborough correctly, but I’ve made a point throughout my life to ignore all those little voices, especially the grumpy ones, so why start listening to them now? If anyone wants to add his or her tuppence to my comments, he or she can stop sulking and blaming defenceless computers, and take back his half of the job.

We have now explored the north of Scotland. The entire trip to date has been wonderful, and Edinburg was a fascinating historic city, but the past five days have been absolutely outstanding. On Sunday, we headed north from Edinburgh, and after a short stop in St. Andrews for the golfers to get photos of themselves beside the clubhouse and buy golf clothes with the logo of the world’s most famous golf course, we headed into the beautiful Grampian Mountains, heading towards Inverness. We covered mile after mile of rolling green hills and picturesque little towns, beautiful wildflowers that we never see in Canada, blooming rhododendron bushes taller than I am just growing wild beside the road, and beautiful cottage gardens that are so far ahead of our gardens this time of year and so filled with perennials that can only be grown as annuals in Ottawa, that I’m green with envy. It’s just after lambing season here, so the fields are filled with tiny bouncing baby lambs that we’ve all agreed we’d love to smuggle home as pets. We’re much further north than Ottawa is, but the ocean currents keep the winters milder and shorter than ours. It doesn’t get dark this time of year until after 10 PM, and the sun is up before we are. By the end of June, they’ll have just 3 hours of darkness, but of course, they pay for that in mid-December, when they only have 3 or 4 hours of daylight.

Temperatures since we crossed into Scotland have dropped a little; it’s now 10-12 C most mornings, and in the afternoons, it may get up to 14. Richard checked the newspaper today and found that it’s 8C in Toronto with showers, so we’re not upset with the weather, but the poor Australians, who have just come from their hot summer, and aren't really used to cool weather! Most of them are wearing winter jackets, hats, scarves, and gloves, and every time we get out of the bus, they turn blue. A few others dress in layers the way we Canadians do, and one hardy soul has worn shorts the whole trip, except for the last 2 days on Orkney and Skye, where the wind and the cool temperatures has made us all button up our jackets. Many of them can’t believe we manage to survive in weather much colder than this, and when we tell them how low our winter temperatures can fall, they stare in amazement and ask if we ever go out when it’s -30. What choice do we have?

We’ve been extremely lucky with the weather. Most days have been mainly sunny with good visibility, so we’ve been able to appreciate the fabulous scenery, but in this part of the world, sudden rain squalls pop up suddenly, last a short time, and then disappear just as quickly. We find it amusing that Dylan, the tour guide, never says the word, “rain”. Instead, he’ll say, “You notice that as we crossed the border, Scotland was crying tears of joy at our arrival”, or “We seem to be having a slight Scottish mist at the moment”, or “You’ll notice that the loch (lake) is being replenished at the moment”.

The highlands are Bonnie Prince Charlie territory, so we’ve been learning his story as we go. We made a stop at the battlefield of Culloden, where Prince Charles and his followers met the British in the third and final battle of the Jacobite (Scottish) Rebellion. It was a total slaughter: in as long as it takes to reach half-time in a modern football game, the British killed 1500 Scots and wounded another 400. Some managed to escape, but they were hunted down over the next few days and killed, as well. Prince Charles was spirited away into the highlands, where he was passed from place to place by supporters and hunted by the British until he was able to escape to France. Support for his cause continued in secret, and when Scots loyal to Charles were ordered to drink to the British King to prove their loyalty, they did it in a special way: they kept a bowl of water on a table nearby, and when they were obliged to raise their glasses “to the king”, they would raise the glass out and over the bowl before they drank, indicating to those in the know that they were really drinking to Charles, the king “over the water”.

Dylan told us about one man who helped Charles escape from the British. Charles had no possessions left to give the man in appreciation so he offered him the only thing he had left: the recipe for a brandy drink he had been served and enjoyed in France. The man replaced the brandy with Scottish whiskey and it was so delicious that he and his family began to bottle and sell the drink, which is still popular today: Drambuie.

Shortly after Dylan finished the story, we arrived at the ruins of an old military barracks from the Jacobite period and were invited to climb the hill to the ruins where we would make a toast to Bonnie Prince Charlie. We entered the ruins and all gathered in one room where an unseen helper (a ghost, maybe?) had set up a table with a large bowl of water in the centre. Dylan distributed “Scottish crystal” (plastic) glasses to us all, produced several bottles of Drambuie, and poured us each a “wee dram”. He offered a toast to the king, and we all raised our glasses over the bowl in our secret salute to Bonnie Prince Charlie, and passed around tins of Scottish shortbread. The setting set the perfect mood, and we all stood in silence after the toast. Suddenly, the silence was broken by the wail of bagpipes, and even those of us who really don’t believe in ghosts were startled a little until we realized that the kilted piper marching past our doorway was very much alive. We all filed out into the courtyard while the piper played songs written about Bonnie Prince Charlie. Until then, I had never realized that “My Bonnie lies over the ocean“ was a political song about a banished king.

Shortly after our toast, we stopped for the night at a highland hotel, where we were treated to a highland dinner, complete with haggis piped in by a piper and, of course, whiskey for us to toast it. Surprise! The piper was our ghostly friend from the ruins.

The next morning, we headed for Inverness, where we all had our cameras ready to shoot photos of Nessie, the monster of Loch Ness. The deal, Dylan told us, was that if any of us managed to get a photo, we’d share the money we’d make from the sale of the photo with the others, and each share would be more than enough to pay for our trips. Seemed fair. Unfortunately, Nessie was otherwise engaged that day, so we’re all still on the hook for our bills. We did see one interesting character, though. A man lives in a trailer right beside the loch. He has become so obsessed with seeing Nessie that he’s lost his wife and his job, and now supports himself selling little models of Nessie that he makes from coloured clay. I commented on the many colours available and asked what colour Nessie really was. He claimed that different viewers claimed to have seen monsters of different colours. Purple? Orange? Turquoise? OK. Maybe there are several of these creatures! This guy has never really seen her himself, so I asked how he knew that Nessie really looked like his models. Straight-faced, he said, “I guarantee it. And if you can show me a photo that proves me wrong, I’ll give you your money back.” Sadly, I didn’t get a photo. But then, I didn’t buy one of his models, either. As we left, I asked when the last sighting had been. Last November, apparently, but it had been on the other side of the loch so he’d missed it. Tough luck. But maybe he’ll be luckier next time.