Beauty and Blood

 It was a bright, beautiful cool morning when we woke up in Drymen. My weather app said it was a brisk 46 degrees, but when I considered how hot and dry things are in Southern Oregon, I felt very grateful to be in Scotland. We had breakfast and packed up. Before we left, we took pictures of our hotel

and the pub where we had had dinner last night. 

We then set forth to explore a little of the surrounding area. Drymen is at the edge of Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park. Like Adirondack Park in New York, much of the land here is in private hands and there are farms and hamlets mixed in with the forest and lake areas. It is not a particularly dramatic landscape. When we ate last night at The Clachan, we talked with a young couple from Cumbria who had been up camping in the Trossachs. I asked her about her experience. "It's okay, I guess," she replied. "Not that much to see." Perhaps she was spoiled living so close to the Lake District and the Yorkshire Moors. I found the scenery quite enjoyable as we drove through it, though I certainly would not call any of it breathtaking. 

We detoured to see the most famous place in The Trossachs, Lake Katrine. Despite the prominence given to this loch in the travel literature, it is not easy to get there. I had to drive down and back a poorly paved single lane road. There were not enough places to pull over when I car came from the other direction and at one point I was afraid we would just get stuck there in a ditch at the side of the . Need I mention that there was NO cell service? 

Lake Katrine - there are different theories about why it is call a lake rather than a loch - is important for a couple reasons. Walter Scott traveled here in 1810 and was so taken by its wild, natural beauty that he wrote his narrative poem The Lady of the Lake here. I was taken with all the heather on the hilltops, but basically I was a little befuddled by how this body of water and the poem started tourism in the Highlands. 

But rather like Hetch Hetchy, others saw wasted water where Scott saw a mysterious spirit in the depths. So for the past 150 years Lake Katrine has also been the City of Glasgow's municipal water supply. Not everyone was thrilled with the change. When the first water came piped in from the Trossachs to the city, a Glaswegian, accustomed to the brownish well water, supposedly exclaimed, "It's got nae color, nae taste - it's nae good!"

We drove on. The scenery suddenly became extremely dramatic. 

This is both Scotland's most famous scenic area and the scene of its most famous massacre. It was here that the royal army, led by a Campbell, slaughtered men, women, and children of the MacDonald clan. Many of those who fled from the soldiers died in the winter snows in these mountains. For most Scots it is hard to separate the scenery from the savagery, no matter how bucolic it seems.  

Today is part of the August Bank Holiday weekend, so it was it was hard to get a place to stay. I did find a bed and breakfast just outside of Glencoe. It only has two rooms, and I immediately had the sense of staying with a maiden aunt. But it was located in a beautiful area. 

On Land Again

Today was the end of our cruise, and although I am excited to start our exploration of the Highlands and then to see our friends in England, I am sad to part with the friends we have made on this boat. The sights have been interesting, the scenery rather breathtaking, but the best part of the experience has been the people we met here. I will always remember Shirene

Roger and Sandra,

Annemarie and David,

and Marie.

After we disembarked, John and I took a taxi to Glasgow. We are renting a car and driving around the Highlands for five days. I made the reservation a while ago as I wanted to get an automatic. I figured driving on the left side was enough of a challenge without struggling to remember how to use a clutch. The only place it appeared that I could get one was at the Glasgow airport. But just as we were approaching the city I looked again at the confirmation email and double-checked with the driver to make sure that the location given was in fact the airport. "Nay," he responded in the thickest Glasgow accent I have yet to hear, "that's in the city center." We did manage to finally make it to the Budget car office and pick up our car. 

I managed to negotiate several hundred thousand roundabouts - okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration - and we were finally in the countryside. I only planned for us to do a short drive today, so we are spending the night in Drymen - pronounced something like "drim'n - in the Loch Lomond area. It's a very cute town, and we are staying at the Winnock Hotel there. 

The front section of the hotel, housing reception, the restaurant, and a few rooms, dates from the 18th century. We were dazzled by the lovely flowerboxes under the windows and the hanging baskets. 

We are staying in a new wing of the hotel carefully hidden in the back. It lacks some of the charm of the old section, but I do not really want 18th century plumbing, so I guess the modern part is probably better for accommodations.

We had dinner at The Clachan, which claims to be Scotland's oldest pub, established in 1734. It was everything you could want an old Scottish pub to be including a crowd of old guys at the bar who no doubt came every evening it was open. 

Tomorrow we are heading up to Glencoe. 

A Grand Castle and a Long Walk

We pulled out of Tobermory early in the morning and sailed down the Sound of Mull. It did not take us long to reach our first stop of the day Duart Castle. We all bordered the tender

and headed toward a small stone pier. 

John was snapping a picture of the castle itself, looming high above us on a bluff.

Were the scaffolding removed, it would have an even more Gothic feel to it. We started walking up the hill and along the way I was delighted to look at the wildflowers.

particularly this iconic one. 

It was a fair distance from the Sound to the castle. I suppose the MacLeans wanted some time to see incoming enemies and to put them at a disadvantage when they attacked. 

Still, the cannons outside the castle are a purely decorative touch from a much later period. 

Duart Castle and the MacLeans have a checkered history owing to their unflagging loyalty to the House of Stuart.  They prospered during the the reigns of James I and Charles I. They lost the castle and their lands during Cromwell's military government, but regained them with the Restoration. However, the MacLeans, like many Scots, refused to acknowledge William and Mary or the Hanoverians as their rightful rulers and were active in the Jacobite uprisings beginning in 1689 and ending in 1745 at Culloden. At that point, the MacLeans lost most of their ancestral lands for good and Duart Castle fell into ruin. 

In 1910, Sir Fitzroy MacLean, the clan having apparently finally made its peace with the monarchy, bought the castle and began to refurbish it into a residence. 

A few of the ancient features of the castle were kept, largely, I hope for amusing guests. At least that is why I think they still have the dungeon here. Right now, have some models of the Spanish sailors who were imprisoned here after bad weather ruined the Armada's chance of success. 

The living quarters on the second and third floors seem rather modest, despite the size of the building. There is a large living room

and a some not-all-that-grand bedrooms.

Despite the six-foot stone walls, I much preferred our room at the Hotel du Vin. As you might expect, there are portraits everywhere of the different leaders of the MacLeans.

The family has many ties to Lord Baden-Powell and the Boy Scout movement, so perhaps it is not a surprise that so many of these portraits have an outdoors theme to them. 

It was cold and windy on the roof of the castle, but it gave a great view of the area and passing ferries.

Back at the boat, Iggy gave us a suitable lunch for this trip, a Scotch Egg.

Ted moved the ship a little further down the coast and we moored on the other side of the Sound, that is, just off the mainland, in a very peaceful cove. This is our last night on the boat, and we will be heading back to Oban tomorrow. But we had one last excursion. 

In the tender, Ted took us out to see some wildlife. 

A seal seemed to be posing for us, though he was probably just too lazy to get into the water. We also saw a white-tailed eagle, Scotland's largest bird of prey. It was hard to get a good photograph here without having a special lens for my camera.

Just before we landed, we took a look at a mussel farm. I think a lot of the production here probably ends up in Europe. 

The hike was over three miles and it included a fairly big hill. John was a little nervous about this, but he did an amazing job. Even though he is still struggling with his up and down blood pressure, he has made good recovery from his heart surgery. 

The walk was pleasant, other than the ubiquitous midgies, though there was nothing particularly noticeable about the scenery. We saw lots of gurgling streams and rivers

and a few of the famous Highland Cattle.

Back at the ship, we had a lovely final supper together and started getting packed up to go. Most of our friends aboard will be returning home. John and I will start our driving tour of the Highlands. I hope I remember to drive on the left!

Color and Light

Sailing through the Hebrides is a journey through a stark but endlessly beautiful landscape. 

Even compared to much of the American West, the Scottish islands are empty. It is hard to grasp that these places were once filled with small farms and villages prior to the clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now, there are not even all that many sheep left there. I had a sense of melancholy as I went by much of Mull. Maybe, had my ancestors not been among those more or less forced to emigrate, I might not have have felt this so strongly. 

After a couple hours of sailing we came to Mull's largest town, and the charm and energy of Tobermory gave a sense of the liveliness that this island might once have had in dozens of other places. Tobermory is famous of its brightly colored houses. 

Ted pulled up to one of the docks and tied up. This was the first time we have been able to come and go as we please instead of needing a tender to go ashore. 

I noticed a jellyfish floating nearby.

We enjoyed walking through town. There were lots of little shops, though not many had anything of interest to us. 

We had a coffee at a café. And we just enjoyed the colors of Tobermory.

We were surprised to see that the Screen Machine had followed us here. We were tempted to get tickets, but neither of us felt like we needed to see Elvis a second time. 

When we got back to the ship, Iggy was getting ready to barbecue some venison steaks for dinner. 

In the evening, there was a little bit of a shower and afterwards we were treated to a double rainbow. 

Somehow, all the color in the sky and on the ground started to blend together into a harmonious display of color and light. 

Ancient Places

We crossed to from Bunessan to Iona early and rather quickly. Ted wanted us to be there before the first ferries showed up, sometimes disgorging entire bus loads of tourists. 

Given my background, I was already pretty familiar with Iona and the Iona Community. For those of you who have spent your life studying more normal and useful things, here is an almost brief synposis. 

In 563, the Irish monk Columba, apparently expelled from Ireland, though the reason is not particularly clear, landed here at Iona and proceeded to establish a monastic community. Columba was clearly a charismatic personality, and Iona rather quickly became a center of Celtic monasticism. Like many of the Irish monasteries, copying and illustrating manuscripts was a central activity, and The Book of Kells, perhaps the greatest artistic achievement of the era, was created here on Iona. Unfortunately, all this attracted the attention of the Vikings and after successive raids the monastery was ultimately abandoned. Almost nothing remains of Columba’s monastery.  

Around 1200, a group of Benedictines reestablished monastic life on the Island. Both monasteries for men and women were founded, and these thrived for about the next three hundred years. Scottish monasteries were not directly affected by Henry VIII’s suppression of the monasteries as Scotland was an independent kingdom at the time, but none of them survived the radical Scottish Reformation led by John Knox. The monasteries were left in ruins, and Iona became only another fishing village. 

About 1900, the Duke of Argyle, whose lands included the village of Iona, decided that the “cathedral” there needed to be restored. Rebuilding ruined castles and churches was an obsession of the Victorian period, so it is somewhat surprising that it took so long to turn attention to Iona. The Duke established and endowed a foundation to restore the building. 

During the Great Depression, George McLeod, a liberal Church of Scotland minister in Glasgow, wanted to establish a retreat and study center for his fellow Presbyterians, particularly those who shared his commitment to a kind of socialism. He was allowed to establish this on Iona, using the partially restored abbey building. 

The Iona Community has been tremendously successful, and the Community finished the restoration of the abbey church and building a retreat center adjacent to it. Although I find worship resources the community produces to be almost unbearably vapid, they are extremely popular among mainline Protestants in the United States. 

As you approach Iona, the abbey building immediately catches your eye. 

Ted took us in the boat to the town pier. One of the smaller CalMac ferries does dock here, so the pier was a somewhat more solid structure than many places where we have disembarked. The town is almost unbearably cute, rows of whitewashed house with ample gardens facing the sea. 

The abbey church is always visible from just about anywhere you look. 

I was a little underwhelmed the church, however, we we arrived. The visitor’s center does a terrific job providing a variety of interpretive and historical materials. I learned a fair amount I did not already know about both early and later monasticism here. I was particularly fascinated by many of the crosses on the site, and some of them, like this one, are quite ancient. 

But the abbey church itself was disappointing. The interior of the church itself is quite stark. There is no sense of the richness and sensuality of medieval Catholicism. Instead, the feeling is far more Calvinist. 

On our way back, we passed George McLeod’s house. 

Perhaps I am cynical, but this seems a little grander than living in the slums of Glasgow. I wanted to update Viking Cruises’ motto to “Saving the world … in comfort.”

In the afternoon, we finally did make it to Staffa and Fingal’s Cave. Ted, waving hello here, 

split us into two groups. One group would come with him in the tender into the cave itself, while the other group would go up to the top of Staffa and enjoy the view. John and I were in the first group. As we came close to the cave, John noticed how similar it is to the Giant’s Causeway in Ulster. Ted regaled us story of formation of Giant’s Causeway was formed by a big, but stupid Irish giant, who was tricked by a smaller, but much more clever Scottish giant. I wondered if they reversed the story in Ireland. 

The exterior of the cave is dark and almost sinister.

But the inside is remarkably colorful. The water is an astonishing  shade of blue green. 

John definitely thought this was a high point of the trip.

When we returned to the dock to change groups, Ted suggested that John stay in the boat as he knew John could not climb the 100 steps or so to the top. The four who had walked to the top of the island could only talk about how horrible the “midgies” were. Midgies, very tiny flies the seem to swarm in clouds, are the bane of summer life in Scotland. I decided not to walk up to the top. Instead, I followed the path around the side to the cave hoping to get there when the boat did. And it worked. In fact, I was at the mouth of the cave as they entered.

And I snapped a couple photos of them as they made their way into the cave. 

We left Staff and continue on, mooring for the night by Ulva, the “wolf island.” Tomorrow, Ted says that it may be stormy and we will be making tracks for Tobermory.