Posts Tagged ‘Europe’
Where a sheep poops, a daisy grows
They say that the Scottish landscape is dotted with sheep. And they are right. From Inverness, we had headed out to Uig in the Isle of Skye. Apparently, the tourism in Isle of Skye has skyrocketed. The culprit is modernization, the island got connected to the mainland by a bridge on A87 in 1995, replacing the ferry-only option. And who would blame the high rate of tourism. Isle of Skye with its perpetual fog laden craggy landscape looks otherwordly.
Skye has ~1000 hours of sunshine annually. That is about a 1 in 8 chance of sunshine. Of course we had taken our California weather with us to Skye for our three days. While it was hot in Perthshire, Skye remained relatively cool during our stay. The first thing that strikes your eye is the green moss like cover on the mountains. As your eyes adjust to the green, you start noticing the white dots. On closer inspection, they appear to move. Soon you realize that you are looking at sheep. They are practically everywhere on the island.
I read in Peter May’s Lewis trilogy that sheep are not too smart and they startle easy. They also like camping on the road to avoid the midges. And one has to be careful driving, so as not to catch a startled sheep. There might have been time when sheep owners tried building barricades for their flock. But they try no more. How else would the sheep be everywhere? I wondered if they are even keeping counts. We noticed some with colors on them – blues and oranges and reds. I guess one needs no more than five colors (link). We didn’t catch any startled sheep. We did catch a number of adorable ones.
If you are hiking on the island, chances are, you are walking with the sheep. You have to especially watch out for their poop. Sheep are everywhere and so is their poop. Scotland is a land of signs. Outside of India, I have never seen as many signs in my life (did we inherit the habit from the Brits?). You can bet seeing a sign forbidding you to step on a daisy. I read that to mean they want you to be careful so you are not stepping on sheep poop.
Skye hikes are popular. There are hundreds of others with you on hikes. But they are surprisingly quiet. I had a near profound experience in Inverness the day before we entered Skye. We were at the Chanonry Point, a piece of land that juts out into the Moray Firth, a piece of land popular with humans for dolphin spotting. There were dozens of us shivering in the wind, waiting for dolphin sighting. And a solitary dolphin did appear and goofed around for over half and hour and amused us all. We all watched. Quietly. Most of us took photos. Quietly. Even the kids watched quietly. I could not but remember my Antarctica trip where the humans chattered louder than that penguins, non-stop.
In the Scottish highlands, even you don’t see the sheep, you hear them. Particularly the young ones who are persistently calling out their mothers. Baa, Baa, …. the only sound that you hear on your walks along with the sound of the wind.
An ancient forest in Cairngorms National Park
The Romans called Scotland ‘Caledonia’ and Caledonian pine trees are the name for the native Scottish pine. Incidentally, I had first come across the word Caledonia in the Astrix and Obelix comic series. Caledonian pines do not look like Douglas firs. To experience the ancient Caledonian forests today, one has to visit the Cairngorms National Park. Here in Cairngorms, the forest is dominated by regenerated Scottish pine with a native understory of wild berries, juniper, heather and rowan.
The morning after the grand multi-course dinner at the Old Manse of Blair (link), we headed up to Inverness along route A9. Our starting point near Blair Atoll starts to skirt Cairngorms. Aviemore, the heart of Cairngorms, nearly halfway to Inverness, is where we would stop to explore the Cairngorms. The “Big Tree” country Hermitage woods hike (link) with its American Douglas firs and Japanese larches is a beautiful forest but isn’t a native Scottish forest.
Before Aviemore, we stopped at a small town called Kingussie for lunch and to explore the Ruthven Barrack ruins, an important historical site in Jacobite uprising (link). Kingussie itself is not forested. From the on top of the hill where the barrack is situated, one can see the forests. At the top of hill, it was also 80F in shade.
By the time we had reached Aviemore, we had decided to walk a short trail called “An Lochan Uaine (pronounced oo-an-yi, The Green Loch) circular”. The trailhead is at the Glenmore Visitor Center. I was dreading a traffic grid lock but that wasn’t the case. The crowd was reasonable given that the visitor center is right by the popular Reindeer Center. The hiking path essentially takes one to the loch and then loops back. Aside from a short stretch that needed scrambling up a steep hill, the path was accessible all the way. Views included rows upon rows of Caledonian pines, a tranquil meadow, the “mystical” green lake, views of Loch Morlich and at least one gnarly old tree. Here in the forest of Cairngorms, it was remarkably cool. By the time we would get to Inverness, we would also be greeted by thunder and rain.
Edinburgh jewel, Water of Leith walkway
So now we are a week into the Scotland vacation. Edinburgh proved to be a lovely place to babysit the jetlag. It was a bit windy at times, but not the kind that makes you hold on to your hat. It was drizzly but not the kind that soaks you. So we walked. We were staying at The Raeburn in Stockbridge. From there, we walked to museums. We walked to the Royal Mile. We walked the Royal Mile. We walked the Botanical Garden. We walked to dinner. We averaged 7 miles a day. The nicest of these were the Water of Leith walkways. It is like going into a tunnel from one point and emerging somewhere else. Except that the tunnel is a walkway by the river, it is green, only allowing humans and their dogs to walk. The river is clean enough to encourage a bird habitat – we saw herons and mallards. Houses abutted on the walkway. Restaurants too. There were sculptural points of interest.
I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting from Edinburgh. It is an old town with beautiful stone buildings. Perhaps I was expecting to be able to take a lot of photos of rows of beautiful buildings. But that didn’t happen. Like anything old, these buildings needs a lot of upkeep. Nearly every other building facade were scaffolded. It is as if the modern life and the old stone buildings were not in congruence. The older buildings looked like rows and rows of marching soldiers, built in strict conformity to a code from a bygone era. The modern shop fronts did not share any theme. Even at the entrance to the Edinburgh Castle, was a massive steel grandstand, a temporary summer construction to allow visitors to enjoy the musical performance of Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
I was expecting the city to be touristy but found that to be the case only in the vicinity of the Edinburgh Castle and a few hotspots like the Botanical Garden or the Scottish Gallery. The rest of the city felt very laid back. The museums had a good collection of art, but they too were laid back. There was no entrance fee, no significant effort to curate the collections or tell stories, no significant presence of security, no bag checks. I could stand 2 inch from the priceless art pieces and no one cared. Every neighborhood in the city had a green space with benches. The joggers were out irrespective of rain or wind. The restaurants looked equally booked for dinner at 6:30 as they were at 8:30. Ditto for cafes. It was as if life was flowing along at its own routine pace unaware of the top 10 things to do in Edinburgh.
Ready, steady and waiting to go
This one is not a competition unless one counts competing with other vacationers. But this is a bucket list trip. Soon we will be on a flight heading up towards Scotland. If all goes to plan, this is what happens.
We land in Edinburgh and stay four nights. We explore the city and work off the jetlag. During this period, we also get used to the shifts in weather, set aside work worries and get into the vacation mode. Then we hop on a rental car and start heading towards the Perthshire. We stop at Dunkeld and walk along river Tay. Our first night outside Edinburgh is spent in Pitlochry. Next day, we head up towards Inverness. But before we do, we have the option of checking out Pitlochry, or Kingussie. This is when you wish time would dilate and you could do both. But we prefer lingering. Inverness is a two night stay. And here too, we will have options – Cairngorms or Black Isle. We decided not to drive the breathtaking North Coast 500. From Inverness, we will head out to Uig in the Isle of Skye via Achnasheen and Plockton. We stay in Uig for three nights. In Skye I didn’t give ourselves options to leave the Trotternish Peninsula. After Uig, we catch a ferry to Fort Williams and here again we stay two nights to explore the Glencoe region before heading out to Callander. Along the way, we will find ourselves on the edge of the Rannoch moor. From Callander we head back to Edinburgh for our flight back. Our final sight seeing will be the Doune castle where a reenactment of Monty Python and the Holy Grail “Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person!” may occur.
I realized that my utter fascination for the Scottish landscape comes from reading and watching Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, hundreds of times. Conan Doyle grew up in Edinburgh. The story of the Hound of Baskerville is set in Dartmoor, but when Doyle describes the desolate hills, thick rolling banks of fog, and craggy rocks, I think of Scotland Highlands.
California is five times the size of Scotland. Yet, for such a tiny little place, this trip has been exceptionally challenging to plan. I have been trying for several years now. Any which way you look in Scotland, there are breathtaking mountains and lakes, charming villages, and fantastic food. Everything is must do. Everything is top 10. I first started with reading travel books. Then I hoped that AI would come to rescue. Finally, I had to call up a travel planner, Nordic Visitor, to rescue me. They have taken good care of us, have booked us in adorable B&Bs, kept our city to city travels short, given us time to breathe in-between. We drive a lot more in California on a weekend trip than we would drive on this ten day trip.
Yet, I am anxious. All of Scotland has thunderstorm, rain and wind in common. The mountains are often fog laden. This time of the year is also peak midge season – they swarm. If you aren’t careful, they will suck your blood and leave the sites itchy. Then there are many places that are the exceedingly touristy – I hear of the crowd being described as “gridlock” and “infrastructure failure”. I am a morning person, but I don’t like to head over to the car park first thing in the morning. I can’t share nature with noisy crowds. On the Antarctic trip, I was surrounded by chirpy humans, chirpier than the penguins. My movements were also circumscribed due to the fragility of the environment. I couldn’t get away to find a moment of quiet, I couldn’t listen to the nature undisturbed by the humans even for a single minute. I had felt extremely annoyed.
So, wish me luck this time and more importantly, wish me grace.
Locomotoring 