| 2010.1.1 (Friday) - 06:17:55
Well, it's been a lot of driving in the snow, but I feel like I've seen Scotland. Yesterday--wait, no, it's Friday now, January 2010, isn't it? The day before yesterday I left the noble Castle Tulloch and cut across the highlands to the coastal region by the western islands. Beautiful country. There were lakes in the snow-covered mountains where between the water, the ice, the snow and the sky, I could see fifty shades of silver and white and grey at one glance. But the coastline was more brown, its climate tempered by the sea. I stopped at no place at all to fuel up my crappy rental car, which has been driving me to distraction, by the way, with its automatic sensory windshield wiper system. Never, ever buy a car with that feature! It has made absolutely certain that I must view Scotland through an alluvium of mud. Without my wiper fluid functioning, I've had to stop the car and wipe the windshield with snow; and if I don't turn off the engine, the wiper system senses the snow as I apply it, and I find myself boxing with the blades. The man I paid for my petroleum was telling me about a friend of his in Portland (tall fellow, beard . . . oh right, sure, everybody knows that guy!). Then I told him my new fondness for Scottish whisky, and he directed me to a distillery in the village just up the road: the smallest distillery in the U.K., so the locals claim, and having taken a "wee tour" of the place, I do believe it's true. The whisky isn't very good, but the owner was congenial, and it illuminated what a simple thing it is to make the stuff, if not to make it good. Then I turned south and crossed the bridge to the island Skye, called Skyebridge, inventively enough. I meant to make a loop around the western shore, but I found my progress impeded by tourist villages, Skye being a popular destination. So I went as far as a loch that afforded a very satisfying view, its wind-blown waters surrounded by the reddish brown vegetation common to that region, with low, snow-capped mountains all around. I took that in with a dram and then turned back. There was another beautiful castle on my way east from the island. Floodlit in the twilight, it stood on a promontary of rock maybe a hundred meters off the shore, with a stone footpath being the only access. This was just one of a long series of fantastic apparitions I experienced as I drove along. Houses, deep in the woods, would appear out of nowhere, on lesser, winding roads, looking like miniature castles themselves, with narrow windows glowing orange in corner towers--and then they would disappear again into the trees. Yesterday (the real yesterday), I awoke in Perth. I had arrived fairly late after a tiring cross-country drive through the mountains, but I was made comfortable by the gentleman who runs the guest house I had booked (and who cooks a mean breakfast, by the way), and I found my way to a French tapas bar, where I ordered a Spanish tortilla and a lamb curry with a glass of Beaujolais. In Scotland. How cosmo' is that? I sat at the bar, which is my preference, for better conversation with the staff. The barman was French and had moved to Perth, he told me, because Paris is too busy. I tried out my French with him, and we joked about the Scots' English. He's not convinced it's the best on Earth. His and Michael's (the Englishman in Inverness) were the best conversation I've gotten on this trip. Scotland's people have received me no more warmly than its weather has done. Folks seem to regard me with a cold indifference, and some with overt derision. I don't fit in as well as I should. The cut of my overcoat, the hue of my jeans and the baldness of my pate are all uncommon here, so I find I stand out; yet how people treat an outlander tells something about their character, I think. Scotland has had to develop a service economy in recent decades, and tourism is now a primary source of revenue. Perhaps due of this, they seem personally unwilling to accept tourists into their culture. Maybe they're just getting used to it still. But yesterday, as I started to say, I began with the ruins at St. Andrews. Little is left of the castle, and without a bit of imagination, it just looks like so many rocks. But it's very old, after all, and there is a fascinating story behind it involving a mine and a "counter mine". The former was dug by an attacking enemy, literally to undermine the castle walls, and the counter mine was dug by defenders within the castle to head off the subterranean attack. I crawled down into these tunnels, which bore an admonishment at the opening, that visitor are allowed in "at their own risk". To me, of course, this is a copious invitation. Following that, I was duly impressed by the cathedral, which must indeed have been a vast and magnificent structure. At what was the front entrance, I gazed up at the one remaining spire, and the clouds moving over it gave me the sense that the whole thing was bending slowly backward. This place should be seen by any visitor to Scotland. Even in the few walls and towers still standing, there is a powerful sense of the majestic. Then west again, toward Glasgow. Along the way I came down a steep hill into a "T" intersection and slid into the snowbank on the opposite side, breaking a wooden fence. I wasn't going any too fast, but there was so much snow on the road, and my crappy little Audi had no hope of traction. Fortunately, a fellow at the inn across the road had a pickup truck and pulled me out without delay. All in all, this was the least driving trouble I should have expected. Luck has been with me. I stopped at the Famous Grouse distillery, to sample their spirits. In a brief tour of their particular process, I learned that they do not dry their barley with peat, but with gas ovens instead. Peat is what gives Scotch its smokey flavor, which I've come to regard as essential to the experience of it. So I won't be drinking Famous Grouse (which is a blended whisky, anyway, not a single-malt), but I also got from them a sample of Highland Park, aged 18 years, and that was choice. I'm carrying a bottle of that home with me! In Glasgow I helped to push-start a stalled car on my way to a modest Indian supper, thereby restoring my carmic equilibrium after my earlier accident, I can't say that anything else interesting happened in my journey after that. I had wanted to see a Dr. Who exhibit at the Kelvingrove Museum, which place I stumbled upon while taking a stroll from my Glasgow lodgings earlier this week. But when I returned yesterday, they had put up a sign on the door saying it was closed at 12:30. I also would have liked to be at Edinburgh to toast in the new year. The party on Princes Street was shaping up to be an event of international magnitude. A million people were expected there, and they were selling tickets just to get onto that street beneath the castle. But then to have driven the 285 miles from there to Birmingham in time for my flight this morning would indeed have been against all odds. As it was, I only popped into the nearest pub for a half hour on my way down, to tilt a Guiness while the year ended. That was in the little town of Lockerbie near the border with England. And still I had almost no time to spare, even doing eighty on open roads--halucinating the while from the mixture of velocity and sleep deprivation. So now, here I am again at Amsterdam, waiting to fly home, hoping I can get some sleep among the squealing piglets in the plane. I've seen some beautiful scenery, gazed upon some fine castles, breathed the sweet smell of peat smoke, travelled snowy roads and met some of the locals, some cool and some chilly. But for a winter week in Scotland, all I really want to say to the Scottish is, thanks for the Scotch! |
| 2009.12.30 (Wednesday) - 10:14:52
It's against all odds that I'll ever enjoy a meal in any commercial room, anywhere in the world, without hearing music coming from some little speakers. This morning it almost happened, as I broke fast here at the castle. I sat in silence for most of the meal, among the other guests, who talked very softly and politely, and I found it remarkable. There is a consciousness that music kills. It numbs the brain. I think an awareness of the here and now, including the meal one may be taking, depends on quietude. I took considerable delight in the novelty of it as I enjoyed another lovely Scottish breakfast. But rather than what I would call an enlightenment on the part of the hotel's management, it turned out to be a mere quirk. For as I neared the end of the meal, on came the music at last from little speakers in the corners of the ceiling. It was Phil Collins singing "Against All Odds". This was not the only managerial oddity in the Castle Tulloch Hotel. A number of rooms here--beautiful little halls with paneled ceilings, inlaid wooden floors, great fireplaces--are now in disuse, but none of the doors leading to them is locked. They now contain cheap furniture, chairs and tables of unfinished particle board, but the rooms themselves are gorgeous. Doubtless I am not supposed to be in these chambers, but last night the little boy in me took over, and I couldn't resist exploring them, lighting the candles that were there and pretending I belonged, that I was a duke or a lord on visit. That, again, is the real appeal of visiting a castle or a palace, to imagine that one belongs there, that one actually lives in such environs. And sneaking in there alone at night served to intensify that illusion in a way that a prepackaged daytime tour cannot. In one of those halls I opened a corner door and found a spiral staircase leading upward. Now, I'm a sucker for a spiral staircase. It's a fettish of mine. Once I've seen one, not a hundred horses nor king's command can keep me from it. I found no light switch, so I pulled out a cigarette lighter I had been given in the coffee shop in Amsterdam, and upward I climbed by its dim glow. The stair became narrower and then stopped at a little wooden door, no more than three feet tall. In my experience a door like that is always locked shut, but this one was not. So I opened it and crouched through to find myself at the top of the tower, the cylindrical kind that castles typically have, with stone blocks interspersed around the top--the highest point in the building. Above me, an almost full moon shone brightly, surrounded by a wide ring prophesying more weather. I looked down the hill at the lights in the city, and I knew this would be the best moment of my stay in Scotland, lord as I was, for just a moment, of Tulloch Castle in Dingwall, a place rich in history, a center of power throughout centuries. This hotel is undeniably unique, and I would definitely return here on another occasion, but I don't believe that that moment, standing on the tower under a ringed moon, can ever recur. |
| 2009.12.29 (Tuesday) - 22:23:32
I managed to sleep straight on till eight this morning. Feeling refreshed, I said farewell to Michael and started north along the eastern coast. I had a notion of taking a ferry to Orkney Island to see the stone-age ruin Scara Brae, where there remains furniture made of stone, since wood was precious on that island centuries ago. En route I came upon the Castle Dunrobin and stopped to have a look. This has to be the most magnificent, most perfectly romantic castle I've ever seen. It stands five stories tall, like an illustration in a fairy tale book, on the slope next to the North Sea. Below it, between the castle and the sea, is a stately garden with three fountains, and there are other woods and gardens to the north, south and west. There is an ample stone terrace on the ground floor, a hundren feet above the garden, with the castle rising another hundred feet above that. To live like this: that's the thought that a good castle inspires in us. To be a lady, perhaps, stepping out of a fire-warmed bed chamber for a moment onto that moonlit terrace, or onto the little balcony two floors above, for a breath of night air. She sees the moon shimmering on the water, hears the waves crashing gently below. To think of that as one's home! We should all be so lucky. I recall investing such wishful thinking in the idea of heaven, back when I still hadn't learned to think critically about my religious indoctrination. Standing on the terrace at Dunrobin, I can see how the promise of such a home would be enough to bring some sheep into the fold, without even the need for a hell to frighten them. All the world wants a castle by the sea. I drove on to the top of the mainland, but there was more snow blowing in along the northern coast, so before getting very far I was forced to loop back down toward Iverness. This really wasn't just bad planning, I promise you. So much snow is really unusual in Scotland. Michael told me he'd gone for eight years here before now without having any use for a four-wheel drive. I cut southbound through the northeastern corner of the upper highlands on a narrow road, and the snow was already deep enough to dictate a maximum speed of 30 mph. For about thirty miles it was perilous, sliding around the road in a little compact car, with a glass of whisky riding between my legs. Ha! But I like taking risks like that. It helps me to remember where I've been. In that weather, I had the road to myself, so I wasn't a threat to anyone else. And in fact it was as beautiful as it was foolish, moving through a world of snow, the trees shining all white in my headlights, slowing every so often to let a deer or rabbit clear the road. I have to say, I'd do that again. Now I'm actually staying in a castle in Dingwall, the Castle Tulloch, which last century was made into a charming bed and breakfast. I'm in a leather sofa by the embers of a fire in one of the common rooms, contented from a lovely supper I had from the hotel kitchen. This castle dates all the way back to the 12th century, thought to be built originally by the Norsemen who invaded from the western islands around that time. There's nothing like this in the U.S. Here's even a dungeon made into a dining room. When's the last time you dined in a dungeon? |