West to East; From the Isle of Lewis to Aberdeenshire

On Saturday we travelled from the Isle of Lewis, in the West of Scotland, across a large part of the country to Aberdeenshire on the East. The route was like this:

But before I get into the detail of that a bit about the day before.

Friday on Lewis

Friday started like the two previous days with a lot of damp weather, we took the opportunity to wash any remaining dirty laundry, iron our stuff and begin the packing. Then we made our way into Stornoway, to top up the petrol in the car and to have another lovely coffee in Kopi Java. By the time we got into Stornoway the rain had moved off, so we had the opportunity to explore the town in more detail than we had on the previous two days. Stornoway is a small market town, which even on a Friday is not unduly busy. However as so much of the area around it is rural it is a hub for all kinds of activities towns of 8,000 people do not normally have. 

A lot of the buildings were erected in the 1880s and this late Victorian period seems to have been a time of big expansion in the area as the post-Waterloo depression in the 1820s were replaced with new opportunities for trade as the Empire consolidated and grew.

After an excellent visit to Stornoway we went back to Crossbost, via the road where the sheep are the only obstacle. I then cooked lunch, with an early start tomorrow we thought it would be easier to move our main meal to lunchtime so we could clean and tidy the accommodation this afternoon. It being Friday I cooked a non-meat lunch which was a Tortilla (Spanish not Latin American) filled with mushrooms, garlic, onions, peppers and covered with Spring Onions. A very tasty and nutritious lunch eaten with some lovely fresh rye bread we had bought in Stornoway.

The rest of the day was spent preparing for the journey and reading, both of us finished the books we were reading and moved on to the next ones, the great thing about Kindles is that books that used to be our heaviest item of luggage on holiday are now all in one device (well OK two!).

We went to bed at 9.30 pm and were up at 4am ready for the off.

Onto the Ferry

After last minute tidying and putting stuff in the recycling bins we left the house at 4.45am getting to the ferry terminal at 5.15 and were second in the queue. We checked in when the terminal opened at 5.30. This was a much simpler process here than it had been at Uig, with us showing our electronic booking and the staff giving us boarding cards having already dealt with the tickets. We sat in the car lines until boarding and then got on the Ferry, a much bigger ship than on our previous journey called the Loch Seaforth.

The ship departed at 7 and we had breakfast on-board. This entailed lorne sausage, bacon, black pudding, eggs (fried for me, scrambled for Drew), potato scone and pork link sausage. It wasn't like eating a hotel breakfast freshly cooked, but it was tasty all the same.

The boat drew into Ullapool at 9.30 and we were on the road to Inverness.

Inverness

Inverness or in Gaelic: Inbhir Nis simply means the mouth of the river Ness. It is where the river which rises in Loch Ness flows into the Moray Firth. I had no idea how large the river would be in Inverness until we got there. 

Parking the car and walking for a few moments we could see that this 'Capital of the Highlands' was also a place with lots and lots of Churches. Within minutes we had passed two Church of Scotland Churches, two Free Church of Scotland Churches and an Scottish Episcopal Church. All that was on one side of the river. 

We then crossed the river which, as I have mentioned before, runs very wide as it goes through the centre of the City. On the other side were more churches including the small, but pretty, Catholic Church of Our Lady. This church has some lovely modern stained glass of which I give one example here, the rest will be on Flickr when we get somewhere with a more consistent connection.

The town itself has many old buildings, most of them now converted to use by shops not dissimilar from those of other British town centres. 

The castle is imposing and has links to Shakespeare's Macbeth, having been built by King Malcolm the Third after he had raised the former castle.

Culloden

Leaving Inverness we travelled the six miles to Culloden Moor, the site of the Battle of Culloden where Bonnie Prince Charlie was beaten by a Hanoverian Government army led by the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II.  Thanks to Robin, who directed us here, as he already had to Glenfinnan. Both were well worth the visit.

I'll leave the historians to tell the story:

And so, on a rain soaked morning the Government army struck camp and headed towards the moorland around Culloden and Drummossie to take up their positions. (Historic UK)

The sense of this place is that the ground is still mired deep in the blood of the last hope of a Catholic people for the Government of their own country. The bleakness of the moor is well suited to the small stone remembering where the clansmen on both sides of the battle died. Clansmen whose power was doomed to decline in the events after the battle with the clearances and the end of tenancies across the Highlands and Islands that brought to an end the traditional governance and way of life of Scotland. A poignant place and one well suited to today's dark clouds.

It seems strange to me to feel the darkness of this moment in history compared to the hope and joy that seemed to burst out at the edge Loch Shiel where the Prince first landed. It reminds me how place, far more than story can impact on a person.

Cairngorms

We drove from Culloden along the Highland Tourist Route down into the Cairngorms. We had been amazed by the views on the Isle of Lewis, but after those days of miles of empty moor with hardly a tree to be seen, it came as a shock to see huge mountains and forests all along our way.

We passed through Cawdor a place made famous by Shakespeare:

"No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive
Our bosom interest: go pronounce his present death,
And with his former title greet Macbeth." (Act 1, Scene 2)

But apart from the title there is little that links the real Macbeth with this pretty village.

Into the forests we continue to travel until we come to the Cairngorms National Park. It was as if we would need to stop at every bend to see the amazing and beautiful sites of this mountain range.



We had chosen to travel through the Cairngorms rather than taking the faster road along the coast to our next destination, and this decision was richly rewarded. Even the best pictures we could have taken (and I was taking them, so they aren't the best) couldn't represent the immensity and beauty of these mountains. I'm so glad we came to see them.

We travelled through Granton on Spey, which was another pretty village. The Spey river has many distilleries along it, if we drank alcohol it might have taken a long time to visit this area with all the distillery tours and tastings. The water we have drunk most often in Scotland, Spayside, also comes from here. 

We came through Tomintoul and passed the Cairngorms winter sports area, with its snowlifts down into Aberdeenshire and the villages of Cock Bridge and Rhynie. The road from Tomintoul is known as the road that does a vanishing act, for its winter behaviour, but it was quite exciting on a warm August day.

After Rhynie we left the mountains and came to very fertile farming land through which we travelled until we arrived at the Pittordrie House Hotel at 5.15pm, 12.5 hours after we left the house on Lewis. A tiring, but a fantastically enjoyable day.