smokingboot

There were adventures I haven't mentioned, Applecross, Beinn Eighe reserve, Corrieshallock gorge, Bealach-na-ba. This last was where you could not forget that the NC500 may be many things, but at heart it's a driving holiday. Historians, trekkers and nature lovers may enjoy it, petrolheads will love it. All around the NC500 you could find vintage cars making their way, occupants grinning behind helmet/gloves/goggles combos, but the motorbike is champ, with the bicycle deserving an honourable mention. Every time I saw a cyclist they were pushing their bike up a hill, often thoroughly drookit. I saluted their valour and made a mental note never to emulate it. On the Bealach-na-ba, there came a point where signs warned motorhomes and caravans to just turn back. I can imagine it's frustrating, for the roads are generally good and there are plenty of passing places, but also no lack of blind hills and hairpin bends.

The colds we were experiencing got rapidly worse. By the time we got to our lovely hotel on the Kyle of Lochalsh, one thing was evident; we were not going to meet the others in Inverness. It was mortifying to consider that they had bought the air tickets etc, but the problem had moved beyond fare prices to contagion. We had to cancel. There was still Skye and a four hour wildlife trip we had booked, but when the organisers phoned us to say they couldn't run it because of high winds on the sea, it felt like a sign. I like to take the adventure each day offers, and sometimes it's a good thing to have the road lead home.

We got back, I tested, there it was. Since then I've done two consecutive clear tests, and my only remaining symptoms are fatigue and a hacking cough that just won't quit. Am I ready for new ventures yet? Not quite but it won't be long. I'll be returning North, that's for sure. That's the nature of the road.

Every now and then one comes across the lair of a strange and magical gardener. By the Moray Firth, Findhorn was said to be the place; I remember back in the 70s reading in our local library about Findhorn, where huge vegetables were growing and people were talking with angels. I resolved I would go someday, but here is the real tragedy of growing up; by the time you can, you don't want to. You expect the angels to have disappeared and a flourishing New Age community to be offering wondrous activities at wondrous prices; and something in you knows that if you can't find the magic in the sea, the woods and the mountains, you won't find it in a drumming session in the room of a stately home, indeed if you're really unlucky, you may find yourself here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is3OzG3ZPyE
But assuming good will and a non-negotiable absence of placations to Taranis, I'm no misanthrope, not even specifically an introvert, I enjoy company. Thing is, humans have their own enchantment, and when there are many together, it crowds out everything else.

Osgood Mackenzie became a gardening wizard, and if gods or angels spoke to him, he never mentioned it. He had a passion for rare plants, and after his mother bought him some tracts of land, began to create the garden of his dreams, inspired by the belief that he could turn a barren promontory into a precious place. There's a gulf stream or something that skirts the North Western coast, making it possible if not probable for palms, succulents and all sorts of strange vegetable characters to thrive. Osgood knew nothing of such things, as I understand it. He just kept on planting.

The garden was glorious, but best for us was the trip out onto the sea-loch. Our pilot did something particularly handy; he would stop in certain places to pull up creel, tip the contents out and discuss them. It was like the best sort of rock pool exploration from long ago... Moon jellyfish and various types of crabs and langoustines, all as fascinating as they were when we were five, assuming parents ever let us go wandering. My mother would have fainted at the very idea of me touching a jellyfish. All the captives were alive, and gently released back into the sea, while the pilot sought out the stars of the show; and found them, seated like Brighton dowagers taking tea amid the rocks, harbour seals and grey seals enjoying the day.

My photo doesn't begin to show their insouciance, or their numbers, and I gave up trying as the sea grew choppy and the wind, clearly determined to riff on Osgood's tropical theme, gave us a fine impersonation of a freezing monsoon. The evening began to close in and whatever good the gulf stream might do the plants of Inverewe, it was having no mercy on us.

By the time we were away, the cold had settled in our bones, and we made our way to Gairloch quickly. It was at Gairloch I first wondered if something was off. We had got soaked a couple of times, and especially after the temperature drop at Loch Ewe, I wasn't surprised to feel snuffles. I expected us to get minor colds. We stopped for a sandwich and had tap water, as well as bottles of spring water, and when I tasted the latter, it was like rust. I looked at it in surprise. A lot of these spring water brands boast about their iron content, but this was really peculiar, pronounced to an unpleasant degree. I gave up on it. R noticed nothing different. And there I took one of my favourite photos. I know, I know, the weather was being thoroughly unhelpful! But this is one of the things I like about Scotland, the way that you can sometimes be so surrounded by the silver it feels as though mist and air is beneath you, and you could just walk on it, through it, out into another world.

It's possible that the Good Neighbour was disgruntled enough to send a little bad luck our way. The ferry to Handa Island wasn't running due to high winds on the water, and Smoo's Cave was a proper nuisance: you need cash for the tickets and we hadn't seen cash machines for many miles. There are however, ATMs about 3 miles on from the cave, but we found this out by accident, there's no information about any of this at the site. We were irritated enough not to bother going back, and settled for that most highland of activities; driving with the bonnet down, just enjoying the roads and the views. Sometimes the air got a bit soft, but nothing to take the shine off it all. We made our way to Lochinver, which has little to it, unless one counts beauty, in which case it's got everything including giant toad warnings:

There's one general shop in the village, (a Spar which also serves as pharmacy) one fishing tackle shop, some hotels, an excellent restaurant, and a pie stall which was deserted when we arrived. The waitress served us hot chocolate and told us about the lack of 'stuff' in the area. She's 19 and spoke wistfully about the need for a nightclub, the lack of cabs. In many of these places there's a man who runs some kind of taxi service from time to time, but in Lochinver he'd given it up.

Weeks prior to us starting our journey, the place we had booked in Lochinver had contacted us to say they were selling up and couldn't honour our arrangement. Everywhere was booked out in advance, so we settled for the youth hostel, which is bang slap in The Middle of Nowhere. Our satnav disagreed with us, and took us to its preferred version of The Middle of Nowhere, a convincing contender. I feel the car was trying to tell us something, that we should have got out and explored, but we would have been blocking the way for anyone equally lost, and it's worth considering the kind of road that can be blocked by a two-seater Mini.

We found the Youth Hostel close to this:

It's hard to complain. We had a family room, it was clean and OK, the one issue was the lack of en suite. I'm headed for 60, I really do like a bathroom close to my bedroom, but still, it was only a couple of yards away. Trouble was when I got up in the early morning to use it only to find it soundly locked. As mine was not a particularly, er, solid requirement, I was able to engage with the natural surroundings with a minimum of guilt, if not consternation as lights blazed on with Bladerunner keen every time I moved. It didn't matter really. I got to see the world before it wakes, the lulling sea and the hills so silent, and it struck me that this really would be the time to go wandering. Admittedly not in my pyjamas. Not with those toads out there.

We were pleased to find Windhaven. After dolphins and birds at Dunnet Head, the world grew very quiet. The wind blew bright and rainy, and all we saw were bikers exhilarating along the empty roads, while every hostelry seemed shut.

So did Windhaven unless one checked on the door, where hung a poster saying Yes! We are open! In we leapt, to a cheerfully offered pot of tea and cake amid knitted orcas, plushy puffins and local art. We fell slightly in love with the place.

Driving on to find the world ever more mountainous, we rounded a corner and found ourselves in the village of Tongue, Ben Loyal looming high above it. This would have been the perfect pic, and for sure I should have taken it there and then, but was enjoying myself too much just looking. Is it possible for somewhere to be too beautiful for the camera to capture? Later I took loads of photos, and there's not a single decent evocation of the place among them.

We checked into the Tongue which was everything you expect from a traditional highland hotel; tartan carpets, stuffed animals, warm welcome. The rooms were spacious, the food was good, but unusually the service was incoherent, a couple of waitresses who didn't know what they were doing. It was understandable given the pressures of lockdown on the hospitality industries, but not quite 4 star. Doubtless things will improve as tourism gets back up on its feet. We gave a little gentle feedback before leaving.

There's nothing to do except walk and look around the Kyle of Tongue, but that's surely enough. We weren't ready to trek the sides of Ben Loyal, so instead we took the simple path up to Castle Varrich. Some say this is the ancient seat of the MacKays, but I find that unlikely unless it is part of a larger complex as yet undiscovered. It looks like the remains of a watchtower to me; its views are grand and the standing stone nearby is suitably mysterious; I can't find any details on it at all.

But this is when one finds oneself on the story road, and on that road there stands a door. If, having poked your head through it, your question is along the lines of But is it real? You can't really think... Surely you don't believe... All I can advise is to close the door and walk on, lest you find yourself frustrated. I may wave my hands a bit and insert words like pareidolia, and that is the nearest I will come to being rational, because today I am not in the business of clarification or indeed, of making any sense at all. What follows is a tale from a land of magic, and out of that, make what you will.

I pointed him out to Russ, who looked suitably surprised at the sight. There, hanging green about a tree, stood a Good Neighbour. He was large and thick and squat and gorilla like, with huge long arms and a very marked scowl indeed. No, of course I didn't take a photo. What a faux-pas that would have been! I was guilty of a slight misdemeanour; I did audibly use the F word. Uh-oh! He moved not a whit but we did. And though I will happily laugh and smile over the patterns of trees and bark and all sorts of things, yet I'll tell you this for nowt; I wouldn't have wanted to meet this vision in the dark.

On we walked, not looking back for he didn't seem like the kind of character who travels far from home, and thus the door closed. I have encountered far more bizarre than this, but we take the stories that find us. Wanderers will see strange things and the more one walks the more it is bound to happen; you never know, on a curious day you might meet a woman of the roads who will tell you tales unaccountable and possibly pointless. She may claim kin to lost folk, but you can tell by the look of her, she has kin everywhere, or possibly nowhere. Though she is of many places and travels far, yet you are most likely to find her on Merlin's Isle of Gramarye, along the story road. On that road, you may see a door standing there. Walk around it and it seems perfectly normal, just a door. It is only when you go through it that everything changes.

Here lies Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, after Thor destroyed him in the first Ragnarok; Those are the remains of his fangs jutting out of the water. (Russ told me this when he first saw the stacks, and as you know, when bards dream and speak, it must be true!) And I shall tell you more; if you dive down below the swimming of seals you might find the rest of the serpent, so old that many mistake his bones for rocks themselves. But Thor, despite what legends say, found a cure for the poison that nearly killed him, and slept a thousand years in his healing. If you look North from this point, you will see where he made his resting place for all that time, though none know where he is now.

Travelling on from Wick, we made our way to John O'Groats, and from there the lighthouse and Duncansby stacks are close by, the Orkney archipelago shimmering across the water in a haze of clouds and sky. Here then was my first, perhaps only regret; that we couldn't just take a ferry and go across, explore those lands. But there was much else to see, including a dolphin moving gently through the water, and birds of course! Dunnet Head was wonderful for them, including excellently close puffins, so nippy that we couldn't get clear photos of them flying, and so cute we couldn't stop trying.

That wasn't meant to rhyme. Clearly I am still not myself.

But these memories make me smile.

On then, to Wick, and MacKays Hotel, where what can only be described as a micro-elevator will give you hours of fun. Able to take you or your luggage but never both, it has no door, so feels free to misbehave, stopping randomly, pretending to be haunted, and just ignoring lights and buttons til it feels like going up or down. We decided to consider it charming.

Wick seems to have little enough to it. Its town steps were depicted by Lowrie, (https://www.lowry.co.uk/lowry-original-stepsatwick.html) it has at least one friendly cafe, and a harbour though I didn't seen any fishing boats or working ships. It's not picturesque but it's old - by heck it's old! The name is thought to come from vik i.e bay, or viking, but even by then the place had been inhabited for a thousand years and counting. Still, some would say there's no real call to stop there, and that would be a shame cos it has the most splendid museum.

The Wick Heritage Museum is just glorious, voices and artefacts out of the past, greeting visitors with such vivacity and love it feels thoroughly alive. Wick was one of those places the dispossessed of Sutherland walked to after the burning of their crofts, and when they got here, there was work enough. Herring! The heart of the town and yet far from the only story, from the sea to the smokehouses, barrels and boats, moustache cups and marmite cubes , who could have expected such an endearing impact? We expected to be in and out, a 40 minute look around, and instead, easily spent a couple of hours there. I have taken few photos because a local collection dots most of the walls, and copyright could be an issue. But the whole place is a gem.

This tickled me.

It was Wick's first phone - note the number Wick 1. Wick 1 had no-one to call, and no-one could call Wick 1, for a while at least. Still, I guess someone has to get things going, right?

In all the fascinating artefacts, there was one that dazzled me. The Noss Head Lighthouse was designed by Robert Louis Stevenson's uncle, Alan Stevenson, but I don't know if he created the lamp.

It's Tardis architecture, some kind of Fresnel lens I think. And yes, the information was there, but I just got carried away and never digested it. I read the poem though:

To Noss Head Light
As sweet to me as light of moon or star,
Is thy bright gleam, old trusty friend Noss Head
And doubly sweet, when o’er wide ocean far
The ray benignant on my course is shed
Blest be the hand that raised your steadfast tower
And he who trims you never-falling light
For oft when round me midnight tempests lower
Hope’s pulse had failed, but for thy flash so bright
My gallant boat, though scare inch-thick her planks
Flies livelier on the track that heads her home
And dips her prow, as if in grateful thanks
When first you welcome ray reveals the billows foam
Long where the nights and weary were my watch
If from the lively deck thy flame I did not catch.
James G Duncan

On we went, travelling through Sutherland, named from the old Norse, the land to the South of Scandinavia and the Viking colonies on Orkney and Shetland. Many were the little ruins we saw, deserted crofts, bothies of long ago, small tumbles of bricks on the swathes of land sloping down to the sea. Here too waits a warm welcome at Dunrobin Castle, seat of the Earls of Sutherland; I think the oldest parts of it are 12th century. Through the entrance you go, to the welcoming smell of wood burning in a grand hearth just beyond the entrance! It is impossible to fault the prettiness and elegance of the place:

The gardens are fabulous:

And the clan crest is adorable;

In the foyer stood a statue of a gentleman with a head that seems built around his nose. I don't know if the attempt to make him Caesar-like is to offset this impressive schnozz following you around the room; but the gentleman himself is pretty memorable. His likeness recurs on a monument atop nearby Ben Bhraggie. He was the first Duke of Sutherland, George Granville Leveson-Gower, who married Elizabeth, Duchess and Countess of Sutherland. Through the marriage contract he controlled but she still owned the Sutherland estate, which is why the buck stops right at their feet together when it comes to responsibility for the clearances on their land.

There's been a lot said about this, though the palace seems noticeably quiet on the subject. To this day it's extremely controversial. My personal take is that, whenever it turns up, one should always examine carefully Adam Smith's notion of 'enlightened self interest.' Inevitably, the noun matters more than the adjective. Far better rents to be gained from sheep farming than human tenants. Besides, famine and poverty were far from unknown in the Highlands - and in fairness, the Sutherlands do seem to have been dismayed at the living conditions of their tenants - so what does one do in such a situation?

Well clearly, the only way to improvement is to force people off the land and take those higher rents, then relocate those people on the coast where they can learn to fish or farm or, er, whatever works on the coast. Problem, what problem?

Apparently Lady Sutherland was appalled at the resistance of the tenant farmers, who did not take kindly to this idea of being shifted around like livestock. They wanted to stay where their families had always lived, at which point there can be no gilding what happened next. They were forced out, their homes burned down. I do not describe here the force that was used, for it greys the day. Suffice it to say that though these may not have been the worst and it looks as though there was genuine effort to resettle the farmers, the most Sutherland-friendly way to describe it is as a thorough public relations disaster reaching ears in London and astonishing many, even in a brutal time.

Lady Sutherland in particular seems to have been traumatised by the intransigence of people who, despite not having a single chandelier, treated their hovels as though they were actual real homes. Many emigrated to the new world. Indeed, later, when the Sutherland heirs got past their disgruntlement at their generosity not being appreciated, they helped a group move to Canada.

And that's the thing about places like Dunrobin. It's gorgeous for sure, with its falconry displays and its avenues of ancient trees, smiling over the sea. But just a little bit of looking and you'll see; those are some serious overheads.

I had reason for visiting Chanonry Point, beyond trying to spot dolphins and delighting at the lighthouse (why is that, I wonder? What is it about lighthouses that makes them so magical?) Here it is said, Kenneth MacKenzie, or in his native gaelic, Coinneach Odhar called Kenneth the Dark or Kenneth the Mottled or Kenneth the Sallow, the Brahan Seer, prophet extraordinaire and Nostradamus of the Highlands, met his tragic end on account of a distinct failure to read the room.

He was credited with all sorts of visions that came true; the creation of the Caledonian Canal, the Highland Clearances, the Battle of Culloden, World War II. But there is a point at which a seer should stay decorously quiet, and when Lady Isobel MacKenzie of Seaforth demanded to know what her husband was doing in Paris, Kenneth really should have known better. Indeed he did; for he put his hagstone to his eye, looked through its hole and laughed, saying nothing more. But Lady Seaforth pressed him, and eventually he gave way, telling what he saw; Lord Seaforth was in excellent health, having himself a fine old time with two ladies of that city.

Now, Isobel's earlier anger at being disobeyed was nothing compared to her fury in mortified pride. She demanded that the seer take back his words. When he would not, she had him tortured and then killed, burned in a spiked barrel of tar. But before he died, he prophesied the ruin of her family: a well known curse documented as The Doom of the Seaforths, translated from presumably 17th century Gaelic into distinctly 19th century English.

'I see into the far future, and I read the doom of the race of my oppressor. The long-descended line of Seaforth will, ere many generations have passed, end in extinction and in sorrow. I see a chief, the last of his house, both deaf and dumb. He will be the father of four fair sons, all of whom he will follow to the tomb. He will live careworn and die mourning, knowing that the honours of his line are to be extinguished for ever, and that no future chief of the Mackenzies shall bear rule at Brahan or in Kintail. After lamenting over the last and most promising of his sons, he himself shall sink into the grave, and the remnant of his possessions shall be inherited by a white-coifed lassie from the East, and she is to kill her sister.

And as a sign by which it may be known that these things are coming to pass, there shall be four great lairds in the days of the last deaf and dumb Seaforth--Gairloch, Chisholm, Grant, and Raasay--of whom one shall be buck-toothed, another hare-lipped, another half-witted, and the fourth a stammerer. Chiefs distinguished by these personal marks shall be the allies and neighbours of the last Seaforth; and when he looks around him and sees them, he may know that his sons are doomed to death, that his broad lands shall pass away to the stranger, and that his race shall come to an end."

Then he faced the flames. Whatever else may be said of this legend, be it entire fabrication or partial truth, there deserves a moment's sorrow for anyone anywhere who faces torture simply for saying something another person doesn't like. So I came to this place to pay my respects. But on with the tale: For who tells of curses that don't come true?

There came a time when the heir to the Seaforth Mackenzie line and lands was a man struck deaf and dumb by scarlet fever in childhood (he later recovered his speech). Francis Humberstone MacKenzie was his name, and ominously, his neighbours were buck-toothed MacKenzie of Gairloch, hare-lipped Chisholm of Chisholm, half witted Grant of Grant, and the stammerer, MacLeod of Raasay. The last Seaforth had four sons, and each of them died without leaving an heir, their father outliving them all. Mismanagement of land and wealth meant that more and more had to be sold away... So it happened that the male line was extinct, and what was left passed to his daughter, who lived in India with her husband and became a widow (hence the 'white coif.') She had to sell even more of the lands. The final end came when the last Seaforth's daughter took her younger sister for a ride in a carriage; the carriage overturned, and the younger sister died of her injuries. This then, was the end of the Brahan seer's curse.

Of the hagstone, it is said Kenneth threw it into a nearby loch, but there's no such place close to the point. It would be more likely that he threw it out into the Moray Firth, right in front of us. Some say it was a white stone, others that it was mottled black and blue, and perhaps waits to be rediscovered somewhere on the beach, a gift returned by the tides of centuries. But Kenneth himself would warn that a gift is not always a boon, that some things are not worth the search. And meanwhile the sea rolls on, fresh and beautiful, as though nothing other than the play of dolphins ever happened or ever will at Chanonry Point.

Our first stop was near Rosemarkie, near Chanonry Point. We visited here: http://groamhouse.org.uk/project/pictish-stone-collection
Now Groam House is not exactly a museum of surfeit, but the star of the show is the dramatic Rosemarkie Cross Slab. While it is Christian era, some of the symbolism that appears, the z-rods, double discs, crescent moon plus broken arrow are very common Pictish motifs and may well have earlier origins. Some consider the crescent moon/broken arrow combo a tribal identifier, which of course makes sense - and also doesn't. After all, who identifies their group power with a broken weapon? Not exactly likely to inspire fear in Romans or even rival tribes from Dál Riata come to that. R's theory is that this symbol is some kind of compass/sextant design, which makes more sense to me given that the Picts were sea-farers.
pictish motifs on stone

What I noticed was how teeny tiny they carved feet. Maybe they didn't like them. I found it all very dinky.

Then we walked to the local fairy glen. On the way we saw kids engaged in something I thought no-one had done since the 70s; they were swinging on a rope branch hung from an old tree over the burn; not a tyre, not a mobile phone, not a piece of plastic in sight. It was all a bit Stand By Me, and I loved it. We left them behind, and walked on into bird song and sweetness at the gates of Faerie, which any may dream better than I can describe. I just wonder what the Picts who walked these tracks would have made of us, such extraordinary troubled wonderworkers, miraculous and yet determinedly unmagical. I don't doubt for a minute that any of them would swap lives with me... at first. Who wouldn't give up mud, cold, incurable toothache and wolves out there for this Brave New World with its central heating and antibiotics? Positive, brilliant life saving magics! But, as any practitioner in fairy bargains would tell you, careful what you wish for. We are the enchanters they would have gawped at in utter astonishment. and yet disenchantment is our tribal identifier. After all our dreaming and doing, we're the real moon-and-broken-arrow people.

They say its best to do this anti-clockwise, starting East, going across the top of Scotland, and then round to the West, for the obvious reason that the scenery is more conventionally heart stopping on the Atlantic Coast. Up beyond Inverness the land can be almost flat in places, green pastures sloping down to the sea, moorland, and mud. But the light lifts everything in a way that's almost uncanny. Conversely, the West has the great mountains, the woods and waterfalls everywhere you look, and this constant sense of astonishment; there is a scene of beauty literally around every single corner of your journey. The light is of heavier quality and lifts less frequently than on the East coast. When that happens, the effect is a powerful enchantment and when it doesn't, the beauty is undiminished but very different. Then, one feels its loneliness, its desolation, the presence of many ghosts.

As I recover and observe myself, my throat already less painful, other symptoms fading, though some really odd features turning up (twinges of pain in my hips, overwhelming tastes of metal in my mouth) I'm going to take my time recounting the trip for I tire too easily, and want to keep an eye on my own levels of concentration.

And there it is, that sudden fatigue. So I pause now, to begin again later.