Monuments

The Helmsdale monument commemorating the Highland Clearances, still remembered today as the "Cruel Clearances."

Road Trip

We started out as early as we possibly could, taking the A9 down to Inverness and west from there. However, about five minutes out we ran into a snag in our plans. An accident on the A9(Apparently known as the Road of Death) completely blocked traffic both ways. Now, there's no other road option for travel other than the A9. You literally cannot get anywhere unless you are on the A9, and since there was already a long line of traffic build up it was going to take hours to clear the accident. Our only option was to turn around and take a country road that would loop around and take us out farther up the road, and hope it would come out above the accident.

So we took this little one-lane road through the most beautiful backwoods hill country. It was amazingly bumpy and a lot of fun. The drivers here don't drive: they hurtle. Seriously. The cars are tiny, the roads are small and curvy, but people drive like there's no tomorrow. There are also a lot of one lane roads, so I can understand why there would be frequent accidents.

Anyway, the detour while long, was beautiful.  It's hard to take good pictures through a car window, though, so you'll just have to imagine it.

The object of our quest, Eilean Donan Castle on the western coast of Scotland. The roads from the east coast to the west coast are not what you would call direct, so with the detour the trip took us about 3 1/2 hours one way. Since this is the tourist off-season there aren't many castles open to visitors. Eilean is one of the few that remain open year-round. Unfortunately no photography was allowed inside.

The Marchioness wore Linen to Eilean Donan.

After lunch, the tour, and a quick stop at the gift shop, we drove to the Isle of Skye just to say we'd been there. And on the drive home we passed the famous Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle.

Anyone see Nessie? It was perfect weather for a sighting, and I'm perfectly convinced that Nessie is real.



Obviously, it was getting late by than. We ended the day by eating at a Asian buffet in Inverness, and we still had a two hour drive home after that.

Church Tradition: a Sunday Post

This past Sunday following the service up in Thurso Rev. MacL and Mr. W were discussing various interesting situations that come from having small congregations, especially in very old churches.

Understand that many of the churches up in the isolated north seem to be made up of under a dozen attendees, mostly elderly people(think 70+ years). So picture this: an old stone church building with a nice long center aisle with the minister standing in the pulpit up in the front, and the entire congregation sitting in the very back.

Now, most churchgoers are guilty of sitting in the very same pew week after week, and that's simply what these people were doing. For the last two hundred years their respective families had sat in those particular pews, which happened to be in the very back. And the remaining parishioners absolutely refused to sit anywhere else, even when the church size dwindled and the preacher was so far away from the congregation that his face was unrecognizable.

One minister tried to force his flock to the front by putting up a curtain right through the middle of the church, so the pulpit couldn't be seen from the back of the building. Come Sunday he couldn't see a single one of his parishioners- they were all behind the curtain. Another Reverend gave up and simply preached from the center pew. This just goes to show how hard it is to break tradition.

Note: the photos are from our quick stop at St. Magnus.

How the Sun Sets

Golspie Pier.

6pm

"Ingigerth is the most Beautiful of Women"

Yesterday we traveled to the Orkney Islands. Our sojourn began when we left the house at 7:45am and drove just under an hour to the northern point of Scotland, ending up at Gill's Bay. The ferry ride to St. Margaret's Hope on the Orkney mainland also took about an hour. Apparently the biggest industries of the Orkneys are tourism and oil. You can see the oil rigs as you drive along the Scottish coast. We appeared to be the only tourists on the ferry, which is understandable because it's off-season right now. Most of the passengers were men who work with the oil industry: they were a rather rough looking bunch. I was trying to listen to a nearby conversation to see if I could understand what the men were saying(I'm having trouble deciphering the accent here) and once I did I was sorry I had. I guess that's what I get for eavesdropping.

After reaching the mainland we drove another almost-hour to Skara Brae, and ancient village uncovered by a huge storm in 1850. I'm still a bit boggled by all the oldness available for viewing in Scotland, so when I say "ancient", think B.C. It's very cool that we can still see such places today.

This is me standing in the replica of Skara Brae. Standing in the fake fireplace. Searching for warmth.

This is me again celebrating American Independence(No taxation without representation!). As we walked down the the actual site one was supposed to travel back in time, and there were several markers to that effect. Only in our case we more like struggled painfully against the blustery wind through time, and if you're wondering why I have a giant mushroom on my head it's because it was very windy, wet, and chilly.

You're not allowed to actually walk in the houses, just on a path around them. The village was right on the coast.

When viewing such fascinating historical locations under such circumstances, one must ask, why on earth did they live here? Well, originally the coastline wasn't so close to the village; it's been eroded over time. Also, think of the environmental changes since the time of the flood: was it always really so cold here? Obviously the land was populated and good for farming. Perhaps it was attached to Scotland at one time as well, and not so isolated.

Then we stopped briefly at a circle of standing stones, the Ring of Brodgar.

This is me standing on a fallen stone. As with all the monuments we visited yesterday, almost nothing is known about these stones. Were they used for some horrible pagan practice, or were they for astronomical purposes, telling time and the like? Everywhere we went yesterday we saw the old "millions of years" mantra, as well as the "stupid caveman" idea. I know that the people living on Orkney thousands of years ago had just as much brain power as we do today, so I can easily believe them capable of better-than-primitive living and intellectual works. No doubt one reason archaeologists can't figure out what ancient artifacts are for is because they assume the people who made them were ignorant animals just out of the explosive soup puddle.

So were the stone pagan or practical? If pagan, then phooey on them. And if practical, than phooey on the evolutionists. I ran all the way around the circle and then we all squeezed back into the Green Haggis and went on to Maeshowe.

Pictures were not allowed inside Maeshowe, so the above is Miss W and I in the bathroom trying to warm up afterward. Maeshowe is in the middle of a field, so it made for a very windy wet walk there and back. The mound itself was very interesting. I think that was my first time in a burial chamber. The neat thing about Maeshowe are the Viking runes all over it from when some vikings wintered there way back when. One of my favorites is the title of this post, "Ingigerth is the most beautiful of women." You can read more of them on the website.

THEN, after hearing from our tour guide several fascinating ways that Vikings killed each other, we drove to Kirkwall to very quickly see:

St. Magnus Cathedral, one of only two remaining pre-Reformation cathedrals in Scotland. It was truly a beautiful old building.

This is me touching history. Seeing it is all very well, but touching it is more fun. Rich people used to be buried under their churches, and that's why all the old old "tombstones" are inside. Eventually they ran out of floor space and the smell just got to be too much, and thus the switch to outdoor burials.

By that point it was time to head back to the ferry for part one of our trip home, so I just got a glimpse of the churchyard. Short but sweet.

Now, I am not what one would call an accomplished seaman. Where I live it's a good ten hour's drive to any body of water resembling an ocean. I was on a ferry once, but that was for thirty minutes in a sheltered bay. The second largest flotation device I've been in was a canoe, and there weren't any waves in that case. So once we got into open water I began feeling a bit peaked, and wouldn't it be embarrassing to get sick from a ferry ride? The Miss W's loved it(Now we're going up! Now we're going down! Wheeee!) and thankfully I managed to keep my insides inside. It was probably thanks in part to not having much of a lunch, due to our rushing around.

I was very glad once we were on land again. Give me a wild ride in the Green Haggis any day over any kind of water travel. Finally, we got home at 9pm, had dinner and went to bed. It was a full and really very educational day.

By yon Bonnie Banks, and by yon Bonnie Braes

We went walking on a riverside trail in Golspie yesterday, for a change of pace. It was a well-kept path with several bridges that worked their way up to the falls.

We went under the railway bridge...

Past this really old neat tree....

Everything was very wet. There was moss all over. Even though there aren't leaves on the trees yet, there's so much green!

There were also a great many ferns.

The W ladies and I at the falls end of the walk. The whole walk was only 1 1/2 miles. I'm learning it's best to work up to long walks: the rambling-over-the-hills episode had some painful ramifications.

The Falls. Yes, they're sideways. You'll just have to deal with it. Not very large falls, but Scottish falls nonetheless. And the whole walk was very pretty.

So two days ago we finally got the Church owned car and handed in the rental vehicle. Our new mode of transport is compact and cozy in traditional UK style, and it's green to boot. Mr. W titled it the "Green Haggis." The above is a glimpse of us ladies in our new space. If it could be called space.

And then we had fish and chips for dinner. Only I had scampi and chips. Very tasty. Miss E.W. would have fish and chips every night if she could, but her mother has limited it to only once a week.

Hie on the Hielands

Monday, Feb. 28th



I took a walk.


The scenery here rather warrants more exploration than back in Nebraska, and here you can actually walk places instead of having to drive. Places like the library, the shoreline, the post office, even Church. So I've certainly been doing more walking than usual.


This morning I walked up the hill to the south of Helmsdale, since the map said there was a path into the hills in that area. So I walked up and up and up. The view down to the sea and nearby hills was beautiful. We've had very nice weather so far. I did reach the footpath after a few twists and turns, and once I got past the gate I was truly in the hills.

I didn't want to come back the way I came, so to make things interesting I decided to walk off the path(taking comfort that there's only one poisonous snake native to Scotland and the monument for the last wolf killed is down the road) and down and around the hill to the highway that runs past the cemetery. Now, the hills are covered in bracken, which ranges from ankle to knee high. I also discovered that the hills are wet. Wet all over. There were miniature streams running down to a creek all over the face of the hills, but my boots held up pretty well. Anyway, it took me a long time to get to the other side of the hill and then down it once I got off the path, and when I got to the bottom I had to climb over a fence. Everything is fenced in here! Over the fence was the railway, and beyond that was the river, so I had to walk on the rail a ways(which is more risky here than in Nebraska) to get to the road which turned out to be the right one but still a long ways from the cemetery and thus the manse.

I'm not used to hills. I'm not used to walking long distances. I'm not used to walking up hills for long distances. No doubt tomorrow morning my legs will be stiff and unmovable. I won't be doing it again but I am glad I did it. Imagine two hundred and fifty years ago when my Scottish ancestors lived in this country and had to walk the hills like that. Completely quiet and solitary, and utterly brown. No wonder the Scots are famously dour.