Och, Aye! (or, When I Fell in Love with Scotland)

Rallying our hangovers, we set off from Edinburgh on a July Friday with a rented Ford Fiesta. This was Dan's first time driving on the left, but despite a few attempts to shift gears with the door handle, he did very well.

We filled our need for greasy food at a McDonalds in Stirling, and on evaluating the number of tour buses climbing up the hill to the famous castle, we opted to skip. Instead, we drove slightly west and explored the rather less chaotic Doune Castle.

For my fellow nerds - this is the place where Monty Python filmed the Holy Grail in the seventies.

Doune is remarkably well-preserved, slippery spiral staircases and all, and the audio guide was recorded by Terry Gilliam, which makes the experience all the more entertaining.

And yes, we threw insults from the wall in an outrrrrrrageous accent, and fechez'd la vache by donning our new shaggy cow hat.

Excellent.

From Doune, we rushed northwest and caught the last ferry from Lochaline, on the mainland, to the Isle of Mull and found our YHA hostel in Tobermory, among the jellybean-bright houses that line the marina.

We spent Saturday afternoon on a wildlife watching cruise out between Mull and the nearby island of Col. I won't call it a whale watching cruise because although Minke whale sightings are semi-frequent, we did not see any.

We did see a handful of basking sharks, gentle, oblivious giants that measure in at nearly five metres. As the twelve of us crowded to one side of the little boat, picking up our guide Stewart's enthusiasm, we watched the big dorsal fin glide gracefully through the water while the tail fin flipped back and forth. As they skimmed the water next to the boat, we saw their wide, gaping mouths, comically large, seeking tiny plankton.

We saw seals, flopping about on the rocks and bobbing around in hidden coves. We saw two porpoises rushing by us. We saw a whole lot of seabirds and an eagle, which left Stewart beaming. It is great to have a tour guide who really loves his job.

We spent the evening driving a circuit around Mull's northern side, speeding down the single-lane roads, admiring the cliffs where the stiff, purple heather clings defiantly and where the sheep with their matted coats and curly horns insist on climbing, although I don't think they know why. We picked up Sara, who we'd befriended at the hostel, when we saw her hiking down a road - happy to be spared the walk home, she rode around with us for the evening.

We drove around the south end of the island in the morning - the west side of Mull is unbelievably gorgeous. The cliffs spill in ruffled greenery into the vigorous sea. The roads are ruled entirely by oblivious, munching sheep, and if you get caught behind a flock of them, you could be watching their shaggy, dirty coats bound along for a while before you can break through the flock. This is not a place in which you go anywhere in a hurry.

We took the ferry back across to the mainland and picked up some supplies in Fort William. It was raining hard and we were the only guests at our little country hostel, so we took the evening off and relaxed in comfort.

In the morning, we left for Skye. Let me set the scene.

Feet are steady. Right hand in the crack there, left on the rock in front. It's slippery. An off-shoot from the thin, fast waterfall to the right is trickling down the rock wall, the alternating mist and pelting rain have made my shoes damp.

But we can see the way up, and although the well-marked trail has given out, we pick a path through the scree and then climb hand over hand up the chunky rocks to the glacial plateau we seek.

We reach the plateau, known as Corrie Lagan and I plunk down on a flat, black boulder beside the clear, shallow lake, and for the first time in the two hours we'd been trekking, was able to get a look at what we had come to Skye to see: a Black Cuillin, towering over us with jagged, craggy ridges that would seed doubt in even the most accomplished mountaineer.

We weren't going to attempt the sheer cliff face, but the view from the base, which is itself 500 metres up, was astounding.

When we started planning our highland road trip, the Isle of Skye was the first place I knew I wanted to see. It's legendary for its beauty, for the intimidating majesty of the bare-headed, smooth Red Cuillens and of the wicked, craggy ridges of the Black Cuillins. In the north, peninsulas fan out like graceful fingers, some edged with steep cliffs, some with gentle slopes and bogs, all covered with winding one-lane roads.

We walked out along the Waternish Penninsula past a village that was abandoned during the Clearances, a painful era of Highland history in which, on the realization that sheep were more profitable to keep than human tenants, greedy landlords evicted thousands across the Highlands.

Uignish, and on the horizon, the silhouette of the
Outer Hebrides.

There are two villages on Skye that have been entirely abandoned. This one was Uignish, at the very tip of the peninsula. The stone walls of the buildings, piled without mortar, still reach my waist height and often higher. Now, their primary function is to block the wind whipping off the sea while sheep nibble the tasty morsels growing from the floors.

This is also the centuries-ago sight of many bloody fights between two of Skye's more prominent clans, the MacDonalds and the McLeods.

As we walked out to Uignish and back, over the water we could see the the Outer Hebrides, stretched in full across the horizon, a dark silhouette against the blessedly clear sky.

It was hard to imagine that such a peaceful place, ruled now by sheep wandering between the bogs, could have such a violent, tragic history. It's hard to find any corner of the Highlands and the Islands, it seems, that doesn't have claim to a bloody episode or a battle or to eviction sentences that destroyed the lives of thousands.



We had one final adventure before leaving the Highlands to return the Fiesta in Edinburgh: it was high time we bagged some munros.

To clarify, the Scots love hill-walking and mountain climbing, so they have special terminology. To 'bag a munro' is to summit a Scottish peak standing over three thousand feet or roughly one thousand metres tall.

From Skye, we drove south along the long, thin lochs, nestled in their deep glens at the bases of the mighty ridges until we reached the wildly pretty Glen Coe, just south of Fort William.

We left the car at the side of the highway and began our climb up to the Buachaille Etive Mór, a three-peaked massif at the southern mouth of the glen.


I knew we were beginning our most difficult hike of our time in the highlands, but I was excited: we had gone on a few challenging hikes this week, notably the scramble up to Corrie Lagan, but hadn't summited anything.

After an hour and a half of clambouring up first the stones of a dry creek bed, and then up a steep, winding scree-filled path, we made the ridge. In another half hour, we summited the first peak: Stob Dearg, 1022m. Bagged!


The sky around us was magnificently clear. To the northwest, we could see the dramatic cluster of the Nevis mountain range. The tallest of them, indeed the tallest in Britain, Ben Nevis, was crowned by a wreath of clouds. We could see bright, sunlit Loch Nevis in the distance, and Glen Coe's graceful, green sweep between the towering peaks, rising up from the moor to make a magnificent corridor to the west.

We made our way across the ridge, which was comfortably wide, to the summit of Stob na Doire - at 1011m , our second munro. Yes, it counts even if you don't descend between baggings.

We descended the ridge on a perilously steep and at times eroded trail, ambled down a path in the mushy bog-land and reached the Fiesta just as the rain began to fall. Armed with beer and cider from the corner store, we made our way to our hostel for a well-deserved sleep.

S.