ADVENTURE OF THE MONTH — JANUARY, 2006

— RAINBOW  COUNTRY —
A DRIVING TOUR OF NORTHWESTERN SCOTLAND
Scenery & seafood just the way you like it—fresh & tasty!

INVERNESS
        River Ness ran black and fast in the heavy mist out my bedroom window. Inverness still slept at 6AM. But we had miles to cover. And, hopefully, rainbows to see. The weatherman promised the familiar mixed bag of Scottish weather: rain showers and wind interspersed with a few bright spells—rainbow weather.
      Breakfast was fast and dirty: lukewarm coffee, juice, and Weetabix, with a few sclerotic sweetbreads left over from yesterday. We hoped this would be the worst meal of the day. Out the front door, twenty steps through the drizzle, and into the car. A distinct late-November chill bit the early October morning. Round the block, windshield wipers whining, and up the ramp onto the 4-lane A82, our Toyota headed briefly into the sunrise, such as it was: ink black skies conjugating into gray bands ending in a silver sliver at the horizon.

THE BLACK ISLE
        In two minutes we escaped the growing rush hour of Scotland’s northernmost city at the junction with the A9, the only long-distance semi-motorway in the northern half of Scotland. Northbound on the A9, we soon crossed the elegant Kessock Bridge that flies across the narrows where the Beauly Firth meets the Moray Firth. Suddenly we were rural. Inverness has yet to sprawl across the bridge and the lush farmland of the Black Isle seemed to come on us too quickly. This good sign was accompanied by a second: the day’s first rainbow arcing across the agriculture flats of the Black Isle.

INTO THE HIGHLANDS
        At a blip called Tore and a junction with the A835, we exited the A9 and turned west into the rising Northern Highlands of Scotland. When we passed Maryburgh, we came close to thrifty Scottish market town of Dingwall and the Victorian spa town of Strathpeffer, both paralleling us on the A834. We made a mental note that a good dinner would surely wait for us in these two, if our drive around the Highlands took longer than we imagined. Besides, it might be nice to eat a meal in the shadow of the first great mountain north of Inverness, Ben Wyvis, at 3,387 feet above sea level a noble Munro we’ve been wanting to climb for more than a few years.
        The A835 rings round the big Ben for several minutes, granting us understanding why the Scots called this huge, solitary hill Wyvis—"enormous" in Gaelic. Just before the hamlet of Garbat a signpost marks the trailhead that leads up and back Wyvis, about 8 miles round-trip in a predicted 5-hour march. Tempting, but this Munro will have to wait for drier weather – heavy rain began to fall at a 60-degree angle.

CROSSING THE DIVIDE
        After Garbat the A835 turns northwest again and soon parallels the left shore of Loch Glascarnoch before cresting the Highlands divide in the Dirrie More. Until this point, all the streams seen on this trip flow east to the North Sea, finding salt water at the Moray or Cromarty Firths. In a minute or two you parallel the right shore of little Loch Droma, its waters racing steeply downhill to Loch Broom and the Atlantic beyond Ullapool. Did I say racing? Just past the junction with the A832, pull into the parking lot on the right side of the A835. Carefully walk cross the A835 to the edges of the Corrieshalloch Gorge (a National Trust for Scotland property), hidden almost without notice in the forest. Here’s a free amusement park ride that dares you to prove you’re not afraid of open heights. Deep, deep in the vertiginous gorge below rushes the waters of the Abhainn Dromm, which had to slice this canyon in order to go west. Otherwise, the Atlantic/North Sea watershed in this part of Scotland would be within 6 miles of the Atlantic.
        Kindly, the rain let up enough that we could walk out on the fragile-looking, slippery wooden walkways suspended over the gorge. The wind chased the water through the gorge, multiplying the daring required to walk out on the diving boards. It was good to get back to the car—needles of rain had started pelting us again. (Note: the National Trust for Scotland has temporarily closed access to the Corrieshalloch Gorge to inspect and, if necessary, repair the suspension bridge and viewing platform. See its web site for more information: http://www.nts.org.uk/web/site/home/visit/places/Property.asp?PropID=10101&NavPage=10101&NavId=5122)

LOCH BROOM & ULLAPOOL
        Now the A835 begins its descent to Loch Broom, the sea loch that provides a calm, deep harbor access to the Atlantic from the port of Ullapool. Our first glimpse of this Scottish fiord presented us a broad vista of the loch—narrow with sloping sides gentle enough to be covered with grazing sheep. Below us, bending over Loch Broom and the meadowlands was rainbow #2.
        Six miles on, the A835 enters Ullapool via a gateway of petrol stations, marine sales lots, and machine shops. Ullapool thrives as the result of a vision and a visionary. Cleared largely of population during the Highlands Clearances of the 18th century, the Ullapool area was seeing small croft farms (homesteaders) replaced with large estate sheep farms when a British commercial law created the "British Society for Extending the Fisheries and Improving the Sea Coasts of This Kingdom of Great Britain" and brought one of Scotland’s greatest sons to design and build a new port at Ullapool. Thomas Telford—one of history’s great civil engineers—built the deep water port of Ullapool in 1788 as one of Great Britain’s state-of-the-art fishing ports designed in response to the world’s commercial demand for herring.
        We drove into Ullapool and parked at the municipal lot two blocks from the waterfront. The sun was out and the blue sky was the first we had seen all morning. The geometric layout of the town and the harbor is lined with rows of whitewashed cottages with colorful painted doorways. The herring industry has largely disappeared, but Ullapool continues to be a busy harbor with its own small fleet of fishing boats coming and going each day, hauling in lobsters, langoustines, shrimp, fish (especially herring and mackerel), and other seafood. Most of this is iced and trucked back down the A835 to Inverness and beyond—some flown from there to European destinations. Bigger ocean-going factory ships still call at Ullapool, too, for servicing, repairs, to take on supplies, and to drop off some of their cargo.
        Boats have used Ullapool’s safe harbor since before Telford came in 1788. The most famous voyage that ever departed Ullapool sailed in June, 1773, when an old ship of Dutch heritage, the Hector, departed Loch Broom for North America, carrying 189 Scottish immigrants to a new life in the New World. The three-month-long voyage was dangerously uncertain; several passengers died of illness during the journey. Ultimately the Hector’s passengers came ashore at the Indian settlement of Pictou, Canada, and started their own colony, calling the island where they had landed New Scotland—Nova Scotia. Visit Pictou today and you will meet the descendants of that voyage, hear the lilt of Scots-Gaelic and the drone of the bagpipe. You may even see a reconstructed Hector, launched in Pictou in 2000.
        The biggest boat you may see every day at Ullapool is the ferry to Stornaway, on the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles (the Outer Hebrides). The boat carries cars, trucks, motor homes, motorcycles, bicycles, and foot passengers twice or thrice daily on the 165-minute crossing of The Minch, the often-rough strait between the Outer Hebrides and the northwestern Scottish mainland. Do you imagine that crossing this short stretch in a modern steel diesel ferry has none of the danger of crossing the Atlantic in the Hector 250 years ago? Consider this excerpt from a local news report (from the complete report at http://www.ullapool.co.uk/news.html) about a recent (January, 2006) crossing:

        "The MV Muirneag, chartered by Caledonian MacBrayne for the daily crossing, left Ullapool at 10:15AM on Friday with 18 commercial vehicles, ten cars and the maximum 12 passengers on board. But this day the ferry crossing between Ullapool and Stornoway took 15 hours to complete in 80mph winds. At least one passenger became so frightened for his life that he wrote a farewell letter to his wife and children believing he would never see them again. Witnesses described scenes of chaos on board the vessel as it veered miles off course as it attempted to cross the Minch on Friday. Cars slammed about the deck, crashing into other vehicles and smashing deck lights. Lorries were also damaged, freight was catapulted off trailers and oil and cargoes of fish farm food were spilled. Below deck, seating and tables were said to have been wrecked and crockery was sent flying through the air as the ferry was buffeted by the storm. During the ordeal, one passenger, Steven Collins, 22, from the Isle of Lewis, suffered a minor concussion after banging his head against a bulkhead and had to be airlifted off the vessel by a coastguard helicopter which braved the severe conditions to carry out the rescue. Mr. Collins’s father Paul, who was also on board, initially claimed he was assaulted by the ferry captain and police were called in to investigate before the complaint was dropped. Mr. Collins senior also criticized the ferry operator after claiming his 1961 classic Rover car was destroyed. He said: ‘Lives were put at risk. Grown men were extremely scared. The ship was out of control. We were abandoned by the ship’s crew and they disappeared for hours. One driver cut his leg but there was no crew to get him a bandage. I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life. That boat was in serious trouble. I really believed that I was going to die.’"

LUNCH
        Even if you’re not planning to cross the Minch, come to Ullapool for lunch. There are several restaurants, pubs and tea rooms to choose from, but—and not just in our opinion—the Seaforth Restaurant stands out as one of the top eateries in rural Scotland. The extensive menu offers just about everything, but order the seafood—it’s as good as you’ll find anywhere. In a hurry? Stop at the Seaforth’s adjacent fish & chip shop to pick up an order of fish n’ fries for the road.

WILD COAST, WILD LANDSCAPE
        The road remains the same A835. Leaving Ullapool, the A835 continues northwest dramatically to the rugged Atlantic shore at Loch Canaird. At the point, the road swings northeast across territory that would make northern Norwegians, Canadian trappers, and Alaskan prospectors homesick. Along this barren stretch the skies darkened to black ahead of us, although we remained in bright sunlight. Several significant peaks rose out of the moors and muskeg looking threatening in the black heavens. Until the double rainbow—the third of the day—appeared in front of us, crossing the road as if to promise safe passage among these dark giants. Then at an obscure point called Ledmore, far from everywhere else in Britain, suddenly the A835 ended at a T-intersection with the A837.
        We turned left. That’s due north. The choice was easy. The day’s fourth rainbow—an intensely colored, stubborn stub end that hugged close to the ground—pointed the way. Plus, we wanted to find whatever’s left of Ardvreck Castle, promising to be about 9 miles up the A837. Sure enough, after twice that distance we arrived at the end of the line at charming little Lochinver on the sea loch of the same name. Lochinver counts as northwestern Scotland’s largest port north of Ullapool, but that’s damnation by faint praise. Suffice it to say that, like most places you encounter in this remote region of Scotland, you are likely to be the curiosity of the moment in the village—the visitor becomes the attraction! Lochinver had a harbor with a fish market, and shops, and a restaurant or two, and, briefly, it had us, but it had no castle, and, as the wind and rain were kicking up again, we turned our car round and headed back the A837 toward Ledmore.

ARDVRECK CASTLE
        Half-way back we were tracing the long north shore of Loch Assynt, when there it appeared among the knobby peninsulas jutting into the loch: Ardvreck Castle. A ruin that gives ruination a bad name, the rubble might be better named "Ardwreck". Still, the site is romantic—in the lonely, god-forsaken, Gothic sense of romantic. A boggy path runs up to the pile of stones that might accidentally have been blown together by the fierce wind cutting across this moorland. But, archeological historians assure us this place was once inhabited by the Clan MacLeod of Assynt. During the Civil War of the 17th century, one Mrs. MacLeod, wife of the laird at Ardvreck, wrote clan history when she tricked the Marquis of Montrose, Highlander guest and royalist friend of her absent husband, into becoming locked in the dungeon. The next day, she handed him over to pro-Cromwell Scottish Covenanters who were searching for him after they had beaten his army soundly in a battle to the east. When the unlucky Montrose was executed a month later in Edinburgh, it marked a nadir for famed Highland hospitality.

GLEN OYKEL PASTORALE
        No sooner had we scrambled back into our car and out of the driving wind than did the heavens open up again with driving rain pushing us from the northwest. Within minutes we had climbed once more to Scotland’s divide and crossed southeast into Glen Oykel. The event was marked by the appearance of rainbow #5 of the day which arced over Oykel Burn deep in the glen below. The broadening scene that lay before us was a vision of Scotland as I shall always choose to remember it. No threatening skies or ogre-like mountains. No trees permanently bent over from the lashes of the wind. No horizontal rain. No—this scene was of a pastoral Scotland that would disarm even the crustiest Scot: gentle, lush hillsides of grasslands and heather and bracken, sewn together with a peaty burn at the bottom and dotted with sheep to the horizon. Rising from the horizon are blue skies emerging from low, thin, white clouds, rising to the nearly semicircular frame of the rainbow. In the middle background of this grand scene lay a solitary cottage of whitewashed stone, alone—but not lonely—in the midst of God’s grandeur. In sum, it was a vision of Peace, and, in days when peace seems as distant as Youth, I let myself return to this vision of Glen Oykel.

BRITAIN'S LONELIEST PHONE BOOTH
        Chasing rainbows often means getting caught in the rain, and, indeed, after five minutes admiring Glen Oykel, the leading edge of a shower found us, and washed away the rainbow, and sent us scurrying for the car. We quickly darted ahead of the shower, which took a turn south as we neared Oykel Bridge and headed due east. Just before Oykel Bridge came another vision, this time nothing grand, but something silly, iconic, and eccentrically, quintessentially British. There, along the side of the road, miles from anywhere, and with no apparent practicality, stood a classic red British phone booth, a "call box" without a constituency, without so much as a house in sight, with barely a place to pull off the road. I love to photograph these monuments to Britain, which, it seems to me, are to Britons what displaying Old Glory is to us Americans. On went the brakes hard, and the wheels found the gravel apron, and the car almost ended up on top of the booth, which could be in Britain a sacrilege akin to flag burning in the USA. Well—no harm done. I grabbed my Nikon and took several portraits of what I was sure was the loneliest call box in the UK for my personal collection. Only when I climbed back in the car did I notice rainbow #6 arcing over the call box. Splendid!

THE FALLS OF SHIN
        Onwards, eastward, and downward the A837 runs, mimicking the River Oykel, its parallel tributary. Each mile east of Oykel Bridge seemed to bring us to a small habitation, with each hamlet in groupings of three having a progressively longer name—first Brae, Doune, and Invercassley, then Altass, Auchintoul, and Linsidemore—until the junction with the B864 at Inveran. Here, we turned left (north) for 1.5 miles to reach the Falls of Shin, a minor natural wonder and regional tourist trap, complete with parking for at least a dozen tour buses, a restaurant, a craft shop, a Harrod’s shop, and what the promoters believe are special attractions for children. Basically, the Falls of the River Shin are something between a grand rapid and an open waterfall—producing more leaping water than falling water. The falls are an important step for the rapidly descending River Shin, which, in its 5-mile length, must drop the water of Loch Shin some 270 feet—an average descent of 1%—to reach the sea level Kyle of Sutherland, the upper reaches of the Dornoch Firth, a North Sea fiord. The peaty brown falls are impressive, but hardly Sutherland Falls (New Zealand), Niagara Falls (USA), Voringfossen (Norway), Krimmlfδlle (Austria), Staubbachfδlle or Giessbachfδlle (Switzerland) that are Waterfalls. No, what makes the minor Falls of the River Shin with its info centre, coach parking, ice lollies, and shop worthwhile is fish. Atlantic salmon, specifically. For some compelling reason certain members of this species find it necessary to spawn in the high, fresh waters of Loch Shin and nowhere else. And every September and February, the great numbers of salmon leave the North Sea, make their way through the narrow neck of the Dornoch Firth into the Kyle of Sutherland, enter the River Shin and come face-to-face with the Falls of Shin. In that it was October 1, I had hopes we weren’t too late to see what happens next. Thankfully, some salmon were tardy. From the observation deck overhanging the falls we were fascinated by the great leaping fish in their attempts to surmount this daunting obstacle. Remarkably, some were able to overcome the falls in one great jump, while others accomplished the task in two sudden bursts like an Olympian performing two-thirds of the hop-skip-and-jump. Most, however, failed in their attempts, and were washed back downstream in the whitewater cataract. Great entertainment daily to at least 5:30PM at no charge, unless, that is, you visit the shops or the restaurant.

EAST TO THE DORNOCH FIRTH
        By now daylight was growing dim under this gray, late afternoon sky, and it was time to head home. Besides, all those leaping salmon had made us hungry. Back down the B864 we drove, to its end into the A837, and, almost immediately its end into the A836. From here for a mile or so we paralleled the Northern Highland Line of ScotRail, one of the scenic rail lines of Britain. Where the railway crosses the A836 and the Kyle of Sutherland you might see Carbisdale Castle. Close by is Lamentation Hill, the battlefield where the Marquis of Montrose’s Highlanders were vanquished by Cromwellians in 1650. Montrose, you will remember, was the unlucky guest of Mrs. MacLeod of Ardveck Castle, mentioned a few hours ago. Further south at Bonar Bridge the A836 also crosses the water and rejoins the railway for south shore running along Dornoch Firth to Tain. Shortly before Tain the A836 ends into the A9 near the mouth of the firth. Across the water is Skibo Castle, Highlands home of Pittsburgh steel magnate and Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, and site of the marriage of Madonna to someone named Guy Ritchie back in December, 2000. Also on the north bank is the Royal Burgh of Dornoch with its famous golf course, Royal Dornoch, most northerly great golf course in the world. Hanging across the firth was our 7th and final rainbow of the day, its pot of gold probably on the 18th green at Royal Dornoch.

DISTILLING ADVICE
        On this side of the firth, and before bypassing the Royal Burgh of Tain, the Glen Morangie Distillery sits prominently along the A9, as it has since 1843. Along side the distillery is Cadboll Castle, another ruin originally belonging to the Clan MacLeod. If you arrive between the hours of 9AM-5PM from Monday to Friday year round (Saturdays 10AM-4PM and Sundays 12N-4PM, June through August only) you may visit the distillery. Come between 10:30AM & 3:30PM Mo-Fr (10:30AM-2:30PM Sa, 12:30-2:30PM Su) and you can sign up for a guided tour (£2.50/admission). Glenmorangie Scotch is one of Scotland’s single malts, but it is just one of many produced in the A9 corridor between Bonar Bridge and Ardullie, including: Balbair, Invergordon, Teaninch, and Dalmore.

BIRTHDAY SUPPER IN INVERNESS
        The A9, as mentioned near the beginning of this piece, is the main north-south roadway in the upper half of Scotland. And here, across the relatively gentle terrain of Easter Ross, the A9 is a wonderfully open drive across a sweeping landscape. You can make good time if the weather is fair—45 minutes over the 45 miles of A9 from the A836 to the A82 exit ramp in Inverness. For us, after Tain the weather was fair and friendly, and we were home in our historic cottage along the River Ness by 6:30PM. Twilight shimmered like gold foil on the river as we walked 10 minutes upstream into Inverness center. Tonight was my birthday dinner, and we would celebrate with a fine meal at my favorite Inverness restaurant, Cafι 1, on Castle Street at the foot of Inverness Castle. When we finished our food and wine, the walk back to the cottage was dessert. This day I had found peace, and eaten plenty, all in the company of rainbows.

— TOUR RAINBOW COUNTRY —
as part of your next visit to Scotland’s Northern Highlands.
Learn all about HOME AT FIRST's travel program to:
INVERNESS & THE NORTHERN SCOTLAND HIGHLANDS