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north to Lairg
Tuesday, August 7 2007
setting: Portree Independent Hostel, Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland, UK
I managed to assemble myself a cup of coffee this morning using the hostel's free instant coffee supply and it wasn't as bad as I expected it would be. For breakfast Gretchen and I microwaved leftover Indian food, using rice from Fort William and curry from here in Portree. We met Sjør and Siren out in front of the hostel at the appointed time and then headed up to the northern tip of Skye. As we did so, the terrain somehow managed to grow bleaker than it already had been, with the few trees losing all their limbs on their upwind sides. After we got to Uig (another Norse word for bay, according to Sjør), we stopped with increasing frequency to photograph things along the way. The road on the northern tip of the island was a one track for many miles, though Sjør hurled down it like a seventeen year old from Dayton to a Judas Priest concert in Ft. Wayne. We stopped for a time to look at the grave markers of Kilmuir Cemetery. They looked to be far more weathered than their age suggested they should be. (There are still perfectly-legible gravemarkers dating from the 17th Century in the Kingston churchyard, but nothing here older than 1800 is legible.) I'm guessing the constant wind and rain we experienced while here were not unusual conditions. Indeed, I found myself wondering why anyone would want to live here at all. You can't go out and trim your hedges without leaning into the wind! Is there ever a still, sunny day? It seemed unlikely. Mind you, the northern tip of Skye is hardly the worst things get; farther off to the west fifteen miles across the sea were the light blue outlines of the Outer Hebrides. You'd have to be crazy to live there.
The landscape became increasingly rugged as we headed southward down the east side of Skye. It was a little jarring to see typical white Scottish cottages set against increasingly alien landscapes buckling up behind them.
Eventually we'd made it back down to Portree and we had a light snack at An Tuireann Art Center (which features gallery space and a café).
We ended up staying with the Norwegians all the way to across northern Scotland to the town of Dingwall, an unassuming blue collar settlement stretched out beneath a fairy tale castle. By the end there we were running out of the energy to appreciate Sjør's mix goofy humor and constant, unnecessarily-authoritative commentary.
Not really knowing how big the town was, we tried catching a ride out of the center of Dingwall. We were standing in front of bus stop, which probably wasn't the best spot, since potential ride-givers tend to be a little suspicious why we're not taking the bus when that option is clearly available. And people aren't too keen on stopping next to an unruly group of young people waiting for a bus, which is where they would have had to stop to pick us up. After a half hour or more of trying, Gretchen and I decided to try walking out further towards the north edge of town.
Unfortunately, though, our walk took us beyond a section of highway repair, the kind where only one lane remains and large queues of traffic build up behind a temporary traffic light while waiting for a flood of oncoming traffic to get past. Downstream from such a project, nearly all of the traffic comes in vast waves, and drivers hate to stop to pick up hitchhikers under those conditions. So we tried to put some distance between ourselves and that project, which wasn't easy given that we were on foot and the road had no shoulder.
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As cars whizzed past treacherously close and with increasing speed, I feared we'd be stuck walking on this road for miles. But just then Christ Jesus intervened in a hopeless bid to get us to accept His virgin birth and resurrection. He commanded a local gentleman driving home after a long shift at the Dingwall prefab plant to stop and pick us up. Though he wasn't going far, the guy was just as fabulous as all the others who had picked us up (it's a self-selected subgroup of unusually kind people filtered out of the general population). He dropped us off a little beyond Evanton at a cafeteria (57.6788 N, 4.3015 W) where he thought we might be able to get some cheap eats and a good ride.
It was the kind of cafeteria that has a working bug zapper on the wall. When in doubt in such places I always order the fish and chips, and such places always put me in doubt.
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Out on the A9 we found a pullover area and tried to catch a ride at its mouth (57.6827 N, 4.2871 W), but the cars were going far too fast and didn't have a chance to get a good look at us. Fearing we'd never get a ride here before dark, I suggested that we continue on; I thought maybe I could see evidence of a traffic circle off in the distance. For hitchhikers, traffic circles are the only saving grace of the British highway system.
It turned out that there was no traffic circle, just a leisurely bend in the road. There was an intersection coming up, though, with places for a truly kind-hearted soul to pull over. We'd only just begun to hitchhike at this spot (57.6906 N, 4.2418 W) when a car pulled over for us. It was such a rapid manifestation of good luck that at first we couldn't believe the information coming from our eyes.
The driver was a smallish Asian man with an Asian accent, though he lived in Wick and worked in Inverness. He'd been born in Singapore, lived in Australia, and now called Scotland his home. He was a thoracic surgeon, and he drove like someone who specialized in saving the victims of auto accidents. If he hadn't been driving so slowly, there would have been no way for him to stop in the place where he'd picked us up. Politics had come up frequently with other drivers, but this guy was a real junkie for American political news. Like everyone else, he was amazed that Bush had been reëlected.
The thoracic surgeon continued northward up the A9, leaving us at its sleepy intersection with the A839 (57.9578 N, 4.06795 W), the road to Lairg. All we needed was one more ride and we'd be out of danger of sleeping in a field. Though the traffic was extremely sparse, the few coming through were going slowly. We cursed the single males driving by with their empty seats and we mocked the elderly, who we imagine referring to us as "ruffians." But then someone stopped for us!
Somehow the conversation on this ride immediately went to Gretchen's standard indictment of factory farming and American protectionism with regard to beef. It turned out that our driver had a small twenty five acre farm which he was eager to show us. It was right there along the way, and featured a broad field complete with several shaggy Highland Cows. In the middle-distance was his house, a majestic stone structure, and beyond that a steep stony ridge.
I wandered some distance away eating wild raspberries while the farmer talked with Gretchen about cows, but when I returned I motioned towards the ridge and asked if he'd considered setting up a windmill. He said he'd done some calculations and determined it wasn't quite windy enough here for such an installation, though he did have a hydronic solar panel. Sure enough, there it was, peaking out from behind a tree. I almost chuckled to see a solar panel in a place with such an absurdly small amount of sun. Actually, though, since reaching Dingwall we'd experienced dry and sunny weather conditions. Eastern Scotland, you see, lies in the rain shadow of Western Scotland.
The farmer went well out of his way to take us all the way to Carnbren House, our vegan bed and breakfast in Lairg, and once we got there all we wanted to do was take showers and lie around in bed, watching crap television. This was the first place we'd stayed where we didn't have to go down a hall to get to the bathroom. Meanwhile, the glorious smell of Indian takeaway had begun to waft up from downstairs. We hadn't eaten much and the experience was a little like being imprisoned in the Dunvegan dungeon. Though no stone walls stood in our way, we couldn't muster the energy to go out into the world and grab ourselves dinner.
A cottage set against the rugged countryside of northeast Skye.
The castle above Dingwall.
Gretchen talking with the farmer who drove us to Lairg, in front of his farm.
See more photographs from the Scotland trip.
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