The Highlands

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

The descent into Pitlochry is a drive straight into a post card yet a mere hors d'oeuvre for what is to come in the Highlands. Overdue with an update to the blog, I blame the Highlands. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day, let alone the five days we booked, to get enough of a land that has everything I could ever want (with the exception of world class powder skiing).

Western view of Loch Ness
from the top of Grant's Tower at Urquhart Castle

Where the A9 bends northeast toward Aviemore, Cairngorms National Park introduces us to the Caledonian Forest that once covered the whole of Scotland. A colorful, texture-rich, canopy of Birch, Alder, Oak, Aspen, Rowans, and Bird Cherry trees blended with Scot Pines and Junipers, the Caledonian Forest grows exclusively in Scotland. Only 1%, 44,000 acres of the original forest remains, a result of pressures from grazing, resource intense industries, and the same lack of attention to environmental stewardship we have seen around the planet. Restoration efforts are a foot but clearly up against it.

Dropping into Inverness and onto the north shore of Loch Ness adds the deep blue to the palette that comes only from clean, cold, water stacked 700 feet deep. The towering ridge lines capture and empty the clouds creating streams of cascading water over a rich canopy of green grazing grass intermixed with the Caledonian canopy.

Urquhart Castle -
the old drawbride in front and Grant Tower on the left

Colliding Kauai’s Na Pali Coast, whose cliffs rise from the Pacific to 4,000 feet, with the pitches and exposed craggy rock faces of the Rocky Mountains might begin to describe the Highlands. Add in the bounty of Seattle’s Pike Place Market above Puget Sound and you get a sense of the tastes that complement the vista. Alex Trebek might stump them all with the answer ‘A place that puts fresh Venison sausage, Salmon, Lobster, and Prawns on the table next to exceptional cuts of Lamb, Beef, Quail, and fresh vegetables.’

What are the Scottish Highlands?

I’m sure the Vikings threw around the word Valhalla when they first saw it. I understand why there are reportedly 744 castles in Scotland. The Highland Clans, armies of Scotland, England, Vikings, and briefly, even the Romans, fought over these precious lands less than 3-times the size of Yellowstone and just 10% the size of Colorado. Nevertheless King Edward, Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, the Jacobites, the Clans, King James, Oliver Cromwell’s troops, a celebrity cast, they all passed through Urquhart and the water way below.

The MacDonalds return 467 years after the last raid to retake Urquhart

Loch Ness teams with several other Lochs and since the late 1800s, the Caledonian Canal, to create a water-way from east to west that makes everything on the edges very strategic. Great castles invariably mean great battles. Urquhart was a great Castle; its ruins evidence it saw many great battles.

From my vantage point on road A82, the medieval ruins of Urquhart on the rocky promontory before me, you would believe the screams that suddenly fill the air to be those of tartan clad intruders, another Clan MacDonald raid upon the Castle.

Today the screams are the sound trails of jet engines lagging behind an American F-18 in hot pursuit of an F-16 a few hundred feet above Loch Ness. The jets, flying eye-level to me, race toward the town of Inverness and bank high and right as if pulling off their target, cargo delivered, and target destroyed. Images of NATO jets executing low-fly combat maneuvers in the airspace over this the medieval anchor of the Highland waterway are not among those I expected to take away today. Given Urquhart’s history perhaps it is perfectly appropriate.

Load the Trebuchet

Urquhart Castle was last garrisoned during the troubles that followed Scotland’s James VII into exile in 1689 as the “pretender” to the throne of England. The chief of Clan Grant tossed his lot in with William and Mary, the new sovereigns of England, and garrisoned at Urquhart with three companies of Grant Highlanders, 200 men in total.

Besieged by Jacobite forces more than twice their number they managed to hold out until the Jacobites final defeat. When they marched out of the castle, they blew it up rendering it useless as a military fortification against the Crown.

Over the years that followed the castle fell into decay. It was pilfered for rock, timber, led, and other materials that went in turn went into building new homes in nearby Glen Urquhart and Drumnadrochit.

Dating back eight generations before me on my father’s side, it is very likely Duncan MacDonald spent many days in the castle ruins at Urquhart. In 1760, when his son Alexander was born in Glen Urquhart, it wouldn’t surprise me if the walls and roof that gave him shelter came, in part, from the Castle. I am sure he played in the ruins of Urquhart as a child, marveled at their grandeur even as ruins, exactly as we have done today.

How Alexander left Glen Urquhart in 1801 and sailed by the ship Sarah to Nova Scotia leaving the spectacular Glen on Loch Ness behind forever is a story for another time. Without knowledge of what was to come to the MacDonald’s living in the shadow of Urquhart, you would think them to be insane for leaving this spectacular place.

Urquhart from A82 - Grant Tower (left) and the original summit and market on the right