Glencoe - Mallaig

In this part of the world, rainbows emerge directly from the ground and the hills are all made of time.

I'm sitting in a dining room surrounded by photographs of lochs, islands, and highland cattle. The walls are as green and blue as a badly-decorated Sims house, and you really don't want to spend very long in the kitchen. Behind me is a small pine forest containing a tree house (marked with a warning about death from falls), and outside is, occasionally, rain. There's been rain like this, drifts that suddenly come and suddenly clear into stunning sunlight, over the last few days in the places I've been. I'm in Broadford. I'll tell you about that later.

 

View from Glencoe Visitor Centre

Glencoe gave me more rain than sun. I wasn't sure if I ought to change my plans at first, but I knew I'd regret not going, and I was already walking down the hill with a German girl from my room who was catching a train at the same time as my bus (8.45; she was going to Windemere via Glasgow, a nice 3 hour stop for her in uugh).

The road between the little village and Fort William runs along the edge of the water with hills and mountains on the opposite (and, often, the same) side, but all I could really see were gloomy possibilities within the low cloud and steel grey water with lashes of white striping the surface.

From the visitor's centre, just a little beyond the village, I got the start of a sense of what it is that makes Glencoe such a popular site for scenery lovers - the centre and caravan park is surrounded by close, tall, and steep heights of land with rock and snow. The cloud covering their peaks gave something of an ominous air to it. I had all my gear with me, and with them and the rain combining powers didn't want to try any real walking, so instead wandered through the little forest around the centre and then went in and had a look at their exhibition. It showed a documentary about the massacre, about which I didn't know very much. Rather than just a clan dispute, it was commanded on government orders to try and crush the 'rebellious' MacDonalds - whose representative had already gone out of his way to sign the required documents of peace. Walking to the village I passed the ruined stone walls of one of the houses that was reputedly destroyed in the massacre, though rumours say that one boy lived, for his assailant couldn't face murdering a pleading child.

It was only as I was leaving that the weather began to clear, first for just a moment while I was sitting in the Glencoe Hotel with a hot chocolate, and then as I was returning on the bus. Then I really understood what it is that draws people to Glencoe, and saw what I'd hoped to find. I can't describe the hills very well. I've described lots of landscapes already, often ineffectually. I have no pictures to give you, because they rarely look good through a window, and even if I did have them I don't believe they could convey what it was like. It was better than anything I saw in Fort William. It is extreme and contrasting, with the breaching hills and the low flat lochs, with the sudden rain and the bursting sun. I'll go back, one day, and I'll walk there.

I had a wait of too long in Fort William, as I wanted to catch the train rather than the bus up to Mallaig. It rained. I wandered aimlessly, and saw a dead sheep or some other such creature tucked up on the rocks of the waterfront, as though someone had just thrown a damp sheepskin over a stone. I got quite wet, then gave up and sat in the train station to read some more of 'The Three Musketeers' and devour a small block of chocolate.

The train to Mallaig redeemed any disappointment in the waiting - it was the best scenery so far. It was similar in some regards to Glencoe, the same kind of hills, though not as big and with more valleys. The Glenfinnan viaduct is perhaps the best example, looking out over an incredible valley and loch and the famous monument - and for any Harry Potters fans, the spot has Harry connections, including the famous bridge over which the train took me. Coming into Morar the train gave glimpses of the ocean with the sun pouring out across it. We passed wild deer, and got glimpses of the beaches that the area is known for. 

And Mallaig, Mallaig - it is beautiful. A small town at the base of hills and scaling up the sides a little, and with an incredible view overlooking the small isles and Skye. I could see the rain above them like clouds pulled down with a swipe of a hand. I could see it moving across, and then coming in - it hit me on a walk above the little town, and turned to hail, which I caught on my green glove and ate. It tasted furry. A rainbow came out of the ground and reached up out of a little valley right in front of me, and I wandered back down through expensive houses with one of the most incredible views. I had dinner in a restaurant called the Cornerstone, which had a view of the hills on the other side of the small harbour. While I ate fish and chips and drank a little Famous Grouse (the Scottish waitress had to check I'd said 'grouse,' my accent is so odd), it rained again and a double rainbow came out.

The small isles from a carkpark in Mallaig

There were two women who had been on the same train and me and were staying in the same place (Sheena's Backpackers or Mallaig Backpackers or the back and upstairs part of The Tea Garden that was tricky to find). One of them had won train tickets and tickets over Skye, and I was surprised and grateful when I was offered the tickets for the ferry. They had enough time to spend a night in Mallaig, but had to return the next day. I think we all found the backpackers a little odd - it was a very nice place, warm and clean and with two spacious wet rooms instead of pokey little showers, but there was no lock to the door or place to store our things, and we were shown the room and abandoned to work things out for ourselves. But the showers were very nice, and the beds were comfortable enough and I slept well.