Lake District Part the Second

This post will not be very long. I'm in the Manchester Airport, awaiting a flight above the oceans of the world. I have been very busy in London, and didn't have the chance to post about the rest of my time in the Lakes, and certainly did not have time to post about London and its many, many things. So here, I shall summarise here the last few days in the Lakes.

Windemere

Dove Cottage today

The Lake District wasn't all walking for me. I did visit the Keswick Pencil Museum, which houses the largest pencil known to the human race, and also has a model of a chap mining graphite from the Cumbrian land. I also, of course, visited Grasmere, and paid a visit to the grave of William Wordsworth and, on the other side, to Dove Cottage, the first house he lived in when he moved to Grasmere. Dove Cottage was the place where he wrote many of his famous poems, and where he lived with his wife and sister and children and essentially Coleridge, so often did he visit. It was interesting to see his house, and to think that it was here he lived and composed and made good use of his ego. I'd just like to pause here to give you one of my favourite bits of Wordsworth that I think gives a nice little image of the man and one aspect of Romantic poetry:

What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.

Visiting Wordsworth's grave was oddly emotional for me. I fear I must have been tired, and swear a tear did not escape mine eye. Wordsworth is buried with his family in a churchyard that smells like gingerbread and sits just above the Daffodil Garden in his name. It was already past the best of the daffodil season however, and I saw few of admirable note; neither did I see many along the shores of Ullswater, the lake that legend tells inspired that poem for which Wordsworth is most sadly known. Sure, daffodils are nice and all, but I think that one's been done to death now. It's even on the plastic souvenir bags one gets when one buys far too much Kendal Mint Cake. I've always much preferred a sadder poem, 'A slumber did my spirit seal,' which you may read of your own volition should you so wish here. Or elsewhere, such as, believe it or not, in what they call "books."

It was of course obligatory that I must stay at Windemere, and so I spent two nights there in a nice bed and breakfast and had a little look around. There is a walk one can take up a hill from which the lake in its entirety is visible, as well as much of the surrounding landscape. I had again a cloudy damp day when I did this, but nevertheless I was rather taken with the extent and form of the land and water.

I caught a 50p ferry across the lake and walked in no particular direction, ending up beside farmland, beside the lake, through farmland, and then passing Hilltop, the ill-named house of Beatrix Potter (it was not on a hill; neither was it open) and taking a stroll along Hawkshead. It was a walk, the billboards told me, she had often taken, and a source of inspiration for the little characters that decorated said billboards.

I visited Aira Force (from the Norse fors, for, I believe, water fall). It is a very powerful crashing of water down a hillside, not in one mighty drop, but in several smaller ones that send the water churning and have cut through rock and crash and boil down in small places. At the tallest fall, I stood and was covered with spray as it pounded down. The water was a murky shade from all the rain.

And oh, I must have done other things, like enjoy watching television again, and having a room to myself and most certainly banning all snores, and seeing another red squirrel in Grasmere of which I cannot locate a photograph at this moment. The Lake District was beautiful. I imagine that it still probably is, but I have a plane to catch.

A Lot of Lakes Part the First

When I think of the Lake District, I think of scenery, walking, and the Romatic poets - Wordsworth and Coleridge of course, collaborating together in Grasmere and Keswick, but also their contemporaries and buddies who lived or travelled, like Southey, de Quincey, Shelley, Keats. It was an intense period of change for England, socially, culturally and politically, with the French Revolution having implications for English politics and thought, and the Industrial Revolution changing the way life was lived at a speed unprecedented.

At Buttermere

The Lake District surely was a stark contrast to this. It wasn't without change of its own, which is considered in some of the poetry, but there was still what would have seemed a simpler way of life tied directly to the land - and there was a beautiful landscape of smooth lakes and steep slopes, of green pastures and living forests.

Derwentwater

There are 20 major lakes in the District, with a variety of other tarns and resivours scattered in the dips and flat stretches between the hills. I stayed first at a youth hostel beside Derwentwater, a lake I'd not heard of, but possibly my favourite of those I saw. Barrow House, its other name, is a converted mansion that the Queen visited at some point for a reason. It's a short bus trip or a slightly longer but absolutely gorgeous walk from Keswick, one of the main centres in the national park, and so it is removed from the bustle. The lake is on the other side of the road, and all around is tame woodland, with a waterfall right outside - I could hear it (when the fat chick wasn't snoring) from my bed. I'd been unsure of the location simply because the buses didn't run early or late, but when I turned down Barrow Road out of Keswick all doubts were dispelled. The footpath went alongside the road, beside green fields sprouting lambs, through patches of forest with robins and tits and other light-tongued birds, along the lake shore itself, and unfolding at turns beautiful hills layering themselves like a satisfyingly good metaphor.

Walking from Keswick towards Barrow House/ Derwentwater Youth Hostel

The area is on the border of Scotland, and so it's not surprising that some of the hills are quite similar, particularly on the days when I got low cloud and moments of lingering rain. There were similar forms and rocks, and a few thin waterfalls, but it did feel much tamer. Some of this is surely to do with the level of domestication, with a greater population than many of the areas I passed through in the Highlands, but the fields and paddocks were more deliberately defined on the ground. There were also many more people walking, which was sometimes odd as I would feel as though I had it all to myself for a brief time, only to have a small posse of well-equipped walkers just around the next turn.

I had quite a perfect afternoon the first day, so sunny and warm I had to roll my trousers up. The air was clean. I walked behind the hostel and along the side of a hill, looking out across the lake and its surrounding hills. I saw a black beetle shining in the grass, and a hawk having an argument with another bird. After dinner Derwentwater demanded to be swum in, and cajoled me until on the third try I managed to submerge myself (all but my head) in the rather cold water. The stones were slippery with a rust-coloured layer. The air, though cooling for night, was warm again when I got out and hung my damp gear on a small tree at the water's edge. I sat on a stone for a short while then walked back through midges, hoping to see badgers that never came to me.

I did, however, see a red squirrel the next morning. It skittered through the leaves across my path and up the trunk of a tree, where it sat and then teleported a few feet higher, then sat again. If it had kept where it was to start with, I'd not have known it was there.

In the on-off rain the following day I walked up to Cat Bell summit, a steep fell on the opposite side of the lake. At the top the wind was so strong I crouched to try and keep my balance.I could just see the white of the hostel somewhere on the other side, behind the rain. I finally worked out how to set the self-timer on my camera at the bottom, on the other side of Derwentwater.

Foreboding on the Cat Bells

Lake Buttermere

I found my way around to Keswick and caught a bus to Buttermere, where frantic spells of sun lit up the beautiful hills at the far end. I walked around the lake, woods on one side and farmland on the other, with a river reaching from the hills at its end. It began raining again as I reached the bus stop, and I holed up in the public toilet (don't worry - it won Bronze in the National Toilet Awards and wasn't as bad as it may sound) until the bus arrived. 

A Little Trip to Ireland

As far as I’m concerned, the joys of my Dublin trip began in the Leeds Bradsford Airport, where the cafe was trying to get rid of all their stock and I was able to get a salmon baguette for but one quid. The delicious food experiences were only to continue as the weekend proceeded, and what better time to make note of them than now? If you’re not interested in what I ate, you clearly don’t appreciate food enough.

Birthday cake

The following day we had lunch at an oddly decorated but quite charming cafe where Jessie (who came over for the first two days) and I shared a goat’s cheese tartlet for starters, while she had for mains the day’s soup with the most amazing bread, and I had a Spanish omelette covered in cheese. For our dinner at a fine little restaurant that overlooked the river, and gave us a fine view of a rainbow, I had pork with cubes of black pudding and, to nicely compliment it, grated beetroot; Jessie had perfectly done chicken with roast vegetables in a nice sweet-savoury sauce. Finally, the fare of my birthday – fish and chips on the waterfront (observed by a wicked rook) in a little seaside village called Howth and, at a table for one with a checkered cloth, pizza and tiramisu.

Ooh!

On our arrival, I was somewhat daunted by the size of the hostel we had booked for. It had three levels, all rather full, and the reception area was at the end of a gauntlet of loud celebrating guests. There was a quiet bar across the road, where we had a drink before going to bed. In the morning we took care of important business – a pair of shoes, and a pair of jeans, to replace items of ours that had fallen into severe disrepair. The river made a nice little break in the city, and also showed a divide between newer buildings on one side and older buildings on the other. It was difficult at first to find the green places in the city, but once found it was marvellous, for they were very green indeed where they were meant to be, and in other places full of colour for bulbs and blossoms and blooms. We also discovered a face picked out in the grass.

As in Edinburgh, there were two museums I visited – the National Museum, and the Writer’s Museum, for also like Edinburgh the city has been given special recognition (UNESCO Cities of Literature) as having produced several significant literary figures. Chaps like James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde, and a few dames too, have been granted plaques and statues around the city. The Museum gives information about them, but also other writers. There are all kinds of items as you’d expect, but also some portraits displayed in a large and fancy room above the main display rooms. The National Museum had some fantastic displays of ancient treasure hoards, weapons, daily items, and people. There were three bog people, their hides kept quite well in tact over the centuries from their burial in bogs. It’s because of the bogs, too, that many items have been discovered in Ireland. The art gallery too was worthwhile, especially as it clearly marked out the Irish artists – and there were some very nice artworks.

There we go, the Brooch

I was also quite interested in the Garden of Remembrance. I’m used to such memorials for those who have fallen being for World War I and II, with the other wars tacked in on the edges. Here the pool had patterns of shields in it, and the statue was of three figures falling in action. Their clothes were nondescript. Breaking free from the bodies were swans.

The weather on my birthday, when we took a bus out to Howth, was again a little mixed, but mostly it was sunny. Howth is on a peninsula, and we walked the cliffs around some of it. Again, I was struck by the greenness, and the sense of spring. The vanilla scent of gorse was strong in the air, and little birds hid in hedges, teasing us as we passed. We had a fine view of two little islands as we came around the head, one accessible by kayak and, I think, called the Eye of Ireland, and the other privately owned. I wouldn’t mind owning an island in Ireland. I was given a birthday gift there, though, of a triquetra Celtic knot from Scotland. Later, I caught up with an old flatmate.

The final thing I did was perhaps my favourite, because I got to see more green and because I got to see some very old things. I took a tour out into the Boyne Valley to see Newgrange and the Hill of Tara. The Boyne Valley is a very fertile area, with the river Boyne flowing through it, and these are surely among the reasons that it was chosen in ancient times to be the seat of Ireland’s civilisation. Newgrange is one of three large hill-like structures in the valley, along with Knowth and Dowth, considered to be tombs. Large stones were carefully brought in and arranged on top of each other, without the help of technologies such as the wheel, to form dome-like watertight enclosures aligned with important astronomical events. When they were left and fell out of memory, outer walls collapsed, and the grass on top had liberty to spread down the sides on the freed earth. The inside stones, however, mostly stayed as they were.

Newgrange

The entrance to the Tomb, with the carved entrance stone
at the front, and the roof box visible above

Newgrange is the tomb that can be entered. It has been reconstructed on the outside, to put the fallen stones back in their perceived places, but the inside has not been touched – except by graffiti artists a few centuries ago, when the tomb was rediscovered but hadn’t yet been protected. I spotted my own initials carved into the rock. These days you would probably be shot if you tried to do something like that. Visits are very restricted, and rightly so. People brushing against the thin stone passage as they pass through begin to wear them away, along with the beautiful geometrical carvings made by the ancients. We were led in in a small group, but it was a tight squeeze when we got to the centre. I could clearly see the structure of the stones, with the cap on the top. There were three little alcoves (do you use this word? Alcoves?) that held large bowl-like stones. There are many theories as to what they were for, including a resting place for the dead. It’s the alignment of the ‘roof box’ that people tend to know of the most, for at the equinox the sun aligns perfectly with a little gap above the entrance way with its marvellous carved stone beneath, and a long thread of light stretches down the passageway, penetrating the darkness for just a short few minutes before departing. This was simulated with a light bulb, pale surely in comparison to the sun, but quite incredible. With the lights switched off, it is very dark inside, and the line of light could easily be a passage for the spirits of the dead to travel out of this forsaken world.

Detail on another stone around the edge of the monument

Some bumps on the Hill of Tara

Our second stop, after passing by a castle before which many stars (including Springsteen) have played and in which they have then stayed, and driving past beautiful shades of growth on the hills, was Tara. Because of the rain, we were ushered to a little second hand book store run by an elderly chap by the name of Michael Slavin, who’s written books about the area. He gave us a short talk about the hill and showed us some slides. We then went out to look at the hill. It was so very green, a kind of shade I can’t quite think of without being overwhelmed. Tara was, perhaps, the proper seat of the kingdom, where druids felt something important in the ground and the air. The hill has been shaped in dips and rises, in circles. Items have been found here – items I saw in the museum, including the Tara Brooch that came from nearby (and was the emblem for my high school).  There’s a church built on the site of an ancient church. A little further down the well is a sacred well, turned holy when Christianity came.

A rook, and lots of gorgeous green

Sacred water, or holy well?

I left my red hair tie on the fairy tree on the Hill of Tara, along with a thousand other ribbons and rags. Sadly, the Stone of Destiny, that’s said to roar when the true monarch touches it, didn’t roar for me.

The Mighty Cliffs of Bempton

The ocean cliffs of Bempton, a small little place in Yorkshire, serve, at the appropriate time of year, as a breeding ground (and rock) for several species of birds.

Guillemots and a gull thing

You have, of course, your seagulls, and kittiwakes, which are just a kind of seagull maybe a little less beady-eyed than the usuals, and fulmars which are far prettier according to the pictures I found on google. You get guillemots, which are shaped a little like penguins but fly a lot better, and you certainly get gannets, big loud demanding things, that seemed almost at odds to me on these English cliffs, I so associate them with Clifton in Hawke's Bay. You get razor bills, a black and white bird of the auk family with amazing sleekness, and another auk that, if you're lucky, if you're there at the right time and have mad-skillz, you'll get to see the pick of the pack.

This fine bird goes commonly by "puffin," more specifically "Atlantic puffin" (there are three different kinds; the other two are crap), and even more specifically Fratercula arctica. This year, the puffins were late. Usually they start to be seen on the cliffs from April, but there had been few sightings listed, and those mostly in flight or out on the water.

I arrived back in York from Scotland to find the most incredible day. It was sunny, and so warm I had to remove several garments. Everything had sprouted and bloomed in my absence. The next day, the day of Bempton, it rained. But it was all right, as I believe it kept some of the odour of the cliffs down low.

Razor bill buddies

The cliffs themselves are impressive formations, and looked quite impressive with the rain swirling around and the fog and cloud close over the ocean. The cliffs were drowning in gannets and gulls as much as anything, and also guillemots. I found the guillemots unimpressive, although it was amusing to watch them fly, as their wings seem very short and are shaped more for swimming, it seemed, than for flight. The razor bills I liked a great deal. Their colouring is very monochromatic and very precise, with not a single line coloured over, and the feathers all sleek as though they were shaped from a more solid and smooth substance. Their beaks and wings have perfect white lines across them.

Whilst looking through borrowed binoculars at the cliffs, I saw the razor bills and the guilleys, and gannets, and puffins - and I stopped. There were two of them tucked up together in a little crevice between the main cliff face and a jutting raise of rock. I felt proud to be able to point them out to the group next to me, who hadn't yet seen a single puffin, and delighted when further along someone else was able to point one out to me. And so I went on a right scouting mission, up and down the cliffs, pulling my jacket hood over my head when it began to rain quite hard before clearing up a little again.

Spot the puffins

Puffin: "used as a symbol for books and other items," as described on the RSPB website

Not a puffin

I saw at least ten individuals, and several more out on the water. I didn't hear any - their call is, from audio records I've heard, quite entertaining - but I saw them, and it was capital. I think that, with the pictures, is enough about that. I hope you all get to see your own puffins one day.

I will leave you with this highly witty song I made up to celebrate:

Puffins, wherever you may be, 

I am the Lord of the Auks, said she, 

And I'll see you all, wherever you may be. 

I am the Lord of the Puffins said she.

Inverness and Dornie (WARNING: MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF OTTER)

Inverness is flat. I was surprised. I'd gotten quite used to hills. I was also surprised by the size of the town, a proper little city with many a shop and suburbs stretching out wide both towards the firth and towards Loch Ness. The loch is a little distance from the city, and the body of water that runs through the Inverness is the River Ness. You could guess that much from the name, as 'inver' essentially means the mouth of the river. The water was very high from all the rain, which continued to fall in bits above the usual grass level on the banks, and the foot bridge was very wobbly.

Oh no. A loch ness monster emerging from the river
onto one of the islands. What will I do.

However, it was very beautiful along the river. The green of all the plants, except the yellow daffodils, indicated exactly the time of year, for it was the weekend of May Day, that place half-way between the equinoxes, and more significantly for the general public, I imagine, a bank holiday weekend. I walked down along the river's edge to the little islands accessible by bridges that join them to each other and to the banks. The water flowed quickly either side. I plucked a leaf that I think, from its spikiness, was holly and took it back to my room.

I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast called Mardon Guest House, which was very nice, and which provided incredible breakfasts (bonus: food locally sourced and organic where possible). Full cooked Scotch breakfasts, if you wanted, or salmon and scrambled eggs on a potato cake, or pancakes, or a bazillion other delicious sundry things. We also had complimentary homemade ginger shortbreads in the room beside the beverage sachets. Oh. They were good. Jessie joined me in Inverness for two nights. Both nights, we went out for dinner and filled our bellies well. The first night, I had smoked Scottish salmon on potato and for dessert some Scottish delicacy called a cranachan (whipped cream, whiskey, berries, and apparently oats though I couldn't really get their texture for all the cream) served annoyingly in a wine glass. It's hard to lick a wine glass clean. After that we went out to a pub called Hootanany (my computer wishes to correct this to 'Anthony') for whiskey (me) and beer (Jessie). I did in fact try some of her beer, which was honey flavoured and the first beer I've tried that I would consider drinking a full half pint of.

There was a band playing there with bagpipes and an accordion  They have a name, but alas, all I remember was that they came from one of the islands and that we had a lot of fun listening to them (after the stag party left). Their own music was by far preferable to rehashed bagpipe-ified "crowd pleasers" (such as 'The Gambler,' and the most-dreaded 'Brown Eyed Girl' which ought to be shot and its corpse nailed to the bar door as a warning). We also encountered a Georgian and a Serbian who wanted to know if Jessie was from Holland, and seemed rather disappointed to find out that she wasn't. They didn't ask what I was. I don't think they even saw me, standing right next to her, conversing with her every now and then.

The Loch Ness

Urquhart Castle

We took a tour package the next day, to Loch Ness, Urquhart Castle, and the Loch Ness Visitor Centre. We were given a historical commentary on the bus out to the loch, as the area has a deal of significant Scottish history. The loch itself is about 37 kilometers long and 230 meters deep at its deepest. Because of its depth, it is the greatest volume of water in Scotland. I believe our driver said that it contains more water than if all the other bodies of water (probably not including the ocean) were put together. The length was quite apparent and impressive, and we took a half-hour trip over it to Urquhart Castle. We looked about the ruins, some parts offering shelter and a lot not, and quite a view out over the water from a tower that stands. The castle is a lot bigger than it seems at first, and was also deliberately ruined to stop those Jacobites getting a hold of it. Speaking of ruining things (no, it wasn't that bad, just made a nice segway), it so happened that those the Georgian and Serbian from the pub were on the same tour as us (they bought their friends this time), and were still determined to ignore me as much as was possible. We both largely ignored them, Jessie declining their kind offer of joining them for coffee.

Enigmatic.

The final stop of the tour, the Exhibition Centre, was very strange. It has a high rating by the Scottish Tour Board. I'm not sure why. In fact, after going there, I'm just plain not sure. It has six spacious rooms of question marks and enigmas, with a single screen to present a somewhat disjointed (I felt) history of the loch's monster and the search for it. Occasionally objects would light up - a plastic fossil plesiosaur, two mannequins with binoculars, the interior of a boat apparently involved in a deep scan. After the rooms had displayed their 'evidence,' by which we were supposed to fulfill the responsibility we had been charged with of being "naturalist and detective, judge and jury," I still felt left with a powerful sense of enigma, a giant glowing question mark - what the hell was that? Emerging from the exhibition things got stranger. The room before us was filled with Loch Ness Monster and dinosaur toys of all shades and sizes. There were even mirrors to exaggerate their number. They were on the floor, in buckets, on shelves, on racks. Stepping outside, you discovered yourself in a miniature village, largely abandoned in the light rain, of shops. We wandered around. We wanted to leave. Finally we got to.

Save me....

We shopped in the afternoon, only a preamble to the main event of dinner at a wonderful pub above the river. I tried haggis. It was most delicious. I tried a 'Highland mess' for dessert. It had more whipped cream than meringue base. It made my brain hurt. The next morning we wandered down to Craig Phadraigh park, which was a pretty wooded area that went up a hill, and then down to the firth and over the railway to the end of the canal, where the ribs of the Loch Ness Monster lay. We passed a sign beside a tidal area where a girl called Jade's words declared that when the tide was low you could see the witch's grave. Jessie departed; I read in the graveyard where earlier I had chased rabbits until the rain took me back to the B&B which had a roof designed well to prevent books from getting wet, even if they are substandard things picked up simply for a setting in the Scottish Islands.

A tree residing in the Craig Phadraigh park

The spine and ribs of the Loch Ness Monster

Dornie is a small village probably best known for Eilean Donan castle that sits right near it. The bus ride from Inverness to Dornie Bridge is about 2 hours, and is on the Portree route. It would have been shorter to visit when I was on Skye, but I decided to spend my time there on the island. The scenery certainly made it worthwhile for me, despite the rain and low cloud. It passes through those gorgeous steep stretches of land I love, with thin streams forced into being waterfalls down their sides, and with rivers racing past and flat grey lochs beside. The road passes through the Kintail area, which is MacKenzie country.

Eilean Donan itself was once a castle of the MacKenzies, and their allied Macraes. It's been restored by Macraes in modern days, and, though it may seem a little off kilter, I think the castle's more important to me as a film site of 'Highlander' than as a place of family history. My family history is in the land, not what is a pretty but perhaps our-touristed castle. I did, however, feel a moment of pride on seeing the Seaforth stag's head on its sheild on the wall and above the fireplace.

Connor MacLeod: the sultry Highlander from France
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From the castle's wee isle

The castle felt a little odd to me, partly because of the scaffolding I imagine, but also because of the display inside. I preferred the bridge that leads across to it. The castle's rooms were all furnished, and the displays mostly seemed to be Macrae relics - a family museum, in some respects, with little of the castle and area's older history (though there were a few older items, and some black and white photos tucked to one side of the making of 'Highlander'). The kitchen display included model items of food, a few model servants (one poor maid has perpetually been sentenced to the moment of horror as she tries to catch her toppling dishes) and some model Macraes. Despite the rain, there were tourists a-plenty.

The best thing about Eilean Donan is by far its setting. Three sea lochs join at its point on what is a little island when the tide is low. Their waters press against hills, or against strips of land. The colours had that same subtle gorgeousness of this area of the Highlands, and with the weather they seemed fresh and newly found, clean browns and deep golds, rich purples and greens. Dornie is a little further along from the castle and back off the main road, and doesn't have a view of the stone building, but in such land it has views that are superior. I believe it is my favourite landscape so far. Mist cleared for a moment and showed peaks; the loch reflected the village's single row of houses and its guardian hills; a river rolls fast beyond the end of the road. And there are those fantastic colours always.

Dornie also gave me the delight of more otters - two of them, playfully murdering some manner of edible delicacy in front of me while I ate my own lunch. I actually only noticed them when I stood up to leave, which then prevented me from leaving for some time. I considered trying to sneak closer, but on the open land felt that sneaking wouldn't be successful and contended myself to watch from a distance. I also saw a beautiful and suspicious heron, geese, some curious grey birds, and a sudden splash with an impressive noise accompanying it. The culprit did not reveal itself.

The Ancestral Lands

As I have travelled, the ferries have gotten progressively bigger, and the journeys (if you discount the small isles venture) have gotten longer. It’s nearly three hours from Stornoway to Ullapool across the water. Coming into Loch Broom, the sea loch that the streets of Ullapool were ploughed beside, there were some impressive silhouettes of curiously curved peaks on which details were slowly filled in, and passed, as we moved forwards.

In Ullapool, I had someone waiting for me at the ferry terminal, a distant MacKenzie cousin  in a brimmed hat and with a blonde dog. I hadn’t met her before, though she knew my grandparents and great aunt quite well from their trips to Scotland. She greeted me with a hug.

The land around here is MacKenzie country, the Seaforth MacKenzies of the Highlands. Many of the paddocks on our farm in New Zealand, and even the farm itself, take their names from this ancestral area of ours. My great grandfather was born here, in a small house on the waters of Little Loch Broom just a little further south-westish and running parallel to the bigger Broom.

View down onto Ullapool and the mouth of Loch Broom

My cousin however-so-many-times-removed has a Bed and Breakfast, closed at the moment, and home to several dogs, hens, and some feral cats in the process of being befriended – one named Possum, to her amusement, as my grandfather quite rightly hated possums. The cat, however, is absolutely beautiful. Her partner is an artist, and the walls are covered in pictures of animals done by him – a portrait of a patterned cat, a stag stepping forwards from a forest, a fox fruitlessly chasing a song bird through the snow. I was given a room that, she thought, my grandparents had slept in. It was a delight both for that and for having my own double bed and adjoining private bathroom. The window looked over the loch which, that day, was glowing with the sun that had decided to come out. “If there’s enough blue to make a pair of sailor’s trousers,” she said.

On the edge of the loch and with those wonderful Highland hills on either side, Ullapool is beautiful. We drove up above it, then out along it beside model farms and salmon hatcheries and the heathered hills as a manner of evidence of the Clearances – make way for farmland, said the English, and get rid of those awful people.

At the petrol station we saw a bird of prey above a hill. It looked too small to be a buzzard, and the head looked paler than a buzzard’s is meant to be. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to match its silhouette with the one the chap in the sea eagle exhibition gave me, as it didn't turn at the right angle, but they say there have been a pair nesting around the area. Driving out, we stopped at a tree of American extraction that I only remember the local’s proverbial name for – the punch tree. When you punch it, the bark is soft. “Guess who else has punched here,” she said.

View beside Destitution Road

We took Destitution Road, with its stretching golden hills and the snowy mountains at either end. It’s been used in car advertisements the world around, she told me. We passed a deep gorge on a fault line, stopped at a little shop with a stream and bird feeders – she had hoped to show me red squirrels here, but the population had drastically dropped, and there were suspicions of a mink, an introduced little demon, having something to do with it. We, ahem, passed by the house of Tim Rice’s wife, which had over the front door the weathered stag’s head of the MacKenzie crest, and which has in its garden a yew tree whose age goes beyond reckoning. At least 1,000 years, they say, if not older.

Coming towards Kildonan House

The road is narrow and winds through the scenery, looking down over Little Loch Broom. We stopped at a gateway, padlocked to keep cars off the access road. Ealier, it was a matter of picking one's way carefully across soggy ground and probably still winding up with wet feet when you reached the peak of the little hill. It looks over the loch, its beach of smooth stones looking like a crescent of grey sand, and the foundations of stone buildings on the land and one still standing – a shop, once – in view. Going on a little further, Kildonan House begins to appear. It’s closer, but the shape of the land brings first the planted trees, then the roof, and then the rest, into sight. It’s a small white house, boarded up and empty at the moment, and with an overgrown and muddy garden, and, despite the other buildings, it has the bay to itself. My great grandfather was very young when his family left. Times were difficult, and though they were by no means in desperate straits, it seemed that there would be opportunities overseas.

Kildonan House: where some of it began

The old shop, the only stone building still in tact. It has a pretty old fireplace inside.

Perhaps the beach at Little Loch Broom explains my love of stony beaches. We sat there for a while, while I listened to legends and stories more immediate, and looked at the water and mountains and hills. We unsettled a small herd of deer who watched us for some time from the horizon, waiting for us to leave. They gave up first.

Eff off, will you?

The next day – after I slept in quite happily, and had black pudding for breakfast – did not give us the same kind of weather as we drove the other way, out towards Sutherland. The Clearances were very bad in this part of Scotland. I hadn't realised how poorly the Highlanders had been treated. I don't know my history. I want to. I will.

It was quite overcast and then quite rainy, and I missed out, I’m told, on much of the scenery. I did see the closer hills, however, and peaks in moments when the veils shifted for a moment, and I saw snow. The drive, with all three of us this time, served as a sight-seeing, oddjob-investigating, pie-and-sausage-gathering expedition. We stopped to look, heigh ho the wind and the rain, at the ruins of Ardvwreck Castle, which had particular ancestral significance for my cousin. In the weather it had a particularly gothic-Romantic air. I could imagine the man in grey, a kindly ghost who speaks only Gaelic, escorting people across the grass.

I cannot remember her name, but she's beautiful and sometimes dangerous,
a little of a femme fatale

It was after, as we drove upwards, that the snow began, thrown like light rain in the wind against the wind sheild, where the crystals melted and slid down. It was white everywhere. And suddenly, as we dropped from the mountains, it was gone and instead there was only rain.

I'll return to Ullapool.