Rain, Roads, and Roger

After the Wallace Monument we kept on trucking -- or Vauxhalling, I suppose -- all the way north along Loch Lomond and beyond to a place on Loch Linnhe called Kentallen. I drove all the time, Deb navigated. That worked well. The drive around Loch Lomond was gorgeous, although I had much of my attention focused on staying centered in my lane (tending to drift left -- b/c back home that's to the center -- is not so good when the road is so narrow and the wall is so close). The landscape here is incredibly beautiful, which is a phrase that is well overused, you realize upon actually gazing upon something that is incredibly beautiful. I am sure I'm not doing it justice with Steve's camera. Although on the other hand it's hard to take a bad shot. It's just all this ... scenery. Every turn of the bend, something breathtaking flashes by. Even the more desolate stretches are somehow lovely. Bagpipes don't really stir up the clannish emotions in me, but being among these mountains and moors is really working some kind of spell on me. I have never seen quite these colors before, for one thing: streaks of green and heathery purple and grey rocks and brown/green moss. Springs gushing forth, making jaggged waterfall paths that cut through the mountains. And the ever-shifting play of light and shadow that the clouds provide, to blue sky or grey, gives every sight a whole nother dimension. There is a certain characteristic to the light in any place -- in California, certainly. But here is something I've never seen before, and sometimes it really moves me.

All of this mercurial emotion was somewhat fittingly happening on the fly, as we had to make time, so I just kept on driving. Too bad; it might have been nice to savor different parts of that landscape for a while. But I did not want to be traveling on this unfamiliar highway after dark. The road was narrow and twisty, like the PCH gets up in Big Sur. Mostly the pavement was in good to decent shape -- a patch around Loch Lomond was kind of rutty. It took a long time to drive all that way. I am an excellent and hardy driver, but it was still tough. I was fatigued by the time we made it to the Holly Tree Hotel. It was spitting rain by then ... then, as I waited in the car for Deb to check in, it started raining really hard. (Of course.) After settling in a bit, Deb bought me a drink for my valiant service. We ate dinner in the restaurant overlooking the loch. The inn is a converted railway station from a track that used to run right along the loch. You can see the inn's little boat dock in this photo, although you wouldn't wanna be picnicking in the rain:



By dinnertime the clouds had lessened a little, and some of the full moon glowed smearily through the haze. I thought of my friends and loved ones looking at this same moon from different parts of the world -- Don in Cali, Sam in Pa., Mick all the way in Japan. But soon enough the clouds rolled back in and a velvety darkness prevailed.

Dinner was one of the better ones so far. I had venison pate: earthy, rich, savory, mmmm. And scallops in garlic and butter with rice. Vegetables, too, probably. Scallops back home are so often rubbery and kind of briny; but these were amazingly sweet and tender and good. For dessert, we had cheese and port -- mine was this amazing white cheddar from Mull.

As primitive and gnarly as the situation has sometimes felt since we left Edinburgh, many things remind me that we're not actually roughing it. First off, I am loving what I'm doing and seeing, even though I still feel sort of off my feed and unwell, don't sleep as well as I should. But everything is new and different, which is great and provides its own kind of energy. (That, and the readily available coffee beverages...) And what I am seeing is so amazing I can only take it into me ... it's hard to spit it back out in any coherent or noncliched fashion w/o more thought than I can currently give.

Anyway, so ... whatever challenges I face are well compensated for with indulgences of different sorts. I mean, we have cell phones that work, fer fuck's sake. My American cell phone gets crap reception in the canyon (thank you, Virgin Mobile)! Here we are on the edge of nowhere, and we've rarely been w/o a signal so far. The car itself is a luxury, with a radio/CD stereo and a heater and a rear defroster. (And not forgetting it is black, hurrah!) And so, not surprisingly, the Holly Tree Hotel had delicious food, soft beds, and, for me, a bathtub filled to the brim with hot water and sea salts -- a sanctuary of steamy wetness, while just on the other side of the wall the wind howled and the rain blasted down. I soaked and listened to the wind, wisps of icy air leaking in the window and teasing my earlobes with whispers of the cold just outside. Strangely, although I was very soothed and comfortable, I felt lonely and really missed Don. With the wind and the rain knocking against my little bathtub bubble, I felt perched on the very doorstep of the ends of the earth. Several times that day I had told Deb she was insane -- for planning this excursion, with its nonstop motion and distances to cover -- and she agreed, and apologized. But I didn't mean she had to be sorry. I love to drive, and it's been pretty exhilarating driving, if draining. This is definitely the most arduous "vacation" I have ever taken, in a way. In other ways, not so much.

I slept well that night.

In the morning, it was pissing rain when I loaded the car. I have taken to announcing, "It's raining!" in mock-excitement, as if it is a rare thing. Sarcasm, the last refuge of the soggy. We had been planning to take the ferry over to Skye, but this involved timing issues that were questionable given the weather. The rain was so bad the ferry hadn't sailed yet when we called to ask about the schedule. After much consultation with our Lewis guide, the ferry operator, and Mick's friend Roger, we opted to go by the bridge instead. So we would meet Roger on the mainland side of the bridge in Lochalsh that afternoon. We got gas -- and I nearly killed us a couple of times -- in the picturesque town of Ft. William. And then there were more hours of driving on twisty roads in the rain.

At the Bridge

At last we came to Lochalsh and the appointed meeting place with Roger at the surprisingly named Lochalsh Hotel. The plan was to hang with him for a while, then drop him back at his ferry and continue on to Uig, where we are currently staying.

When I turned onto the lane leading to the seaside hotel, a man in a tan jacket, wearing glasses, crossed in front of the car. He seemed to give a look of curiosity or quasi-recognition as he went by. I thought it might be Roger. We parked and went into the lounge as he had instructed. It was full of plush, inviting furniture and picture windows looking out over the water. In this one you can see the Skye Bridge, which we will soon cross:



Roger wasn't in the lounge, but he soon arrived -- and it had been him on the road! Yay, me. We said our hellos, and I gave him the issues of CityBeat Mick said to bring. Then we had coffee and whisky and some snacks, and chatted.

Roger is a little younger than Mick. He is an author too, of serious books about history and sports and such. It seems he is famous. He is also very nice, obviously smart, and cool. He calls a girl "pet," which is funny and charming when by rights it should be insultingly paternalistic. I do not know how the British get away with being adorably sexist. It all just seems so civilized, pet.

Anyway. My sister of course impressed Roger with her knowledge of something ... probably everything, as she knows everything. (Except how to drive in the rain in Scotland, hah ha!) The whisky slipped agreeably through my veins as I listened to them geeking out on historical-type subjects and attempted to sound intelligent when possible. The coffee kept me from getting totally languid, but I felt happily much more relaxed. Soon we got into the car and drove across the bridge toward the ferry at Sconser (I am so naming a cat that). There was some momentary confusion over whether or not there are roundabouts on Skye -- there is at least one -- and Roger remarked, "It must be really weird to drive in a place where there are no roundabouts" when I complained how roundabouts were bedeviling my American-driver self. "No, it's really NORMAL!!" I spluttered.

So along the way, he pointed out the sights and told us some of his own story. He came out to the islands in his 20s and started the West Highland Free Press, which he still works for, mainly writing the editorials and such. He and his wife, Caroline, also an old friend of Mick's, have lived different places on Skye and now reside on the small adjacent island of Raasay, where Caroline runs the store. (That's right: the store.)

During the drive, he told us something very cool. That the Scottish "Mac" means "son," but "Nic" means "daughter," and so our last name means "daughter of the Coll." Coll being yet another Scottish isle. Hmmm ... I guess this history stuff can be fun.

So we left Roger to catch his ferry to Raasay in the late afternoon, then went on about another hour or so to Uig, at the northeastern end of Skye, where we are currently staying, at the (didn't you just know it?) Uig Hotel. It is pronounced "ooo-ig," more or less. Another ancient, charming building. It is right off the main road, overlooking the water and a mini-tower called a "folly" -- not ancient, but a Victorian construct, like an architectural fad, I guess. It is round and sort of squat, made of stone (like everything in Scotland), with a small cross on it above the entry, which you can't really see in this photo, also showing, on the lower right, the ferry we will be taking to Harris tomorrow:



We are on the second floor. The hotel is a little more primitive than some other places we've been, but still fine. We parked in a small lot above the back of the place, directly behind a fenced-in plot of grass where grazed a shaggy red bull, a shaggy black bull, and a ram with the biggest balls! They were, like, clanking.

The sun was setting, and the light bursting through the clouds was golden and angelic. I took some photos from the window of our room, b/c how could you not? After settling in a little bit, we went down to prepare for dinner by having a whisky at the bar. I tried Talisker, from a Skye distillery. Yuck. Too iodine-y. Peat-y, they say. Not to my taste, but Deb liked it. Dinner was a split appetizer of scallops and calamari in garlic butter (mmm), and then I had lamb in this nice, light coriander/mustard sauce. Deb had a ginormous plate of mussels. All good.

Back upstairs now, we have been channel-surfing (4 whole choices!) and just saw Anthony Stewart Head -- a.k.a. Buffy's Giles -- on some drama where his character seemed to be a guy who had an affair with a woman who then killed his family ... yikes. But the news is even grimmer, with reports from Basra of British troops in ugly clash with civilians, Iraq police, and militants. Sigh. I don't want to think about it right now.

For once I am tired and might actually fall asleep OK. But at this point I still won't sleep long, b/c we have to get up kinda early to catch the ferry to Harris. It's not a far drive from here, just around the little bay, and we are leaving the car at the dock here. We have a guide on the island(s) who will be taking us around. There are things to see .. mainly, for me, the standing stones on Lewis. Which I cannot wait to see.