EUROPE – PART 5

 

The images we’ve seen of the devastation caused by Fiona on our beautiful Island are heart-breaking. As I write this on Day 12, too many of our friends are still without power. While our apartment was unscathed, many historic trees in downtown Charlottetown were destroyed, and this will alter our beloved urban landscape for what remains of our lifetimes. As a forester, I mourn the loss of many majestic giants across the province and know that many old-field white spruce and plantations will not have made it. I sincerely hope they can be salvaged in time and that governments will plan for their replacement. 

As many readers of this blog will know, we’ve spent time during the winters in Fort Myers. We’re deeply saddened by the images we’ve seen of the damage caused by Ian’s wrath. One of our favourite hangouts, Fort Myers Beach, is unrecognizable, the bridge-causeway to Sanibel has been badly damaged and, worst of all, our beloved downtown Fort Myers suffered major water damage from the storm surge that raised the Caloosahatchee River to historic levels. We plan to rejoin our cycling friends there for March and April 2023, and hope that things will be OK for us to do so when the time comes.

Well, it was time to leave Edinburgh after four wonderful days there. As I walked along Princes Street to pick up our rental car, I noticed this beautiful rainbow and thought it must be a harbinger of good weather for the day. Our Vauxhall Overland is a great little vehicle. Only two problems: the steering wheel is on the right and it's a six-speed manual transmission! I kept wanting to sit where Elva was and both halves of my brain wrestled with one another as I drove southward out of the city, thankful for light Saturday morning traffic. Elva usually walks to my right because of deafness in my left ear but, as long as I’m in Scotland, she’ll walk to my left!

Our first stop was Lockerbie, a small town not far from the English border. While Lockerbie is not a common surname, I happen to know two of them. One, Earle, noted Island historian, spells his name “Lockerby”. The other, Brett, a cycling companion and friend from Kingston, Ontario spells his “Lockerbie”. I’d promised Brett I’d send him a couple of images of the town, but the other reason I wanted to go there was to pay my respects to the victims of Pan-Am 103, the terrible plane crash that took place there in 1988. The plane was torn apart in mid-air by a bomb placed in the luggage compartment by a Libyan terrorist and 290 people died, 279 of them passengers and crew, and the remaining 11 citizens of Lockerbie who were killed by falling debris. The beautiful memorial brought to mind just how fragile life can be.

Next, it was on to our first hotel, the Cardross Inn in the small town of the same name. The plan for our nineteen-day Scottish road trip is to stay in inns, guest houses, and B&Bs and get to know the locals and their favourite places as much as we can. It’s a recipe we followed when we visited Ireland in 2016 and it worked very well. Since arriving in Scotland, we’ve encountered many familiar place names, most of them from Southern Kings and Queens counties on Prince Edward Island where many Scottish families settled. Cardross is only one of them.

On our way to Oban, our destination for a three-night stay, we stopped in the beautiful village of Luss on Loch Lomond, ancestral home of the Culquhoon (Cohoon) family. We were very impressed by the beautiful church and houses in this ‘conservation’ village, so named because its cottage-style houses are protected by law. We also stopped in the tiny village of Loch Awe and had a beverage in the tea house located next to St. Conan’s Kirk.

Our first impression of Oban was Wow! We’d seen it on an episode of Rick Steve’s TV program and planned to do a couple of things here: the Three-Isle Tour and the Jacobite Steam Train. But first, we had to find our lodging, the Glenbervie Guest House, not a simple task even with GPS. Eventually, we did, and the place is beautiful with a lovely view of the harbour. The town is home to about 8,000 people and is a major transportation, fishing, and commercial center on the West Coast.

I’ve always loved trains. No doubt it’s because the CNR tracks ran through my back yard in Wellington and because I hung around the station, the feed mill, and the warehouses as a boy. In planning our trip to Scotland, I’d considered the possibility of a rail holiday and looked into several packages, none of which worked out. Instead, while on the West Coast, why not take a ride on the Jacobite Train, described by some as the greatest railway journey in the world. For Harry Potter fans, it’s featured in the movie as the Hogworts Express.

If there’s a straight stretch of road in Scotland other than on the motorways, we haven’t found it yet! We zig-zagged from Oban to Fort William and boarded the train at 10:15, headed for the end of the line, the coastal village of Mallaig, forty-two miles to the west. The experience far exceeded my expectations. The rhythmic clickety-clack of steel on steel, the chugging sound of the steam locomotive as she struggles up a grade, the smell of coal smoke, the rattling sound of the ancient railcars, the beautiful countryside, and the view of the famous viaduct, made it a journey I’ll never forget. After a short walk in the rain and lunch at a local hangout, we embarked on the return journey to Fort William. A day in my travels that I shall never forget! In the video, you can almost hear the engine saying: "I think I can, I think I can!"

For our second day in Oban, we’d chosen the Three Isle Tour, and boarded the Cal-Mac ferry bound for the Isle of Mull, a forty-five-minute crossing. Once there, we boarded a double-decker and listened to the driver tell us everything we needed to know about the island and much more before arriving at the tiny village of Fionnphort. The next leg of our journey required us to board a fifty-foot boat and sail 10 kilometers to the Isle of Staffa. Along the way, we were entertained by frolicking bottle-nosed and common dolphins, my first glimpse of the latter.

Staffa is a wonder of nature, a flat-topped islet made of basalt columns that look like organ pipes. The ocean’s swell made it impossible to dock that day so the captain took us as close as he could to get a good view of Fingal’s Cave, the island’s other prominent feature. There are many legends attached to this island, and my favourite is the one that claims it to be the Scottish terminus of the Giant’s Causeway, the other end of which we’d visited in Northern Ireland in 2016. Many famous people have been inspired by Staffa’s uniqueness. For example, the composer Felix Mendelsshohn wrote his Hebrides Overture after seeing the island and hearing the waves crash against its shores. On the way back, we crossed paths with a Minke whale.

The next stop on our three-island tour was Iona, a place I really wanted to visit to see the Iona Abbey. St. Columba established a monastery there in the year 563, making it one of the oldest Christian centers in all of Europe. Why he chose such a desolate place is today hard to imagine. Nothing remains of the original wooden abbey, but the reconstructed Benedictine abbey and the other buildings are impressive, and the museum contains many important relics; gravestones and crosses mainly. There are, of course, many layers of history on Iona. For example, the Vikings wrecked and pillaged the place several times, the first in 795, killing many monks in the process. There is a palpable aura about the place and I’m so glad to have been able to visit.

We left Oban in the driving rain and took the Cal-Mac ferry to the Isle of Barra, our first stop in the Outer Hebrides. There are two constants in Scottish weather: rain and wind. We’d been supposed to take the 7:00 crossing but it had been cancelled because of high winds. The five-hour trip on the MV Isle of Lewis brought me as close to being seasick as I’ve been in a long time. Jesus was it rough!

From the small port of Castlebay, we drove south a short distance and soon encountered our first single-track road. It’s not enough that I had to drive on the left side of the road, now I had to learn how to drive on a single lane, using the passing areas to meet vehicles going the other way. A rush for me since the road follows all the contours of the landscape and has lots of blind crests and twists and turns. A roller-coaster ride for Elva! Occasionally, I'll hear a little yelp from her and: "Y vient une auto!" She couldn't help herself.

The tiny island of Vatersay, population 90, is about as isolated as it gets but I wanted to see it just the same. We headed north again along the west coast of Barra and toward the ferry crossing that would take us to the next island, Eriskay. Along the way, we marvelled at the beautiful beaches and the barren countryside. Barren except for sheep, that is; they must surely outnumber humans here.

It's a short drive across Eriskay, population 143, and along the way we spotted these semi-wild ponies grazing contentedly by the side of the road. Soon, we were on South Uist and nearing our objective for the day, the Hebridean B&B on the island of Benbecula. Yes, you counted correctly, five islands in one day! After getting settled, we had a nice meal at the nearby Dark Island Hotel. When we came out of the restaurant, we were met by horizontal rain, not an exaggeration!

Having only one full day on the Uists, we headed north toward the small island of Berneray and drove as far as we could until the sign said: “Private Property – Do Not Enter”. Along the way, we saw many pretty pastoral scenes and our first thatched house in the charming village of Berneray. We drove south to the village of Lochmaddy, the ferry terminal on North Uist and had lunch there. I suggested to Elva that if we should ever decide to start over again, I’d like to buy the house in the photo; it looks to me like a nice fixer-upper. Her answer: “Ben tu le feras sans moi!”

Heading south again, we walked through the Langass Woodland, one of only two wooded areas on the seven islands we visited, probably covering no more than thirty acres. A local conservation group helped the Forest Service plant Sitka Spruce and Lodgepole Pine there in 1969. The spruces have done a lot better than the pines, but this little bit of woodland made for a nice after-lunch stroll. 

The two words that best describe the Uists are bleak and barren. The landscape consists of various shades of brown and grey with the odd green field where the land is more fertile and suitable for grazing. There are houses everywhere and just when you think the single-track is going to end, it keeps on going around the next turn and over the next hill. The richness of the landscape makes you want to go to the end of every road, which we did several times. This will likely be our one and only visit to the Uists and the other islands that make up the archipelago, but it was well worth it! Rather than describe the places we went to, I’ll leave you with these scenes.