Travel with Manfred

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Copyright © 1997 by Manfred P.. All rights reserved.

Dec 26, 1996 till Jan 1, 1997

Bens, Glens, and Lochs

Scotland at New Year's

by

Manfred P.

Keywords: Scotland, nature, Ayr, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Nessie, Loch Ness, Loch Lomond, Glencoe, Inverness, The Malt Whisky Trail, Perth, St. Andrews, Hadrian's Wall, haggis, Hogmanay, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

With nearly every European country visited it became easy to decide on an appropriate destination for a New Year's get-away: Scotland. I have never been there but always wanted to see it. Winter might not be the best time to visit it. However, the opportunity to go there with my brother and his girl friend by far compensated for my dislike of cold weather.

The welcome was nice, just hours into Scotland it started snowing. Besides the snow we also had to get used to the fact that it got dark early, just shortly after 4 p.m. We were at a castle, the first in a list of countless ones, when the snow flakes turned the brown environment into a white winter wonderland. For the first time this season the gloves came handy. We just strolled around the castle and before we knew it it was dark. That didn't stop us to make it to another castle nearby. The castle was actually a ruin but it had more charm than the first. Maybe it had something to do with the full moon putting it under a soft spot light. A herd of sheep was roaming around the ruins making it eerie. A local chap told us how warm it is and that the snow fall last week forced them to go out into the fields to dig the sheep out of the snow. As always, everything is relative.

Driving a few more hours brought us into Ayr, a coastal town. We toured it in the rain, up and down High street, searching for a restaurant. We found one that looked like a museum of random unrelated objects ranging from a dental chair, street signs, to a working toy train. No, it did not carry the drinks or food to our table. The Bed-and-Breakfast place was just like any in the UK with the exception that the breakfast included a slice of haggis, a traditional Scottish dish. The host would not fill us in on what it is made of. No matter how hard we twisted his arm he just repeated "you don't want to know". Let's just say it is black and consists of some meat, oat, and lots of seasonings. Not knowing what is in it, it tasted good. I am sure that this ignorance is a blessing.

Stuffed with haggis, ham, eggs, toast and more, another two castles south of Ayr were on our schedule. We spent most of the day there, hiking along the coast line and in the forests surrounding the castles. Without going out of our way we easily saw more than a dozen castles on the trip. Usually two to three a day. It is not surprising that the excitement and interest in them tumbles to low levels in just a day or two. By the end of the vacation I had seen enough to last me for a few years.

Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland, has transformed itself in the last years. The smog is gone and with it most of the jobs in heavy industry. Most of the shipbuilding, if not all, on the river Clyde has vanished. Marketing campaigns like "Glasgow's Miles Better" are supporting that shift in reputation from "industrial with high crime and poor quality of life" to "vibrant city with culture". The tourist center in downtown has put together a video clip promoting the city. It's MTV-style, fast cut action, with everything in bright colors and everything moving fast. Appropriately it was running non-stop without brakes. The reality outside the small theater was not moving quite so fast. Cathedral and Necropolis were actually areas of peace and quietness. Later we hooked up with a friend from Glasgow who showed us around the Burrell Collection inside the Pollok Country park. The museum was interesting as many exhibition pieces were built into the structure of the building, e.g. arches and windows from past centuries would form doors and wall openings. While chatting in a cafe the discussion with our friend drifted to tourism and I found her insight that the movie "Braveheart" caused the Scottish tourist trade flourish to never before seen heights interesting and amusing. Movies can be powerful tools after all. No wonder that Braveheart was accepted to well, it starred people with that cute accent and guys wearing skirts.

The Highlands start north of Glasgow. More castles on the way. We even had the opportunity to spend a night in one as a castle was converted into a youth hostel. Not knowingly we gave up that opportunity and traded it for a night similar to the movie "Night of the Living Dead". The host lady has "decorated" her house with tens of dolls. 50 might be a good guess. They were everywhere, the living room, our beds, the bath room. After dinner she told us the story about several of her dolls. Where she bought them, how good a bargain it was, and that she is looking forward to inherit them to her daughter. Visions of a nightmare came up in me. I feel sorry for her daughter. Finally we had to play the game of "guess the price of that doll". This was close to inhuman treatment. It was certainly boring. Having a hobby is okay but that was carrying a little bit too far. My final thought was the nightmare of the dolls waking up at the twelfth strike at midnight. During breakfast we were teasing each other that the drinks and other food was poisoned. We found some items with expiration dates going a few years back but nonetheless we all survived and are able to tell the story to our grand children.

From the doll house the scenery changed to the spectacular Highlands. We went from bens (hills) to glens (valleys) to lochs (lakes). Even better, we climbed one of the little bens. The bens are all less than 4406 ft high as this is the height of Ben Nevis, Scotland's highest point. As most lochs are just a few hundred feet above sea level, the bens appear high and impressive. Yes, they don't compare to the Alps, but they cannot be underestimated. The caps are snow covered. From the wee ben we climbed in a couple of hours we had a great view down Loch Lomond and the surrounding bens.

Nature was of course the most fascinating feature of Scotland. From Loch Lomond to Glencoe the road was very scenic. Moors, tiny frozen waterfalls, creeks coming down from the glens, and sheep everywhere. Overall it's very rural with plenty of space. You can drive for hours with seeing just one or two small villages. People are friendly and social live centers around pubs. I missed the Scottish bitter and ale.

Not to be missed was Loch Ness. Famous not for its beauty but for one thing only: Nessie. Urquhart Castle is a good spot to go camera hunting for her. We were too late for the official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition Center as we were fooled into some unofficial Nessie museum just before closing time. From here it's just a short drive to Inverness, the capital of the Highlands. Inverness is a happening place (relatively speaking of course). Unfortunately the cold weather had its toll. By now I had a bad sore throat, trouble swallowing, a headache and therefore no desire to do anything.

Inverness' vicinity had an interesting history. Macbeth's castle is supposedly here. Culloden Moor was the sight of a fierce battle some 250 years ago. A lot of skulls were cracked, 6000 or so the historians say. The loyal "Butcher" Cumberland defeated the revolutionary and independent thinking Bonnie Prince Charles. The Butcher got a hefty pay raise afterwards but lost his luck to ever win a battle again. The Scottish clans, the losers, saw a decline in their power. Not far from Culloden is Clava Chairns, a burial site thousands of years old. Three round rock piles of a 40 feet diameter and with an open center survived all that time.

What else besides Nessie can you think of when you think about Scotland? Kilts? Bagpipes? What else? Whisky! Of course. As making whisky requires fresh water, a lot of the Scottish distillers have settled along the River Spey. Half of all Scottish Malt Whisky is produced here and 7 distilleries have put themselves together to form the Malt Whisky Trail. While most castles were closed from Oct till Feb we were lucky to find an open distillery and learn a lot about the Whisky making process: malting, mashing, fermentation, and distillation. The consumption is naturally as pleasant as the Whisky burning process.

Not far from the Whisky Trail were ski resorts. The young crowd in the lodge showed us how the brown liquid is consumed properly in large quantities. One of the guys won in the lottery and a gang of ten helped him finish an equally large number of bottles of liquor. With my cold and my liver problem I headed for the sack before midnight. Another missed party, what a shame.

Somewhere near Perth we went up a hill from where there is, according to the tour guide, the very best view of all of Scotland. Such a claim is pretty wild, but it forced us to at least form our own opinion. Well, we saw great fog and snow clouds on one side and had a few nice glimpses on the other. Okay is the best rating I can give it, but the exercise was good.

St. Andrews is the Scottish equivalent to Oxford. A college town also known by the golfing elite. The Old Course is world famous amongst drivers and putters. They even have a golf museum here. The beach front is wild and rough. The houses are old and have flair. The ocean seams to have the desire to swallow the Castle one day, it's slowly eroding the land the ruins are standing on. The beautiful coastal path leads to the Gothic Cathedral which was built in medieval times. It is now a ruin too, but what a ruin. Scotland's largest cathedral. The fact that the roof and other structural elements are missing doesn't reduce its majestic posture. The city wall with its gates rounds off the picture. If you put it all together you get a great experience. I loved St. Andrews, the most attractive Scottish town in my book.

For New Year's we ended up in Edinburgh, the capital. We drove around in search for shelter, a B&B or similar. We weren't having any luck. The dreaded sign "No vacancy" was ubiquitous. Making phone calls didn't show any more promise. After I had heard "sorry we are full" once again, the lady added after a pause "but I know a woman who rents a room for the night". Within an hour we found the place: a couple of mattresses without anything, no blankets, no linen, nothing. We didn't really have a choice and with a few kind words we had negotiated for a sleeping bag and someone's blanket. We were set. The woman said that there is some sort of activity going on in the center of town and that a crowd is expected. I clapped my hand in anticipation and replied "All right!". We walked into the town center. The crowd couldn't be missed. Not just a crowd, a mega-crowd. People were standing shoulder to shoulder all along the broad avenue Princes Street. The lasers were painting colorful pictures onto various buildings. Two screens entertained the crowd with live images from the bands playing of four different stages: pop, rock, and a mix of traditional (bagpipe) music with rock beat. We worked our way through the pushing and shoving to get off the main boulevards onto some side street for a dinner. We got out of the restaurant just half an hour before midnight. By the time we reached a little platform overlooking a small part of the crowd the countdown started: Ten, nine, ..., four, three, two, one, Happy New Year. Several fireworks started to compete with each other. One was from the roof of the near-by hotel, another one was from the Edinburgh Castle. The castle itself was lovely to look at; situated on a rock overlooking the whole city and dipped into colorful lights for this festive occasion.

Minutes into 1997, I wanted to shake my body so we slowly worked our way to one of the stages. As we dove into the masses a woman reaches over and kisses me. I was a little bit puzzled for a second. Positively puzzled of course. Must be the local New Year's tradition to kiss strangers. A quick look around confirmed my thought. Pretty much everybody was kissing everybody. Guys kissing women, women kissing guys, and women kissing women. A very charming tradition, breaks barriers, opens up people, and puts them into a positive attitude and mood. I am a strong supporter of such open mindedness and liberalism. Some people of course took it a little bit too far, for my taste anyway. Some guys, like hyenas, just waited for the truly gorgeous babes and French kissed them until they ran out of breath. And there were tons of knock-out women. For a couple of hours we were making our way through crowds, dancing, and kissing. One of the Scotsmen dressed in traditional kilt climbed up a light pole and started to undress. With bare chest and kilt he was swaying to the music 10 feet above the people. We all went crazy cheering him one.

After we had enough of the dancing we maneuvered through the masses from the New Town to the Old Town. People were everywhere, the Royal Mile between the Castle and the Holyroodhouse Palace was filled as well. The statues at the entrance gate of the Castle were used for snow ball targets. The kissing continued as the cleaning teams descended onto the town in large numbers. When we went home at 4 a.m. one could finally walk again along Princes Street without having to fight for room. Despite the mega crowd and all the booze, people were unbelievably friendly and cooperative. No fights, no senseless destruction, no violence. It was definitely a good start into 1997. Other cities and people could learn from this event. On the next day we heard on the news that this was the world's largest New Year's street party with 350,000 people. No wonder all hotels and B&B's were full. Given that Edinburgh only has 400,000 inhabitants a lot of out-of-towners and foreigners had to participate. Only 20 people were injured, sensational. Since none of us knew about the street party or its size, I have to add that the unplanned parties are always the best.

Celebrating the New Year is a very strong and old tradition. The Scottish name for this tradition is Hogmanay. The name might be derived from the Anglo-Saxon Haleg Monath (Holy Month) or the Gaelic oge maidne (New Morning). Hogmanay was a feast more celebrated than Christmas. Presents were exchanged on January 1st. Only in the 19th century did Christmas overtake Hogmanay in importance. The presents themselves were called hogmanays.

The final highlight on the way home was the Hadrian's Wall. Once it run from coast to coast, today only a few hundred yards and a few tower ruins are visible.

Just as touted by the tourist agencies, Scotland's beauty and attraction lie in its nature. The Highlands are unique in form and impressions. Beautiful cities like St. Andrews and Edinburgh complement the natural elements. The people are tough and rough and above all friendly.