Unexplorable

This will probably a post with a lot of pictures.  I’ve already put a handful into a folder, and it doesn’t do the last few days justice so it’ll probably stretch into 40 odd photos.  Let’s get started on the last few days though, because they’ve been some of the busiest, most insane, and most beautiful days.  Well 2 out of 3 were.  One was more of a rest. I’ll get to that.

Monday was a day of lots and lots of Inverness/Loch Ness activities, starting with a mini road trip from Inverarnie to Drumnadrochit, where you can find the Loch Ness Center and Exhibition. There are two Loch Ness Monster attraction in Drumnadrochit and the Loch Ness Center and Exhibition is one of them.  The other is Nessieland, which didn’t used to be called Nessieland but something along of the lines of the Loch Ness Monster Exhibition.  This caused a commotion and they changed their name to avoid confusion.  To give you an idea of the rivalry, have a read of this http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/loch-ness-monster-centre-owner-1977664 .They’re about 200yards apart, both attached to hotels, and both include ‘studies’ (I use this term loosely because we visited Nessieland today) of the Creature(s) of Loch Ness.  Anyway, when I met up with the Sea Monster Expert in St Andrews, he advised visiting both just for the experience.  The Loch Ness Center and Exhibition was first on our list.

When we later relayed our experience at the center – which I will detail in a moment – to Rosalyn, she laughed and said “the further north you go in Scotland, the further back in time you feel like you are.”  She didn’t just mean in terms of remoteness, poorer internet connection and the age of the standing stones, but also the museum quality.  With a sigh she told us that it was a shame they had recently done up the Inverness Museum, because it was a classic. 

The Loch Ness Center and Exhibition – while wonderful, don’t get me wrong – was like stepping into a 1990’s Powerpoint presentation.  There were black lights and projections and light shows that were, at one point, considered crazy and novel.  It was great though, and really informative.  The whole thing was put together by a guy named Adrian Shine, who has a website (http://www.adrianshine.com/) and I’m not totally sure on how he wants to present himself.  Sea monster expert? Explorer extraordinaire? Loch Ness Monster skeptic?  Not sure.  The exhibition itself was very much on the critical, I-will-disprove-the-existence-of-this-creature side of things, which was fine, though not altogether fitting with the fact that one of the most famous sightings is from the hotel it takes up residence in.  My favourite room was a room at the end, where you can read heaps of old newspaper articles and listen to people recount their sightings.  My second favourite room was the giftshop which, after you’d listen to a Scotsmen dispel any possibility of the monster, was literally filled with green plesiosaur stuffed toys in varying sizes.

We finished up here and decided to head into Inverness for lunch.  We hit up a café called Girvan’s, as recommended by none other than Rosalyn, and had herby scones and candied parsnip soup.  From here we intended to visit the Victorian Market, but there’d recently been a fire nearby and the whole thing was a bit of a ghost town.  We ventured toward an old bookshop we’d been recommended called Leakey’s, which is an old Gaelic church filled with second-hand and antique books.  Apparently there used to be a café inside, but they removed it to make room for more books.  I found a few books on Scottish folklore quite quickly, and then spend a good half and hour trying to decide which one to purchase.  My suitcase is quickly becoming full of books and they’re not the easiest/lightest souvenir to travel with, so I really had to limit myself.

We then visited Lush, where I made great friends with the manager of the Lush Inverness store.  We joked about visiting Lush’s all over the world and said I’d come the furthest.  Nicholas ummed and ahhed over a perfume we don’t have in Australia and eventually bought it.  He denies being a Lushie but he totally is.

There were some standing stones nearby, and we’d figured sunset would be the best time to see them.  To pass the time, we went via Culloden Battlefield (and all I could think was Outlander because I’m terribly uncultured) and, although the museum was closed, we could walk around the battlefield.  Lots of people were there walking their dogs and disregarding the signs that asked for people to be reverent.  I suppose that only applies in business hours.  One man had three beagles (three!) and I pat them all.

The sun was starting to go down and dramatic shadows were being cast all over the field while Nicholas and I walked the track that outlined where the different armies stood and fought and died.  The air was thick with the strong smell of smoky coconut from the flowering gorse around us (the first gorse we’ve come across that’s been aromatic, because I think that often happens later in the season).  It was very calm, but we hurried on to see the Clava Cairns before nightfall.

Any real explanation of the purpose of the cairns, doesn’t do them a whole lot of justice.  They were three burial cairns, surrounded by stone circles, which symbolized that they were out of use – I think.  One of the cairns, the first you approach if you park your car in the designated carpark, was designed so that on the day of the winter solstice, the whole thing would light up, thanks to a roof made of a slab of agate.  I think it was agate. 

The whole scene was incredibly beautiful, but had this weird blasé-ness that we’ve only encountered in the Highlands: they had built the road to the farms behind the cairns THROUGH the stone circle.  One stone was on the other side of the road.  Another stone was standing solo in a nearby field and a cow was munching on some grass at its base.  It was completely strange.

Because of our rushing around and doing a million activities the day before, we slept way past our alarm the following morning.  When we finally got out of bed, we decided just to head to Dores to seek out Steve Feltham, the Nessie Hunter.  Our attempts proved fruitless and we sat in the Dores Inn carpark making elaborate plans for the bed and breakfast we wanted to build into the cliff-face of the loch.  We then went to Costa and I had a soy caramel cappuccino that had a volume literally greater than my entire head.  We had high hopes of driving to see another amazing sunset, but the sky had filled up with clouds and we were getting hungry, so we went back to Inverarnie and had a very early night, because we had a huge day planned for Wednesday.

Wednesday arrived really early.  We ate, and drove the hour to Glen Affric.  We hadn’t really heard about Glen Affric before we started planning our trip.  One night, before we left Melbourne, we had been flicking through our Lonely Planet guide, which described Glen Affric as the most beautiful Glen in Scotland.  From what we saw, we wouldn’t disagree.  It was still and serene and the water was like glass.  We didn’t stay to admire the loch for too long though, because we were heading vertical, up two Munros.

Craig met up with us, after Nicholas and I organised our pack and listened to a few more tracks of our audiobook – admiring the serene Loch Affric beside us – and we began the hike together.  It was originally meant to be 17km and take around 8 hours, but we somehow added a few more kilometers onto it, and a few hours.  I’ll get to how that happened shortly, I think.

We came across a large puddle that was playing host to five or six salamanders, who had come out of the mud to bask in the 22 degree sunshine.  We also came across an adder who wanted to do the same, but he saw us and slithered into the bushes.  Thankfully, we didn’t see another, because we were soon up on the mountain and wouldn’t be back down in a hurry.  Then again, I don’t think Scottish snakes are quite like Australian snakes and require an antivenin as quickly.  I wasn’t too keen to test the theory though.

We had hit our first Munro by lunchtime, and boiled up some water for cup-a-soup on the summit.  We could see a huge loch stretching out beneath us – I think it was Loch Mullardoch but I could be wrong.  The wind wasn’t blowing past faster than 10-15mph and it was still easily 20 degrees, so the weather was perfect.  We had a kilometer and a half of ridge to climb to the next summit, which was quite a bit higher than the first so we kept going.  Along the way we found all kinds of amazing rocks, some with Z-shaped curves that showed how they were formed, others that glittered like magic.  I particularly enjoyed those ones and filled my pockets with them.  I spent a good while looking at my feet and collecting pretty rocks.

There were soon fewer and fewer rocks a comfortable size to pick up – much less put in pockets – and I looked up to find a jagged, steep incline.  From a distance it didn’t look too bad.  In pictures, it doesn’t look too bad.  It was a solid ascent though, and it was icy and comprised of rocks larger than my shins, which made climbing over them a bit of an effort.  I got dizzy spells every time I accidentally looked down the cliffy edges of the ridge, so I only looked in front of me for the climb. 

Walking up this stretch of land really struck me.  At one point, Craig pointed to a row of inch-thin rocks protruding out of the earth. Some were sharpened to a point, while others were slightly smoother.  “They look like a row of teeth,” he said.

I could imagine being an early Scot, though, and walking up this terrifying terrain and seeing these rows of rocky teeth, and it made perfect sense that creation stories and folktales tell of giants turning to stone and devouring humans.  I was walking into the stony mouth of an ancient beast, and he could quite easily have spat me into the snow.

The glittery rocks that were weighing down my pockets continued to appear too: some the size of a man, and others crushed and littering the ground like flecks of glitter.  My immediate wish was to sprinkle it over my sweaty head and fly the final 400m.  Scotland feels completely magical sometimes.  Others it is terrifying.  On rare occasions, it is both and this was one of those times.

When it comes to hiking, I’m in it for the views.  I’m not the most agile or the most coordinated (especially when it comes to things like scree and scrambling and rock-hopping) and I don’t really enjoy being sweaty.  The view that awaited me was pretty worth it though.

When we got over the final stretch of vertical ridge – and I mean literally ‘got over it’ because it was a pile of jagged rocks – we saw a topless, 70-year-old Scotsman lying like an X on the ground.  We went over, said hello, and he started fishing around in his backpack for a camera, then asking Nicholas to take a picture of him.  He lay back down in his original position and grinned toothily up at the camera.   One of his shoelaces was broken and held done up by a piece of wire and small length of string.  His calves and thighs were the same size, only a knobbly knee giving any curve to his hardy body.  Craig and I spied a mountain range and body of water in the distance, and asked what it might be.  

“That’s Lochalsh,” he replied, pointing.  “And The Cuillin.”

He was soon pointing out Ben Nevis, the Atlantic Ocean, landmarks on Skye and various other points we might recognize.  He admitted that he’d been up the summit some 300 times and was enjoying the heat.  He gave us an alternative route down the mountain, which proved difficult, then hopped – literally hopping and skipping – down the mountain.

We walked a rough, exhausting terrain of bog and several burns (rivers) that Nicholas refused to carry me through, and he constructed me one very pleasant pass that I could jump over.  Thanks Nick!

We were starting to get a little bit too exhausted and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the bogg-hopping, when we spied the sun dip behind the mountains.  The whole sky started to glow a beautiful pinky colour and cast strange blue shadows over the mountains.  The moon was glowing and wafer-thin in the sky, accompanied by a single star.  We hurried back to the car (Craig had to pitch his tent in the dark!) and were startled by a herd of deer disappearing into the pine forest.

The drive home was very still and we listened to our audiobook until I fell asleep.  I woke a few times when I felt the car slow, and I instinctually thought we were back at Inverarnie.  One of these times, Nicholas had slowed to a stop because the road was blocked by a group of sleeping sheep.  We had previously seen a postcard emblazoned with the words “traffic jam in Scotland” and thought it was ridiculous.  We had to beep the horn several times before they scurried off the road.