April 13 & 14: Highland 'wildlife' & not going back in time
The infamous 'stolen' beanie (shown: washed and dried)
Memory is a really weird thing and
reflecting back to last week is a weird task.
We checked out of The Glen for genuinely the last time, and decided to
get southeast to Braemar. Given that the
weather gods were still against us and the ground was still wet and cold with
sleet, we decided to give another day of hiking a miss and head to the Highland
Wildlife Park to see some actual wildcats (also wolves).
In the last little while I have become very
skeptical of zoos and places that keep animals in captivity. While I think it can be really irresponsible
to keep animals confined for our pleasure, that’s probably the no. 1 way that
children and people develop a love for non-domestic animals and does a lot in
the way of inspiring people to look after animals. I was really keen to see wolves and reindeer
and, of course, the Scottish wildcats that are flourishing in their breeding
program, so we bit the bullet and went.
We were pleasantly surprised by the park,
which featured a ‘main reserve’ that you accessed by car, and a secondary
reserve that you could walk around. I
guess it makes sense that an animal park in the Highlands can have acres and
acres for deer to explore, so they’re not so cramped. The one place this became really obvious was
the polar bear area, where two male bears were policing the fence because they
could smell a female. My other
experience with captive polar bears is SeaWorld, which had a lot more water for
them to play in but was much, much smaller.
While my initial thought was that the area looked much less polished, I
came to realise it was far less contrived and tourist-driven and probably
suited the needs of the bears a lot better.
When we went to the talk about them and watched their feeding time, the
keeper gave us a bit talk about climate change and how we could help the polar
bears, before giving them lunch.
Arktos, the polar bear
Our next big stop was wildcats, which
looked like beautiful big moggies with stumpy tails and slightly squashed
little faces. They were very
fluffy. What Jackson Galaxy would refer
to as ‘a cat superhighway’ was built around the perimeter of the human viewing
area, so they could get a good view of what was going on. We were there at the right time for wildcat
feeding, and got a lengthy talk about the importance of keeping domestic cats
inside.
“Even if they’re desexed and can’t mate
with the wildcats,” the keeper said, “they’ve got more energy from all the food
they’re fed at home and then catch and kill the prey that wildcats should
eat. There’s not enough food leftover
for them.”
There are only something like 400 Scottish
wildcats left, and possibly only 10% of those are pureblooded wildcats. They can tell the lineage by DNA testing,
because wildcats have a different ancestor to our domestics, even though they
can breed together.
A Scottish wildcat, sniffing out the grouse the keeper hid for her
The next stop was the wolves. I like wolves. I have a huge tattoo of wolves on my right
thigh, because they’re one of the best animals in the world. For all the love I have for wolves, I’ve
never been able to see them in person.
When I did, I cried. It was The
Elephant House all over again, and I was blubbering away about how pretty the
wolves were and their soft little faces and how majestic they looked. I wish it was a graceful, tear rolling down
the face, “I’m a bit overwhelmed” kind of cry, but it was a snotty, shaking,
shivering one. Nicholas sighed and patted me on the back.
There were reindeer next to the wolves and
I had previously been really excited to see the reindeer, but was so distracted
by the wolves that I can hardly remember them.
There was a red squirrel scurrying around their enclosure and one of
them was scratching his antlers. The
wolves, though.
Majestic beastie
Two majestic beasties
We saw a very active wolverine, red pandas
munching on carrots and a fat, friendly little arctic fox who was simultaneously
determined to be our best friend and terrified of us. The temperature dropped about ten degrees and
everyone else left the park, but we did one last trip around to say goodbye to
the animals. We were probably the last
ones out, and the coldest. The heated
seats in our hire car are a godsend.
A red panda eating a carrot
An arctic fox mistaking a stick for his dinner
We thought we'd found the perfect campsite until we saw this sign
The trip to Braemar was very long and very
scenic and we ended up with not enough time to pitch a tent, so pulled off to a
viewing spot and slept in the car with our sleeping bags and heated seats. There’s not much to say about the afternoon,
but I fell asleep feeling very content and happy. The playlist was good, the views were good,
we saw lots of deer peering at us through the trees. All was well.
The next morning we popped into the
information center in Braemar to check on the weather, which warned us of high
winds – which we decided to avoid, so forwent a day on mountains. We decided to do the short drive to Aberdeen
but got side-tracked looking at our tourist map, which labeled stone circles
and other points of interest. It turned
into a day of finding carved Pictish stones and stone circles nearby (we later
found out that we could’ve picked up a map with an actual trail for these
stones from the tourist office we’d visited that very same day, but there’s
nothing like finding these things for yourself).
Our first stop was the Cullerlie Stone
Circle. MAINTAINED BY HISTORIC SCOTLAND,
the sign proclaimed. Historic Scotland
were in the process of maintaining (read: deweeding) the historic spot and a retired
farm dog had jumped the fence for some attention. In the distance we could see the newer,
younger, more spritely farm dog rounding up some sheep. The deweeding team couldn’t have been less
interested in the collie or us, so ignored us both while we threw sticks around
for him. We had a read about the stones,
which were placed above a crematoria as cairns, took a picture (featuring
Historic Scotland in action) and carried onto our next stop.
The Cullerlie Stone Circle, feat. Historic Scotland & a dog
The next circle we came across was probably
our favourite. It was labeled as the
Sunhoney Stone Circle on our map and we just about drove past it. Well, we did drive past it. Then we drove back past it the other
way. And again. And again.
Then, atop a small hill, I spied it!
There looked to be several huge stones erect amongst overgrown trees,
tucked behind a paddock where sheep were grazing. It was an almost complete recumbent stone
circle, completely unmaintained – we wondered why Historic Scotland weren’t
interested in this one – and somebody had visited recently and left a single
rose behind. The air was thick with the
smell of sheep and manure, and the trees twisted above the stones to form
intricate knots. It all felt very
removed from the small town of Echt just down the road.
Sunhoney Stone Circle
Sunhoney Stone Circle
Our next stop was only a mile or two up the
road, and was a better example of a well-maintained circle. It wasn’t dissimilar to the Sunhoney circle,
except that when the Christians had decided to perch churches around the
countryside, they’d put one right next to the circle. A couple of stones were missing, and the
kindly volunteer told us that one of the missing circles lay beneath the
altar. She invited us in for tea and to
see the church, insisting we sign the guest book (whose last visitor was in
February). Two middle-aged women were
outside placing pyramids made of crystal on the recumbent stone. I wanted to ask them why, but the little old
lady at the church had urged them inside.
There was a sign in a small room behind the organ that read “Try Church,
it might be your cup of tea” and featured a steaming cup of milky tea. The sign was next to a kettle.
The Stone Circle by the Kirk
The carved recumbent stone obscuring a graveyard
Next on our list was Whitehills, which was
a mile walk to and from, so we begrudgingly left our heated seats and attempted
to follow a mudmap to the spot. We got lost,
because maps clearly aren’t our forte, and had to go back and try again.
“This is a shit circle,” said Nick. We were a bit hot and bothered by this point,
and the circle had evidently been battered around a bit. More than one empty can of Irn-Bru lay beside
the recumbent stone. We head back down
and decided we would see one more circle (to make up for the disappointment of
Whitehills) and then head back to Braemar to find a camp.
Whitehills Stone Circle
Walking through the crumbly remains of Whitehills Stone Circle
Demonstrating the height of the stones flanking the recumbent
On our way to Easter Aquthories we got very
lost. We asked a friendly old man where
to go to find it and he gave us very vague (and very wrong) directions. We drove around for the better part of an
hour, before we gave up and decided to head home. We found it accidentally as we turned off to
find home (we later found out that there are very specific instructions to find
it in the pamphlet we didn’t pick up).
Lots of people were walking their dogs nearby. Scots love their dogs. I touched every stone I walked past, telling
Nicholas that if I disappeared, I’d definitely travelled back in time and he
needn’t look for me because I’d be shacked up with a Scotsman from the 18th
century. He said this was ok.
We picked up some groceries and saw a sign
advertising a Pictish stone in the area.
How bizarre, we thought. A Pictish
Stone in little old suburbia! We made a
quick detour and found it in a small park, surrounded by almost identical
houses, with little old Scottish women walking their little Scottish dogs. It was a bit surreal. I don’t think the Picts had this in mind when
they carved the stone, which was apparently to worship a local
saint/god/equivalent. All our detours
left us a bit late (again) so we were reduced to sleeping in the car exactly
where we had slept the night before.
Lucky the view was great!
Easter Aquthories Stone Circle
A Pictish Carved Stone with a suburban bus stop in the background
Not far from our 'campsite'
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