Springtime in the Scottish Highlands

Press, 12 May 1987, Page 20

Springtime in the Scottish Highlands

From

ROBIN CHARTERIS

in London

If there is somewhere more glorious than England in spring, it has to be the Highlands of bonny Scotland. Heather-dotted, stone-grey-housed, brown-bum-burbling, the banks and braes that were home to so many ancestors of present-day New Zealanders whisper of history and hardship, yet shout of beauty and serenity and solitude. A northward retreat into the land of Bonny Prince Charlie is an escapist’s dream after the crowded cosmopolises of Britain to the south. People, thrusting, shoving, demanding, sardinecanned crowds of them that so quickly exhaust the patience, melt quickly away on the romantic road to the isles.

At the south-western foot of the Highlands is everlasting Loch Lomond, its beauties captured for all time in song more than 200 years ago by a Jacobite supporter of the Young Pretender from a cold prison cell in Carlisle Jail. Almost 40km long, eight wide at its broadest point and 200 metres below sea level at its deepest, this, the largest inland waterway in Britain, is peppered with islands and patrolled by enormous pike. Like Loch Ness, Lomond has its own monster, a fabled fellow far larger than the 21kg pike recorded in 1945 as the biggest catch ever made. Anglers are convinced that Lomond’s misty, mysterious, sub-aqua pastures are home to a huge pike which one day will bite off more than he can chew. In its southern reaches, Lomond is gently caressed by meadows and wooded farmland, but to the north are

ragged eagle-haunted Highlands and spectacular fiords. The Vikings plundered these shores and islands, manhandling their vessels over the three kilometres of land between Arracher and Tarbet which separate Lomond from salty Loch Long. The longboats are gone, but Lomond’s own little navy rules the waves today, rowboats and pleasure cruisers which ply as if the Edwardian era had never ended. In summer, the Countess of Fiona puffs a pleasant course from Balloch, calling in at villages on either shore. So like our Wakatipu’s Earnslaw, she and the bare rugged beauty combine to remind us that Central Otago, indeed much of New Zealand, is but Scotland reincarnate.

To the east this day, Ben Lomond punctures the puffy clouds of a hazy blue sky. The southermost of Scotland’s “Munros” mountains over 1000 m high - it is subject to dangerous moods of weather and is no gentle stroll for the unwary. Below its braes are Rob Roy’s cave and old oak woodlands which now mingle with the instant conifers of the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park. Nearby is the isolated village of Inversnaid, where a glimpse of the ferryman’s daughter more than than 180 years ago moved William Wordsworth to pen ‘Sweet Highland Girl.” Local guide books tell of more beauty and history. There is Callandar at the junction of the Rivers Teither and Leny — the Tannochbrae of “Dr Finlay’s Casebook;” Crianlarich, where Robert the Bruce offered thanks for his victory at Bannockburn; Dumbarton, just below the southern tip of Lomond, where the lovely Cutty Sark

was built and launched, and took' her name — Short Skirt” from an incident in Robbie Burns’s “Tam O’Shanter.” The quick 2000 km return trip from London, my wife, son and I were making to run in the new engine in our campervan before an overland journey to India and home later this year took us from Loch Lomond up through the sparsely-peopled western highlands to remote Mallaig and the first sailing for the season of the car ferry to Skye. Before camping overnight above a secluded beach, we had clambered over rocks at the mouth of the Sound of Sleat to the cairn which marked the spot from where Bonny Prince Charlie was rowed to a waiting ship and exile in France after the Jacobites’ defeat at Culloden Moor jn 1746. With the road at our backs, the view was exactly the same as it would have been for the saddened lad who, song and supporters still say, was bom to be king and who was leaving the mainland of Scotland for ever.

We too went over the sea to Skye, ours an easy 30-minute sailing to Ardvasar and the welcoming wail of an unseen piper. There was time only to see the southern tip of the island before ferrying back to the mainland at the Kyle of Lochalsh, but long enough /to appreciate its remote and peaceful grandeur. ' . ; ' A few kilometres to the east of Kyle of Lochalsh, the Macree clan’s imposing granite castle of Eilean Donan at the mouth of fiordal Loch Duich stops every traveller on the winding high-, way towards Invergarry, Invermoriston and Loch Ness. Reached by a narrow causeway over the tidal waters of the Loch, the immaculately-kept bastion has an un-

usual history. First built centuries before, it was held by a handful of Spanish soldiers supporting the Jacobite cause in 1719, only to be blown up by an English man o’ war. The ruined castle lay abandoned for almost 200 years until one of the Macree clan, fired by a vision he had as a youngster, rebuilt it stone by stone early this century. The task took many years and thousands of pounds, but today the castle is as solid as the rock it stands on and is lived in once again, now incorporated as well as war memorial to the Macree clan.

Down through the wooded delights of Glen Shiel and Glen Moriston, the excellent but empty highway takes the traveller to the heart of the Highlands, to mysterious Loch Ness. Search the stately waters as we did, we found no sign of the monster, not even from historic Urquhart Castle where a number of the many sighings have been made.

Close by the ruins of the castle, however, is the Loch Ness Monster Museum, which records all the known information and scientific evidence that strongly suggests its existence. A large, life-like model of Nessie floats in a pond outside, allowing all visitors to leave the narrow shores with at least something on film. In more sombre mood one travels south from Culloden through more mountains and glens riddled with raw beauty and yet more history. )•• The inescapable links between Scotland and New Zealand are everywhere, in the scenery, the names of people and places, in the glorious sprintime weather — and in the certainly of knowing this once was home. !