Day 47: On Mountains and Midges

I’m retracing my path of yesterday towards Lochinver, along the single track roads up in the mountains. The Munroe mountains are said to be the highest in Scotland. Today with the lowering clouds you can’t see the peaks.

And although the weather is wet it’s still beautiful here.

At Scourie I met a new friend. 

I call him Boris and his mate Trump. Don’t know why – it just came to me. 

Most of this area is a designated National Geo Park – an area of considerable scientific and geological interest and you only have to look at the rock formations along the way to get an idea why. 

 

The National body responsible for looking after the area are brilliant at creating parking spaces all along the route where you can stop, look at the landscape and read the information boards telling you about the glaciers and the formation of the country. With no towns, no shops and little visible agriculture, this part of Scotland is all about the outdoors: biking, cycling, walking, (sometimes both)

-nature watching and camping.

This camper was under an enormous road bridge over the river Assynt. 

On the subject of camping, the Dutch caravan club was also on annual manoeuvres this morning. I counted a convey of 32 cars pulling caravans and the odd Camper van thrown in for variety, heading towards Lochinver. I understand they come over every year. The mountains must be a major draw to the Dutch. They have barely anything even remotely resembling a hill let alone mountains of such majesty as these. 

I passed by several very small hamlets and the very photogenic ruined Ardvreck castle. 

All of a sudden as I crested a hill, there was Ullapool laid out straight in front of me looking as if it was floating on Loch Broom. 

Ullapool is really nice and very white, virtually everywhere is painted white including the Indian take away. 

The owner of a lovely Gallery told me it was because in the past all the houses were painted with lime wash to preserve them from the salt. Now the old part of the town is a conservation area so the white painting is set in stone so to speak. 

There is a large modern Ferry terminal on the harbour because the ferry sails to the isle of Lewis. as well as smaller boats taking day trippers round the Summer Isles. 

Sounds so lovely but here is the reality of Scottish summer today. 

I was expecting it to be a bigger town but it is small with lots of galleries and gift shops and of course the inevitable fish and chips.

Very nice and freshly caught, but expensive. 

Like everywhere else on the coast of Britain there is a long history of fishing here.  In the 1970’s Ullapool became the base for many eastern European factory ships known as the Klondykers, who processed the mackerel that small bought caught and transported them back to their home bases. 

 

They are no longer part of Ullapool’s economy, but I saw Spanish fishing vessels in the harbour loading crates and crates of their catch directly into Spanish refrigerated lorries ready to return to Spain. Why? The cold water. Seafood is very popular in Europe and these waters produce the best lobster, crab and langoustines anywhere and are in very high demand. I don’t know quite how that works – European fishermen fishing off these waters and sending the catch out of the country -  but I suppose since no-one is rioting, it must work somehow.

The other large European presence in town today were the French 2 CV club. Apparently they often come to Scotland. 

The town was full of tourists today and some of the cafes were struggling to serve people. This is what the woman in Lochinver was implying when she said these towns don’t really have the infrastructure to deal with sudden influxes of visitors. Particularly when they are so irregular that they can’t be foreseen. There is almost no-one in the winter.

This is Polly Hoad. Polly doesn’t do white. She does unlimited colour. 

Her little shop is every hue imaginable. 

Polly has had a very interesting life so far. She was a light house keepers wife bringing up her family in very remote places. She studied art and textiles as a young woman, hence her love of colour. And every winter she shuts her home and her shop and travels the world looking for lovely things to bring back. She has recently commissioned a range of leather handbags which she designed. 

She had an accident a while ago and that left her with an element of brain damage, a useless hand and partial sight loss but that does not deter her from her travelling alone to places like India or Peru for her crafting. 

Polly weaves. 

This year as soon as her feet touched down at Inverness she made the decision to leave Scotland for Portugal where she plans to open a weaving studio teaching just four students at a time – in the warm sun. 

So her house in Ullapool and her business is up for sale and she is willing to act as mentor and buyer for the new owners if they want her to, for a period of two years from the sale. Sounds like a plan. 

If anyone out there is interested get in touch with her on: 01854 612439 or polly@ucolour.co.uk

When Scots on the East Coast heard I was continuing my travels by going along the top and down the west they told me that the West might have the beauty but it also had the midges. I see what they mean. In the damp they are out in force, clouds of tiny biting flies, so small you can hardly see them, nibbling away at any exposed part. The locals use a spray called Smidge. Boots don’t sell it. Tesco does. I will get some tomorrow first thing. 

Day 39: Buckie and Findhorn

Almost at my half way mark if I intend to complete this journey in 80 days.

My brother just asked me what the best bit has been and without doubt it has been about the people I have been fortunate to have met.

Sue and her delightful children in Flodden who are raising quail and sent me on a wonderful treasure hunt in the nearby villages. Lorna in Markinch who is so passionate about the refugees penned up in Europe that she is prepared to save for months to go out there to wash bedding and befriend. Helen who felt like a friend I had known forever. Vishnu and Rebecca who have one of the gems of Airbnb and all those rescued dogs. Janet Philip the architect who lives on a farm with her family and should be CEO of B....Homes and creating small but beautiful places for people to live. Rod Philip who cooks a mean venison steak and mows a pathway down by the river so people like me can stroll with pleasure.

And definitely the fishermen of Buckie. I am coming to them

But first Whisky!

Tonight I will be sleeping in a Large Whisky Barrel in the Findhorn Foundation. So I need to investigate a bit.

Whisky spelt without the 'e' is Scottish .

Whiskey with the 'e' is Irish and American (no idea how the Japanese spell it).

I am in serious whisky distillery country now. Not hard to find one round here. They are as common as castles and stone circles. As soon as I come off the single track road from Tillynaught and saw the A98, I was crossing it straight into the Glenglassaugh Whisky Distillery on a mission to buy a fab bottle of single malt for my friend Debs. (I got it Debs!)

I did the tour – just me and a lovely man called Mitchell who was my guide, but I was not allowed to take any photos.

Here is a photo of Debbie’s single malt instead.

It’s a very scientific process now, and this distillery buys in the 60 tons of malted barley every week, ready sprouted and cleaned of nitrates. Mitchell, once of the Scottish Department of Agriculture and Fisheries until he’d paid off his mortgage and could take life a bit easier as a whisky distillery guide, could have had a second career as a per fumier. He talked a lot about ‘nose’ and described images that floated into his head when tasting certain brands. I did a testing for a lovely perfumier in Hastings not long ago and we did the same thing; sniffed and said what images came to mind from the fragrance.

Apparently a bottle of Revival “has a sweet caramel and toffee nose with notes of nutty sherry, milk chocolate and honey, ripe plums, red berries and oranges.”

On the palate “it is sweet, rounded and creamy” with a finish that is “ medium with warming mulled wine spices sherry and caramel.”

He gave me a wee nip. Really? All those flavours? Sorry to report I couldn’t taste any of that but then I am no connoisseur.

I was telling the girl behind the sales counter about my experiences travelling the east coast and about Visit Scotland reps. not being totally thrilled with my views on Fraserburgh and Peterhead and she told me to go to Buckie to talk to the old fishermen who ran the Heritage Centre.

Like these two towns, Buckie was once a major fishing town. For every job at sea there were ten jobs on the shore: sail-makers, electricians, painters, carpenters,net-makers, ship builders and so forth.

Like everywhere else on the East Coast of Scotland it was the herring, the Silver Darlings. The fishermens’ wives could gut 60 herring a minute. It was whole family stuff for generations. From 1950, in Buckie at least, it went from Herring to white fish. The Common market ended all of that. The country was promised a wider trade potential (as both sides are preaching now actually) but no one told the fishermen and boat builders that their lives and livelihood would be destroyed forever. No more small wooden fishing fleets that they traditionally built themselves. Europe now told them how many fish they could catch and what size and what of their catch had to be thrown overboard.

Their boats, only 3 years old in some cases, where replaced by monster trawlers that could catch in one night as much fish as their fleet could catch in a season.

The Fishing and heritage museum is modern and very well set up for school visits.

It can seat 50 children at a time. The item that most fascinates the children is the dog skin that was inflated like a balloon and used as a buoy.

“Och, that’s nothing” confided my guide George, “we may have used dogs but we used to call them down the road Cat town because they used cats!”

The item that most struck me was that so often a fisherman lost at sea becomes unrecognisable  after a while in the water. Except by his jersey, knitted with love by wife or mother to a pattern of her own devising. It was that pattern that distinguished one drowned fisherman from another. Sad.

Buckie Fishermans Heritage has a magnificent internet archive of fishing boats and fishing families that are accessed by people from all over the world looking for family connections. It is a labour of love and has taken unbelievable hours to put together. They have over 8,500 photos and provide specific memory boxes to local fisher families in care homes who may have dementia - pictures of their family, their boat etc.

The Training Schooner Captain Scott used to train young people was the last boat made here. It is now in Oman. The centre has memories and a model.

All those skills, all that pride, all that expertise lost to Britain. It is insane. We are an island. We will never be anything else. Our mad excuse for ‘leaders’ have allowed all our manufacturing to die and be replaced with financial services. You can’t eat, or wear, or live in financial services.!!!!

To quote a first nation Canadian:

"When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river polluted, only then will we realise that one cannot eat money."

And what well paid staff run this centre of fishing and maritime excellence? None at all. They are all the old skippers and fishermen and lifeboat crew. And when they are gone – knowledge of that way of life is also gone.

I was shown round by George who had to be eighty if he was a day, and then by the secretary of the Buckie Lifeboat. He proudly told me that they had been out just last week to tow in a yacht that had lost power in bad weather.

He asked me to go with him to see the fishermens’ memorial.

It was in a tiny once disused chapel and was now a memorial to all the local fishermen who had died catching fish. There are dozens and dozens of names. Not in wartime – in the everyday business of catching fish. And some were so young and others were all from the same family. In the 1970’s they lost five boats and all crew.

Local crafts people helped make it happen. It is beautiful.

I had intended just to pop in to the Buckie centre and stay for a minute or two and take a couple of pictures and leave, but I was there two hours. Two hours well spent I think.

Now time to find some lunch.

Baxters is synonymous with jams and soup. The Baxter factory at Fochabers has a visitor centre that is charming.

They tell the story of James and Margaret Baxter who started the company and have a mock up of their first grocers shop in Fochaber

 

The current CEO is Audrey Baxter and she has a signature range of pickles and chutneys and fruit curds. Irresistible once you’ve sampled some even though my car is now resembling a gift shop!

There is a restaurant serving more than just their famous soup, and a whisky shop with hundreds of different local distilleries represented.

I stopped briefly in Elgin, and went on to my new home for one night Findhorn.

I have done workshops there over the years but it has changed and matured. There were some elegant and inspiring eco homes that are privately owned on the Park that put into proactive what this famous foundation believes in, principally sustainability.

My home for the night was in the Barrel Cluster, literally homes made from recycled whisky barrels, made in 1920 and used in a local distillery for 60 years.

I was in the smaller of the twin barrels know of course as the Baby barrel. It was basically a bedroom. Round with a platform bed reached by a ladder. It was gorgeous but I was nervous of falling off the ledge.

Findhorn is a spiritual centre founded by Peter and Eileen Caddy in 1962. It has grown over the years into a community of about 350 people, some living on site and others locally. It has a school based on Rudolf Steiner, a pottery, a community centre, and a shop stocking the new age gizmos books and fortune telling cards I recall so well as well as wonderful organic whole foods. The Universal Hall hosts musical and arts events for the locality as well as renowned workshop presenters. 

Richard Rudd of Gene Keys was here last week and my favourite American presenter Caroline Myss is due back again in late Autumn.