It's Sunday night here, and I'm back in St. Andrews! The weekend trip my study abroad program led to the Highlands was magnificent! Below are some highlights:
We saw a bit of this, to me it seemed like the classic "Scottish Highlands."
A nice waterfall, much of these woods reminded me of New Hampshire.
I met up with this highland cow one day.
We stayed at a hostel in Inverness, Scotland's 5th largest city (population: 70,000) and "The capital of the Highlands"
We met a few hundred of these guys:)
I spent some time with this little guy:)
As well as this growing guy.
We tasted some whisky here,
And I did my best to search the waves of Loch Ness for Nessie.
The weekend began early Friday when we departed St. Andrews. It was the typical tour group/high school/college massive field trip group. 19 of us travelled from St. Andrews, and in Perth, a city north of here we met up with other groups of students from Edinburgh, Stirling, and Glasgow. There were over 100 of us, and we each had a kilted Scottish tour guide travel on our bus. Our tour guide, Ross, was wonderful and quite the Scottish nationalist. I think he converted most of us as well. Much of what he taught concerned the centuries-old shaky relationship between Scotland and England. He described that all residents of the U.K. (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) are 'British,' but only those from England are 'English.' He described wars and massacres over leadership of Scotland, the oppression of Scots under English rule, the wars between clans in the Highlands, as well as how the Scots collectively feel about past English monarchs. It almost felt a bit like the American Civil War, with the North perhaps being less keen on Robert E. Lee, and the South less keen about Gen. Sherman. (Did I just label myself by using Gen. to refer to one but not the other?) While Ross didn't cover it much, since arriving here over a month ago, I've heard a bit about and have tried to read about the Scottish referendum vote which will take place in the Scottish parliament in 2014. I don't know too much about it besides that Scotland plans to seek full independence from Great Britain, a bit like Ireland. Currently, Scotland is a part of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and that would change if the referendum is passed. I'm curious what it would do for Scotland's currency, as the pound I believe is much stronger than the euro currently.
From Perth, we travelled to Pitlochry, a cute town which is described as "the center of Scotland," it's in about the middle of the country. While there, I ate this tasty mozzarella, pesto and sundried tomato panini. It came with a clover-like salad that was quite good.
Pitlochry.
From there, we drove up to Blair Castle.
An entirely white castle, it was quite beautiful. I was able to find a little bit of foliage outside which was lovely, and parts of the castle dated to the 1200s. We weren't able to photograph within the castle, but several of the rooms were filled with every type of medieval weapon possible. The walls were adorned with swords, knives, guns (more modern not Medieval..) and suits of armor. While the castle is currently not in use, Scotland believes strongly in bloodlines and clans (families, last names), and when the direct bloodline of the clan that once occupied the castle died out when several of the Castle's heirs did not have or could not have children, a recent search unearthed a distant cousin of the direct bloodline living in South Africa. Now, a South African family is the direct heir and owners of the Castle.
Blair Castle.
Foliage! And menacing skies...
One of several guards of the castle.
A woods walk to a waterfall later felt very much like New England in the fall. The walk was in Hermitage, Scotland, and we learned it was the childhood summer home of Beatrix Potter, and provided the inspiration for Peter Rabbit.
Arriving in Inverness, the enormous-American-college-tour-group-feeling set in when we were fed a ton of pizza. It brought me back to my Defender days in Journalism labs this past spring when tons of pizza was provided. This pizza was tasty, but reminded me that I hadn't really ate pizza since my journalism days.
Inverness was nice. Soon after arriving, I met up with a group of seven others and we walked around the small city for 2.5 hours, and then settled in a pub called Hootananny's. I ordered a pint of pear cider which was sweet and delicious, and we heard traditional Scottish music performed. I've written before about it, but the alcohol scene here is very different. It's classy and contained, and being 20 where the drinking age is 18 is nice. Walking into Hootananny's, I showed the bouncer my New Hampshire drivers license that I've used here for my ID (as it says boldly in bright red, 'Under 18 until 2010' and 'Under 21 until 2013,') and he said loudly in his thick Scottish accent, "Well! New Hampshire!" While I don't drink here all that frequently, I do wonder what it will be like returning to a country where I cannot drink. We headed back to the cozy hostel early for some sleep.
The unicorn is the official animal of Scotland. This stone unicorn stood atop a monument in Inverness.
A suspended bridge over a river running through Inverness. It was shaky!
The next morning involved an early stop to Culloden, a bit like the Scottish version of Gettysburg, I gathered. I can't completely recite the entire history, but on the battlefield, government troops of the English met the Highlanders, a collective of men from the Scottish highlands, fighting for Scottish independence. After 45 minutes of battle, 50 English government troops had died and 1500 Highlanders had died. All wounded Highland soldiers were killed on the battlefield, and residents of the Highlands were forced to bury the dead in mass graves at Culloden.
A cottage at Culloden with a thatched roof. The cottage existed when the battle occurred.
The next stop was my absolute favorite part of the weekend. A Scottish sheepdog farm! This area looked more like the traditional highlands I had expected, and consisted of a sweet family of farmers who live on government land in the Highlands. They described that all farming land in Scotland is government land and they work for bosses. The husband-wife team consisted of a traditionally Scottish Highland man and his younger wife who (surprise) visited the farm as an American study abroad student for the day about fifteen years ago. She returned and they have three sweet children who were around throughout the visit. Together, they keep about 2,500 sheep and sell the wool to the British wool market. They described that the only things they own are their sheepdogs. They have 18 of them, and use them to gather the thousands of sheep and move them to different pastures. The dogs each go through two years of training and each of the 18 has a different whistle command for herding the sheep. The husband who trains the dog has won a few sheepdog competitions too. We watched a few demonstrations and met several puppies. :)
I worried here that the sheep was about to be sacrificed in front of us with that medieval-looking metal instrument at the bottom, thankfully, he was only demonstrating how to position a sheep to shear him or her the old-fashioned way, with scissors.
More scissor-shearing.
Seven dogs at prepared to herd!
At one point, that black horse deep in the background got closer to the sheep, and one of the sheepdogs chased/put him in his place.
Later we visited Glen Grant distillery. All of the ingredients for the whisky were sourced locally and the factoy smelled very good. A tasting was involved, and I had never tasted whisky before. I always associated it with pirates and/or very old men. I mixed in a bit of water, swirled it in the glass and in my mouth, and took small sips. It was tasty. Very strong, and it numbed my lips, but it tasted pretty nutty, sweet, and fresh.
Earlier today, we visited Loch Ness and a castle on the banks of Loch Ness before heading back south. I had been hoping to gain some Loch Ness/Nessie knowledge, and I found it interesting that Loch Ness is the deepest lake in the U.K. at 700 feet (whoa!). The legend with Nessie is certainly murky, but best described as Loch Ness emptying into the ocean, being extraordinarily deep, and having a high peet content meaning submarines can only see a few feet in front of them when exploring. Nessie is realistically believed to be some sort of species of eel that could transition from the ocean to Loch Ness, and supposedly is seen about once a year, although not completely in the type of dinosaur/monster image we hold of him. The most famous photo of Nessie in the 1930s as a large sea monster was proven to be fake, and the first reported sightings of a sea monster in the 500s are too old to prove true or not.
Views from Loch Ness!
Julie and I. :)
This was on our trip back to St. Andrews. It most closely resembled my image of the traditional Scottish highlands.
All in all, it was an amazing and wonderful trip! I'll be hitting the books now for awhile (or, in the case of creative writing, writing the books), and am looking forward to my wonderful German friend Lydia's visit mid-week!
Thanks for reading! :)
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