The Scottish Highlands

The Highlands cover the upper third of the country of Scotland, some 10,000 square miles, roughly the size of Massachusetts.  Undulating moors, framed by mountains and etched by rushing rivers are roamed by herds of wild Scottish deer and Highland cattle, lumbering beasts with pointy horns and shaggy coats.  Driving along narrow single lane roads, you turn a corner and a white-sand beach with turquoise waters comes into view. Turn another corner, and a trail beckons through ancient woods with thundering waterfalls. Turn yet another and you’ll find yourself in a tiny loch-side town with a single inn. Inside is a flickering peat stove, a line of local ales on tap, and a clever cook who can rustle up a bowl of fish chowder or a hunk of braised lamb. Such encounters like these light your way through miles of incomparable wilderness, past sparse groves of Caledonian pines, once covering the heathered moors like a bristly green halo, their foliage reminiscent of Japanese landscape paintings.

Come to the Scottish Highlands not only for its stark natural beauty but for its history, unabashedly heroic and fairy tale-like.  This land, just six hours north of the capital of Edinburgh, is truly the great beating heart of Scotland.  It was here that William Wallace, Scotland’s national hero, and his fellow Highlanders, farmed and raised their families, forever fending off the English.  From here Wallace and the Highland Clans, swathed in tartans, finally swept south, defeating the English forces at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.  For a sense of that heroic fervor, watch the 1995 Mel Gibson film, “Braveheart.”

The Highlands were also the scene of the Jacobite Risings, between 1688 and 1746, when heroes like Rob Roy Macgregor—Liam Neeson in the 1995 Hollywood blockbuster—fought to secure the English throne for Bonnie Prince Charlie.  And, from the 1760s to roughly 1820, these lands witnessed the Highland Clearances when English lords seized the Highlanders’ farms. Today, most of the land remains in the hands of a relative few and there are more Scots in foreign places than in Scotland.

But the Scots survived along with their vast heartland.  One young Scotswoman I met, referring to the Scottish independence movement, spread her arms wide, gesturing toward the moors, mountains and lochs and declared with bravado worthy of Wallace: “Who else do we need, when we have all this?”

Though I could have tackled the narrow roads on my own, common sense got the better of me.  So, I signed on for the five-day “Highlands Explorer” tour run by Edinburgh-based Rabbie’s Trail Burners.  In sleek white Mercedes Benz vans, tours range from one-day visits to the Kingdom of Fife—where Prince William met Kate Middleton—to 17-day explorations of the Highlands and the northern islands.

I joined the tour in mid-spring, well before the summer tourist season, so there were only six other tourists in our 16-passenger van. Joining us was our driver, Ross, a wiry Scot in his early 40s with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Highland flora and fauna, and his co-pilot Emily, a lively strawberry blond in her 20s. North of Edinburgh, we crossed the Firth of Forth and that great red erector set of a bridge, the 19^th-century Forth Rail Bridge.  Our first stop was Dunkeld, its long main street lined with bakeries and butcher shops, tearooms and coffeehouses.  The town’s chief landmark is the 13^th-century Gothic Dunkeld Cathedral beside the River Tay. Along the riverside Braan Path, we hiked to Black Linn Falls, whose raging torrent inspired English poet William Wordsworth and German composer Felix Mendelssohn.

By lunchtime we were in the popular resort town of Pitlochry, “Gateway to the Highlands,” ringed by mountains and graced with pubs, shops and small hotels.  Amid the stone cottages of Blair Athol Distillery, I learned how single malt Scotch whisky is distilled, then browsed through the well-stocked shop featuring a commemorative flask depicting Prince William and Kate on their wedding day.  After lunching on salmon sandwiches and salads from The Scottish Deli, a couple of us ran into two strapping Scots headed to a wedding in full Highland dress, sprigs of purple thistle in their buttonholes.  I asked for a photograph and like most Scotsmen I encountered, they raised their chins, stuck out their chests and struck poses so full of manly Scottish pride that I had to smile.

Leaving behind the small towns of the Grampian Mountains, our van climbed into more rugged terrain.  Before us stretched Cairngorms National Park, the U.K.’s largest, home to red Scottish deer, wildcats and golden eagles.  Dwarf stands of birch lined the roadside, their branches waving in the wind like long tassels. Not far away rose the ruins of Ruthven Barracks, which the English built after the 1715 Jacobite Rising to police the Highlanders, who, true to form, burned it to the ground. Beyond the historic Culloden battlefield, where the English finally defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746, we crossed Glen Mor, the Great Glen, into the Northwest Highlands.  With its red-sandstone castle, Inverness lay at the meeting of the River Ness, Beauly Firth, and the Moray Firth, where, in warmer weather, dolphins, orcas and minke whales leap through the whitecaps.  We arrived at Loch Ness, home of the infamous monster, just as a brilliant sun broke through the clouds.  Although it is Scotland’s second-deepest loch, it is its largest by volume.  Incredibly, its 22-mile-long stretch could hold the water in all the lakes of England and Wales combined.  After hearing about the Loch Ness Monster for years, it was a thrill just standing beside the lake’s inky waters.

By twilight, we had pulled into tiny Ullapool, extending along the shores of Loch Broom, from where the big Caledonian MacBrayne ferries depart to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.  We checked into the Royal Hotel, a simple place with a lively bar adorned with deer antlers.  The next morning the glorious Northwest Highlands met us.  Following one lane roads north to the Assynt Peninsula, we hiked to the pebbly white shore beach of Lochinver through hundred-acre Culag Wood, home to otters and eider ducks.  Achmelvich Beach dazzled us with pristine white sands and a startling turquoise bay.  At wild, windswept Clachtoll Beach, I frolicked on the high dunes with a black-and-white border collie.

The grey stone ruins of Ardvreck Castle stood just south, atop a spit jutting into Loch Assynt.  After the Mackenzies seized this Macleod stronghold in 1672, it’s said that one of Macleod’s daughters jumped into the loch to her death and was resurrected as a mermaid.  Since one of the gals in our group had Mackenzie roots, we took turns photographing her before the ruined castle while several deer watched from the moors.  Later, at the waterfront Arch Inn, she and I celebrated her heritage with beef Wellington, and sweet sticky pudding with toffee sauce and salted caramel ice cream.

Bound for the Isle of Skye the next morning, we traveled along 200-foot-deep Corrieshalloch Gorge, passing the striking red-sandstone beaches of Torridon, and finally looping around the Applecross Peninsula.  At the big, whitewashed Applecross Inn, facing an endless beach, we feasted on prawns, crab, lobster, scallops and smoked salmon.

Motoring east along 2,054-foot-high Bealach na Bà, one of Scotland’s loftiest roads, then south, we finally crossed the bridge to the Isle of Skye, a Highland microcosm of moors and mountains.  In Portree, Skye’s largest town, I checked into the four-star Cuillin Hills Hotel on a 15-acre knoll overlooking the harbor and the distant red and black Cuillin Hills.  Then I headed down to a little harborside haunt called The Lower Deck for thick creamy seafood chowder known as cullen skink, mussels in garlicky white-wine broth and a bottle of golden-brown Skye Ale. Skye’s west coast was on the next day’s agenda.  At Dunvegan Castle, a Macleod stronghold for 800 years, are one-of-a-kind heirlooms like the Fairy Flag, a tattered yellow silk banner with small red “elf dots” that supposedly protected the Macleods in battle.  Also here: the Dunvegan Cup, presented to Macleod chief Sir Rory Mor for helping the O’Neils of Ulster fight Queen Elizabeth I in 1596, and the Amen Glass, given to Donald Macleod for helping Bonnie Prince Charlie escape to Skye after the 1746 Jacobite Rising.  In summer, the Macleods run boat trips across Loch Dunvegan to islands where Atlantic grey seals bask.

At Skye’s westernmost reaches, it was an easy climb up Neist Point, jutting into Moonen Bay. Frequented by whales, dolphins and porpoises, it’s where the 1996 film, “Breaking the Waves,” was filmed.  On the east coast, the stony pleats of Kilt Rock rose 180 feet above the Sound of Raasay.  Inland, in the rocky Quirang, sheep grazed in bucolic Fairy Glen, shaded by Caledonian pines, and covered with dwarf crowberry and bearberry bushes.

I saw many of Skye’s highlights in two days.  Next time, I’d pony-trek through those wild, rocky lands, taste whisky at Talisker, Skye’s sole distillery, and browse through the island’s pottery shops.  For now, I was headed back south to Edinburgh.  But not before shooting a parting glance at those famed Highland peaks, The Five Sisters of Kintail, and visiting 13^th-century Eilean Donan Castle, at the confluence of three mighty sea lochs—Loch Alsh, Loch Duich and Loch Long.

www.visitscotland.com

The country code for Scotland is 44.