The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Cromarty Firth fishy tales
On Monday, the Doyenne and I had a very wet drive home after a visit to son Robert and his family on the Black Isle. It was tipping it down when we got up and it turned out to be a day of biblical downpour. Black, rain-swollen clouds greeted us round every corner and the summits of the Lecht and Cairn o’ Mount were shrouded in impenetrable fog. Only the hardiest – or perhaps lunatic – cyclists had ventured out.
My favourite travel writer HV Morton described such a day so much more colourfully in his classic travelogue, In Search Of Scotland – “It was a wet day. The clouds hung so low over the hills that it seemed possible to stand on a chair and touch them with a stick. The thin rain came slanting in successive windy sheets, wild gusts flung themselves round corners and appeared to be cast upward into the air again by the violence of the wind. The whole countryside seemed prostrate in grief. There are days like this in Scotland when earth and sky abandon themselves to sorrow…”
Rescue dog
Cooped up in the car for the journey, Inka was ready for his walk when we got home – still in the bucketing rain. It was the sort of weather that brings out an epidemic of hats on ladies. Not just ordinary hats that you might see walking down the High Street, but fierce, confrontational hats clearly intended to intimidate strong men. They are worn low on the forehead so you have no idea who is beneath them. You see them in glossy, sporty magazines usually on ladies with dog whistles round their necks and packs of labradors or spaniels at their heels. I met such a hat while walking Inka on Monday. With her wellies and long stockman’s waterproof coat I should have had no idea whether or not to tip my cap to the lady if I hadn’t recognised her dog. So a potential etiquette crisis was avoided – thanks to a dog.
Evergreen journey
It was so different from the journey north. We had a call to make in Pitlochry so we took the road to Dunkeld to join the A9. You’d never guess the country is just coming out of lockdown from the lines of traffic travelling nose to tail up and down the Great North Road. It’s not often we take this route as it adds 50 miles to our journey. But driving up it again confirmed it is one of Scotland’s most spectacular roads. You hardly hear the A9 called the Great North Road these days, but great it is. It follows the general route of one of the historic drove roads down which huge herds of the old black Highland cattle – kyloes, they were called – were driven for sale at the great cattle trysts, or markets, at Crieff and Falkirk. It’s a journey that has never lost its freshness and we never tire of the ever-changing landscape of the “mighty Grampians whose very name is a gallop of wild horses – remote giants guarding the Highlands of Scotland”. Once past Dalwhinnie, the road runs through a wide strath with the peaks of the Monadhliath Mountains rising up ahead. Then you’re driving through Drummossie Muir with its bloodsoaked memories of 1746 and Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Highlanders’ crushing defeat at the hands of Butcher Cumberland’s Hanoverian army at Culloden. There could hardly be a more dramatic and romantic introduction for visitors driving to the Highlands.
Gone fishing
Weather permitting we were looking forward to a morning’s mackerel fishing in Robert’s new boat which he keeps moored at Cromarty. It had been too long since I’d been out on the sea and I was looking forward to our trip. There was also the chance of seeing bottlenose dolphins which come into the Cromarty Firth to feed and often keep company with the boats, surfing alongside the bow waves.
Word had gone out the mackerel were running. A local fisherman had been catching them the previous day. I should have known the moment I heard it – they were catching them yesterday and you’ll likely catch them tomorrow, but catching mackerel today – that’s just to encourage the tourists. So, no mackerel and no dolphins, but I had a marvellous trip with the sun on my face and feeling the movement of the boat under me.
Meantime, grandchildren Cecily and Fergus took Doyenne granny to eat pizza. By great good fortune Cecily had her father’s wallet so Robert paid for the meal.
Covid has made us all very conscious of the importance of family. The Doyenne and I count our blessings that we have all our family in Scotland and now that lockdown is easing we are able to be with them.
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They were catching them yesterday and you’ll likely catch them tomorrow, but catching mackerel today – that’s just to encourage the tourists