Conquering Scotland’s remote north
From beaches and barrows to mountains and lochs, the landscape utterly seduces
SCOTLAND- When one mentions plans for a 3,000-kilometre road trip around Scotland in November, most people react by talking about rain, roundabouts and driving on the wrong side of “terrible” roads.
Then they suggest that it would be better to just stick to Edinburgh.
“The north,” they say, “is beautiful, but there’s nothing there.”
It had been a year almost to the day that Mathea and I did just that, and as lovely as Edinburgh is, the Scotland we wanted to see lay north where rumours of beaches, barrows and haunted caves beckoned.
So, on a wet November morning, with guide book in hand, a prayer and bumper-to-bumper insurance on our little rental, we were off.
Our goal was to see it all, to conquer Scotland — in nine days.
Doable we thought, given that Scotland is one-twentieth the size of Quebec.
During the next few days, we would pass from bucolic farmland to a country of sheer-sided mountains with tops bathed in grey cloud.
Taking advantage of Scotland’s camping-friendly, right-of-way laws, we would pitch our tent in rust-coloured moors shot through with deep, green pines and gaze at golden larches mirrored in stunning lochs.
Scotland’s landscape turned out to be as varied and wonderful as any of its cities.
Every glen brimming with stories so ancient, their origins fade into darkness.
Every loch has its tales of a tragic drowning.
Every town its kirk and castle, and every field its mysterious Pictish stone. Walk even the most mundane-looking path in Scotland, and you’ll soon find a Tourism Scotland board explaining that it was once the site of a battle or the favoured path of a laird.
We camped on the tiny Isle of Mull in the shadows of a haunted castle. We hiked in the highlands. We sipped Scotch metres from its water source, and watched waterfalls of mist plunge hundreds of metres to the sea on the Isle of Skye.
But when we’re asked the inevitable, “What was your favourite part?” question, it’s the night at Sandwood Bay that stands out.
Named by Vikings, home to mermaids and haunted by the ghost of a shipwrecked sailor, Sandwood Bay, like much of Scotland, is shrouded in a mix of fact and legend convoluted to a point where the line between truth and myth is as hazy as the salt spray.
Near the end of the seven-kilo- metre hike, the sound of crashing waves joins the smells of salt and peat carried by the restless and relentless North Atlantic wind.
The pounding gets louder until, as you climb a small hill, kilometres of golden sands unfold below.
Here, on the rough north coast of Scotland, is one of the most beautiful beaches either of us had ever seen.
We made our camp atop a grasscovered dune, five metres above the beach and North Atlantic.
We were alone on a huge beach under a clear mid-November sky.
“I can’t believe we’re here.” “Me neither.” Above, the Milky Way slowly emerged, and far to the east, the lighthouse at Cape Wrath winked at us.
There was no mistaking it. We had found what we were looking for.
This was the north. This was Viking country.
This is Scotland at its most remote and most seductive.
Of course, we didn’t conquer Scotland; it conquered us. Thomas Hall is an Ottawa-based writer. Read more at tomhall.ca. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @tomhallca.