SS2:EB, Glasvegas

After wrapping up my collecting in the Callander area, I set my sails for Glasgow to meet my family at the flat we had rented for the week. Prior to that afternoon, I had never driven my car in a city as large as Glasgow--which, though small by American standards with a population of 1.2 million, is the most populous city in Scotland. Unlike Edinburgh or Stirling, Glasgow is a sprawling city with dozens of neighborhoods and suburbs comprising the metro area. It was a little daunting at first, trying to navigate my way around by memory, as I had neither a navigation system, nor a city road map, but I managed to find our flat with relative ease, just off the Great Western Road, and less than a half-mile from my old flat.

After locating our homebase, I parked my tiny car and skipped over to one of my favorite local cafes, Naked Soup, for a bite and to bide the time until my family arrived from the airport.


Here's our charming flat in a renovated Georgian townhome. When in the planning stages, I told my parents that we should stay in Glasgow for a week, using it as a base for surrounding towns and attractions in the Central Belt and southern Highlands. All told, we spent the better part of three days exploring the city itself, while the rest of the week we traveled further afield.

(Credit: Johnnyfer)

Naturally, I had to bring the fam to my old stomping grounds. In fact, I dragged them along the same route I used to take to get to class in the Philosophy building on Oakfield Ave., then took them around the central campus. For more information on the University of Glasgow's history and more pictures of its gorgeous campus, click back to this entry.

After touring the university, we strolled through Kelvingrove Park, which was bursting with wildflowers and greenery. According to locals I met on my travels, spring came very late this year. Scotland must have known we were coming and gotten herself all tarted up for our visit.

(Credit: Hopsi/Mum)

We continued our leisurely stroll through the park toward Argyle Street, the home of this russet beauty:



This imposing sandstone edifice is Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, one of the crown jewels of Glasgow culture. Kelvingrove was one of my favorite afternoon haunts during my semester spent in Glasvegas; I'd come in every so often, pick one wing or exhibit, and slowly wind my way through, absorbing every bit of information that I could fit in my noggin.



Not only are the exhibits top-notch, but the building itself is a masterpiece. When we visited, we were lucky enough to catch an organist playing the massive pipe organ seen above.


Heading toward the Natural History wing, there is a gaudy pop-art tribute the King. Naturally, everyone under the sun strikes a similar pose for pictures, as Johnnyfer is doing. Of course, I did the same thing on my first visit.

(Credit: Hopsi/Mum)

One of the very popular exhibits in Kelvingrove: the hanging heads. Dozens of heads with different expressions float above one of the wings of the museum.

Sadly, our time in the Kelvingrove was cut fairly short, as we had to rush back to our flat to meet a bag courier to pick up my mother's lost luggage. If you ever get a chance to visit Glasgow, make sure to allot a few hours to wander around this amazing collection.

Everyone in my family likes museums; we are all unabashed trivia/information hoarders. As such, there were several museums on the agenda for Glasgow. Later in the week, we made a trip to the Museum of Transport, which sits across Argyle from the Kelvingrove. My dad's an engineer, so naturally we puttered around the exhibits for about five hours. Toward the end, Jen and I got a little restless and started acting like assholes.



Yar, there be pirates here. Man, pirates are so much better than ninjas. Please take note of the bovine plush that we have sitting on our steering wheel. That's Duncan, a mascot of sorts. We did a sort of "traveling gnome" photo-project with Duncan throughout our trip, so expect to see him again.

After spending time exploring the West End, we made our way to City Centre for a visit to Glasgow Cathedral, George Square, and City Chambers, and also to do some shopping.


The front of Glasgow Cathedral, which was founded in the 13th century and served as the original site for the University of Glasgow. Surprisingly, much of the original architecture is still intact, having survived the Reformation that swept through Scotland in 1560. As in the case of Iona Abbey, the site of the modern Glasgow Cathedral has served as a religious center since the 6th century.

In the cloisters under the nave lies the tomb of Saint Mungo (St. Kentigern), the founding monk of the cathedral and, some say, the city itself.


Ooooooooooh, spooky. Actually, I really like the lighting in the cloisters. It lends a warmth to the otherwise cold stone.

After touring the cathedral and the necropolis behind it, we made our way to George Square so I could show everyone the architectural magnificence of City Chambers. The wings open to visitors are covered in rich, rose-colored marbles and dark, ornately carved hardwoods.



Later we tooled around Buchanan Street and Princes Street, the two main shopping districts in Glasgow, and rounded out our visit with a spot of tea at the Willow Tea Room on Sauchiehall Street.

The Willow Tea Room, along with several others around the city, are old tea parlors designed by Glasgow's own Charles Rennie Mackintosh, an architect whose work was integral in shaping not only the Scottish arts and crafts movement, but also the American arts and crafts movement.

(Credit: Johnnyfer)

Drinking tea and waiting for our scones with clotted cream and jam. I miss tea time.

(Credit: Johnnyfer)

Finally, to round out this bear of an entry, an inside joke for my family who are reading this and likely chuckling at this picture. Croutons, anyone?

(Edited to add: As I've mined my family's photos for this portion of the blog, I'll put a credit under their photos that I use.)

SS2:EB, Tyndrum and Callander

My last two days of solo travel were spent tooling around the heart of the mainland, primarily around the Callander area, home to the Trossachs. This slice of the country is considerably hillier than the Lowlands, but it is not as barren and unforgiving as the Highlands. Rather, the hills and Munros are surrounded by deep cut valleys and lochs, and glens are vibrant and teeming with plant and animal life.



Loch Awe, the longest freshwater loch in Scotland. (Technically, Loch Awe is in another council area than Callander, but I had to drive through the area to get to Callander.) Scotland has as many legends and mythologies as it does hills, and the area surrounding Loch Awe is no different. Loch Awe is located in Argyll and Bute, a large council area in the western part of the country. According to legend, the Cailleach--a winter goddess in Scottish mythology--created the mountainous landscape in Argyll and Bute by dropping stones from her large plaid apron. Loch Awe, it is said, was created when the Cailleach of Cruachan didn't cover the wellspring on Ben Cruachan, the largest peak in the area. A deluge surged forth from the mountain, drowning villages and filling in valleys, including the one seen above. Some people still speak of the Cailleach, usually when referring to a bitterly cold winter--which she brings by riding across the country on the back of a wolf--or a severe coastal storm.

Another legendary figure with considerably more historical authenticity hails from the Callander area, the great folk hero and Jacobite outlaw Rob Roy. In the tiny village of Balquhidder, in front of the ruins of the old Balquhidder church, lie the remains of Robert Roy MacGregor, his wife, Helen, and two sons, Coll and Robert.


The front edifice of the old Balquhidder church. Rob Roy's gravesite is usually quite a tourist draw, especially among Scottish Nationalists, but the morning of my visit was rather quiet, much to my delight.



Rob Roy and his family. Having devoted so much energy and attention to studying Jacobite history and Scottish folklore in general, I was a little overwhelmed standing before the tomb. Not that I did anything silly like cry over a centuries-dead Scottish cattle thief. It was just a little surreal, is all. I had the same reaction when venturing through the Pass of Killiecrankie, looking over Clifton Moor, and standing in Culloden.


As I said earlier, Rob Roy's grave is a sort of Mecca for Scottish Nationalists. When they visit, they leave coins behind so that the Scottish Robin Hood might disperse them to the down-trodden.

Another of my stops in the Trossachs was Bracklinn Falls, a short walk from Callander village centre.



Looking out over Callander and Strathyre. Although much of the area has been clear-cut in years past, right behind me was a lush, oakwood forest surrounding the trail to the falls.


I love when the canopy is so dense that it lends a viridescent glow to everything beneath it.

The falls were about 3km from the town centre, most of which was walked up a fairly steep incline toward the Callander Crags. Once you get to the falls, there are one or two large, flat stones that serve as platforms to view the rapids.


As I was standing on one of these stone decks, two young schoolboys came running up the trail, dropped their stuff on the banks, and began to strip off their school uniforms. I eyed them suspiciously, then asked if they were going to jump into the falls. Indeed, they were.

Now, western Scotland was experiencing a bit of a warm spell at this time, and even so, the mercury topped out at 68 F in full sun. Nonetheless, the mild temperatures didn't seem to dissuade them, nor did the prospect of death on pointy rocks at the bottom of one of the smaller falls. I decided I should videotape one of the jumps, just in case there was an inquiry into an accidental drowning.



The drop was about 12 ft, which isn't terribly huge--if you're diving into a 30 ft pool. There is a fine line between recklessness and stupidity, and these boys are tap-dancing on it. (Dear Lord, I sound like my mother.) In any case, they were an entertaining pair, and they gave me some good tips on where to find the best lentil soup in the village.

And so, we have come to the end of my first two weeks in Scotland. I was going to miss my little steed greatly, but I was looking forward to meeting these guys in Glasvegas:


That would be Johnnyfer, Hopsi, and Hendry on the trans-Atlantic leg of their flight to Scotland. (Apologies for the blurry picture; not being there, I couldn't be all anal about image quality.) Don't they look pumped? Stay tuned for my Scottish adventures with the whole clan.

SS2:EB, The Holy Island of Iona

Returning from my little puffin paradise on Staffa, I had the option of setting down directly on Iona instead of taking the boat back to Fionnphort on Mull. The sun had risen higher in the sky and burned off most of the cloud cover, allowing the full beauty of the inner Hebridean waters to shine through. Not many people expect to see water this shade of blue in such a northerly latitude. Oh, Scotland, you're just a bowl of surprises.


Likewise, most people think the tropics have the market cornered on white sand beaches. Not so, as any postcard from Iona, Uist, Lewis or Harris will attest. If I didn't know any better, I might think that the following picture was taken somewhere in the Caribbean, what with its clear waters and jauntily colored fishing boats. I might imagine the person who shot this photo was reclining under a ridiculously over-sized resort umbrella, sipping fruity cocktails, and enjoying the warm, head-numbing buzz that can only come from the mixing of alcohol, dehydration, and mild sunstroke. (Ah, vacay.)



Alas, I know better. There were no umbrellas on the beach--and certainly none in my drink--as it was a toasty 54 F on Iona. Normally, this is approaching the lower bound of my "Kathryn's preferred ambient temperature" range, but I made do. I own a heavy, lined sailing jacket for one reason: it's perfect for Scottish weather. Thus, I have to make frequent trips to my favorite wee country to justify owning such heavy duty outerwear.

While the mid-50s might be brisk to me, there were plenty of other metazoans that were perfectly comfortable. My favorites were the ones I found in the tide pools, like these gorgeous vermilion anemones.


At first, I wasn't sure what these tiny little Actinarians were. However, when I touched one, he retracted his little tentacles before slowly letting them unfurl once more. (For a full appreciation of just how pretty these little guys are, click the picture to enlarge.)

While I'm usually perfectly content to wander around and pester nature with my constant prodding, coastal flora and fauna were not what initially drew me to Iona. Iona has a very special history, not only for Scotland, but for most of western Europe. This small, holy island was the birthplace of Christianity in Scotland, and has held great religious significance since the 6th century. (No, that's not a typo.)

St. Columba was an Irish monk who sought to spread Christianity to the Picts that ruled most of northern Britain. In 563, he landed on the Mull of Kintyre but did not set up shop there, as the Irish had colonized much of western Scotland for centuries. Instead, he moved on to the Hebrides, finally settling in Iona, where he began work on his abbey. Although the original church was lost, the current abbey, built in the early 1200s, stands on the site of the first Columban church.



Unfortunately, the abbey was undergoing some intensive restoration, so most of my pictures are marred by scaffolding and tarps. The preceding photo shows the entrance to the nave, with the abbey's well in front. Just in front of this edifice is a towering 1,200-year-old Celtic cross carved from a three-meter block of sandstone.

Iona was important as a center of ecclesiastical learning in early Christian Europe. Monks from all over the Continent would travel to tiny Iona to study and pray with Columba and his monastic descendants. According to several sources of varying veracities, much of the Book of Kells (one of Ireland's most prized religious and historical relics) was illustrated in the abbey on Iona.


A small reading room just off the nave in the abbey. A short, narrow staircase led to a door no higher than my shoulders. Christ, people were tiny back in the days of perpetual and inescapable malnutrition. Also, holy creepy photo, Batman.

Despite the abbey's advanced age, much of the original stonework is intact. These carvings onone of the interior columns are thought to date from around 1200.



Scotland has a rich history of bloodshed and bellicosity*, so like most medieval structures in the country, the abbey has seen its share of violence. In the early ninth century, a Viking raid on the island left every resident of the abbey dead. Over the next few decades, bands of Vikings repeatedly pillaged Iona and the surrounding islands.



The cloisters of Iona, which were added several centuries after its establishment. Cloisters are my favorite part of medieval cathedrals. I think it's the symmetry and the repetition that appeal to my OCD. If only I were kidding. (Sigh.) All around the interior walls of the cloisters were the remnants of stone crosses that had adorned the site throughout its 1,500 years of service.




St. Oran's Chapel, the oldest original building standing on Iona. This small chapel dates from the mid-twelfth century, but the cemetery around it is considerably older. Further, the graveyard holds the remains of nearly 50 kings of Dalriada, one of the ancient kingdoms of Scotland.



Finally, the remains of the Iona Nunnery, built in 1203. Sadly, like many of the religious structures in Scotland, the nunnery and the abbey fell victims to the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries. The nunnery took the brunt of the abuse and was not restored in the same manner as the abbey.

There is plenty more to see on Iona than just the abbey and the ancient religious structures. The island itself is a beautiful patch of land in an already stunning locale. However, there is a certain tranquility in this one area of the island that is hard to recreate elsewhere. Though the summer crowds hadn't yet arrived on the island, I was far from alone when touring the abbey and the surrounding ruins. That being said, you can't help but turn inward when standing in the cloisters, the stone relief of the column cool under your hand, while the sun peeks through the cloister arches and warms your face. Iona is one of the world's magical, timeless places that leaves you not only with a better sense of history and culture, but also a better sense of yourself.


* Easily one of my favorite words of all time.

SS2:EB, Staffa

While on Mull, I planned to take side trips to two of the outlying islands. Early my first morning there, I took a charter boat to Staffa, a rocky uninhabited island about six miles off the coast of Fionnphort.


The boat chugging ahead toward Staffa, which can be seen as the darker mass in the background. The trip there was a fairly short at just under an hour. Along the way, the captain and his cute-as-a-button first mate pointed out various seabirds and seals milling about the tug. The Arctic terns had just returned from their winter vacations in Australia, a migration of nearly 15,000 miles. (Ridonkulous.) Guillemots and black-legged kittiwakes were also flitting about the sky or bobbing along the boat's wake.



Approaching Staffa with its two main geological features--Mackinnon's Cave near the center and Fingal's Cave at the right--showcased.

Fingal's Cave is an enormous sea cave formed by the same volcanic activity that created the other Hebridean islands. The walls of the cave are hexagonal columns of cooled igneous rock that meet in a natural arch at the top. This arrangement causes the cave to have acoustics similar to the nave of ancient cathedrals, trapping and amplifying the sounds of the waves lapping against the rock. Inside the cave, there is what can only be described as a melody from the sea. This melody was the inspiration for Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture.


If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you can see the columns of basalt much more clearly. These columns are similar in origin to the Giant's Causeway off the coast of Northern Ireland and Kilt Rock on Skye.

Despite the advanced age of the rock comprising the Outer Hebridean islands Lewis and Harris (Lewisian gneiss, ~3.3 billion year old), the rock comprising Staffa is fairly young at only 55 million years old. Iona, which will be covered in the next entry, is made of the same Lewisian gneiss formation as Lewis and Harris, and is thus considerably older than its near neighbor Staffa.



The disembarkation point. There really isn't a fixed pier or anchoring site on Staffa. Instead, ships pull in to this cove and let passengers alight as they wish.

Naturally, I chose to get off and make full use of my hour on the island. I immediately headed to the opposite end of the island where the brooding grounds were located. Staffa is a nesting site for several species of seabird, including the puffin, which was next on my Scottish wildlife bingo card.



The view toward Mull on the left and the island of Ulva on the extreme right.



The waters around Mull, Staffa and Iona were a brilliant turquoise, and clear to the bottom. Here, the color of the sea is muted as the clouds had yet to dissipate.

As I said earlier, I was ambling around the island in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a puffin up close. For those of you who have never heard of puffin, allow me to paint a picture of just how darling they are. Imagine a toucan and a penguin got wasted one night, had a momentary lapse of judgment, and bumped avian uglies. The resulting bastard child would be a pigeon-sized ball of squeal-inducing fluff.

Atlantic puffin--the kind I was in search of--breed in the early summer and lay a single egg in a burrow formed on the side of a cliff. When not brooding, they remain out at sea, soaring through the water like a penguin ("She got it from her mama" as the popular rap song of late might say). Both sexes have brightly colored bills, though they become brighter in the weeks preceding breeding season when beak plates grow in. These plates are then later shed.

Both parents tend to the burrow, but in the daytime can usually be seen floating on the water near their cliff, hunting herring and sardines. The captain of our boat gave me a few tips on how to successfully lure puffin to their burrows, the most important of which was to stand still near a cliff edge, thus scaring away the gulls. The mere presence of a human encourages the puffin to return to their nests, without fear of harassment from the noisy gulls that roost nearby. I took this advice to heart, found myself a burrow on a cliffside, and stood near it quietly. Three minutes later, this little guy popped up.



This stunning creature was perched fewer than six feet from me, keeping a watchful eye over his burrow and the treasure inside.

After he flew away and I ensured I had snapped a good photo of him, I proceeded to do a victory dance that likely frightened away most of the roosting birds in the area for quite some time. Thank goodness for uninhabited islands.


I then trekked back toward the boat, collecting along the way, and headed toward my next stop of the day, Iona.

Still to come from the Hebrides: the birthplace of Christianity, Caribbean(?) sands, and keeping friends close and anemones closer.

SS2:EB, Isle of Mull

After leaving the Mull of Kintyre, I ventured up to Oban, a seaside resort town that has frequent ferry crossings to the Isle of Mull. As I discussed with a few other people in my travels, Oban is one of my least favorite stops in Scotland. It is to Scotland what Blackpool is to England, or Branson, MO is to the US. It's kitschy and tourist-y and a pain in the ass to navigate.

Fortunately for me, I spent all of three hours there before hitching my ferry to Mull. Of course, some of my frustration with Oban could have something to do with the fact that I spent a good portion of those three hours looking for any place with internet access so I could email my final paper for my pathogenic microbiology course. I managed to find a small library near the harbour and sent my horrid screed on the minutiae of necrotizing fasciitis etiologies just in time to drive aboard the underbelly of this behemoth:


Eww, my windscreen looks foul. My poor little Hamish took quite the beating in the two weeks I had him. No telling what the cleaning though whe they got him back. (Honestly, it was just the driver's side that was all mucked up, thanks to my hiking boots and the perpetually wet terrain.)

Steaming ahead toward Mull, I went to the upper deck of the ferry to bid farewell to the mainland for the second time in my trip. The skies were overcast, and there was a light drizzle, but the Munros (mountains over 3,000ft) of Argyll could be seen in the distance.



On my first trip to Scotland, I had half-heartedly planned a trip to Mull, mainly to make my way to the holy island of Iona, the birthplace of Christianity in Scotland. I never made it to Iona or Mull my first go round, opting to go to Orkney instead. Once I drove off the ferry, however, I felt a slight tinge of regret for putting off this trip for so long.

Mull is an absolutely striking island with high, rocky cliffs, sandy coastlines dotted with brightly colored villages such as Tobermory, and a wild interior that seems so vast and desolate that it belies the island's relatively small acreage.



Sadly, the dual carriageway that extends from Craignure, the major port of Mull, to my stop in Fionnphort (Finn-uh-fert) only lasts for a few kilometers before turning into single-track roads around the perimeter of the island. As much as I love driving on single-track roads (it's fun, and people are so polite), it gave me very few opportunities to get out of my car and snap photos. Don't get me wrong, I took a couple hundred, but I'm quite selective when it comes to which photos I post on this corner of the blogophere. Can't have people thinking I'm an amateur.



The beach next to the teeny-tiny port at Fionnphort. This is also the view to which I was treated each morning, she says smugly.

On my second day in Mull, after arriving back from tours of Staffa and Iona (still to come), I managed to drive around the island a bit and get some fairly decent shots. In the next two, I loved watching the clouds pour down the mountainsides like a cascade, shrouding the peaks in mist. Regardless of where I go in Scotland, there is invariably something which will make me stop dead in my tracks, inhale sharply, and say, "Whoa." (I know, I'm a regular wordsmith. My poignancy knows no bounds.)



Later that evening, I was heading back to Fionnphort to sample some of the amazing seafood caught fresh off of Mull, racing the sunset.


The Ross of Mull (the large peninsula to the right) and the Sound of Mull as the sun began to set.


The Ross of Mull a few miles closer to Fionnphort.

Fionnphort is on the west of the island, and by the time I arrived to my guest house, the sun was dipping behind the isle of Iona, and the sky was blazing orange and gold. I sat out on one of the rocks on the shore, hugged my jacket tightly around me, and drank in the warm colors of the sky. I'm no poet, but sometimes I wish I were so I could do the scenery adequate justice when describing it to others.

While on Mull, I also had a few run-ins with the wildlife, both domestic and otherwise. It was here that experienced my first true Scottish traffic jam:


It's a good thing sheep are pretty cute, because they are maddeningly stupid animals. They are the pheasants of the ungulate family. And yet, you can't help but want to snuggle the bellies of each supine lamb, soaking in the Caledonian sun. I will have myself a pet sheep, homeowners' association be damned.

Another Scottish ungulate made several appearances in my travels around Mull. One lucky family had a small herd of red deer grazing in their lush pastures. Although red deer are not particularly shy (as compared to roe deer), I was surprised to see them grazing in the wide open. Usually, they are trampling up the sides of fells where we can't see them very well.


Finally, one of my favorite side trips on Mull was the Ardalanish Weaving Mill, a modern weaving mill using 19th-century technology and native Hebridean sheep to produce absolutely stunning handwoven woollens with as little impact on the environment as possible. I stopped in for a fantastic tour and spent waaaay too much money on a beautiful wool blanket. (Actually, it was a perfectly reasonable price, even a tad low, given the quality and the craftsmanship, but the flipping exchange rate screwed me over.) However, it was well worth the investment, as it's a souvenir that will remind of the wonderful time I spent in the Hebrides.

Finally, at the tail end of my tour, the guide offered to let me see some of the other goodies he had out back, namely several orphaned Hebridean lambs.


I used to be a devotee of the white lambs with black faces, but after meeting these guys, I'm sold on the Hebrideans. I may as well be dead, I am practically catatonic as a result of the cute. Baaaaby animals!



Allow me to reenact the phone call I made to my mother later that evening:

"MomMomMom! I got to see some baby lambs and ohmigod I want some can we have some my landlord won't mind I promise he'll love them as much as I do, ohmigodohmigodohmigod" --DEEP BREATH-- "must have a Hebridean sheep you don't understand I got to pet one and they're so soft and I could name it Charlie or Seamus or Duncan or Dougal or something really Scottish, PLEASE?!"

You see this? One little black lamb has the power to turn an otherwise intelligent, articulate, self-sufficient 23-year-old woman into a blethering idiot. Baby animals, it seems, are my one downfall.

That, and smart boys with glasses.