| Before dinner, we walked around Plockton a bit (33-second clip). |
Wednesday, 8 May: a ferry ride to Raasay and
a walk
there, a pub in Plockton, and a train
We got up early enough to check out of the Lodge by 8:30, and hopped onto the van at 9:30 for a ride to the ferry terminal for our trip to Raasay, leaving the port on Skye at 10:30, for a (roughly) half-hour ride.
Directly from the ferry terminal, we walked a loop with lots of good views. In the block of six pictures to the left, the second shows some of our group standing at the ferry terminal before we set off on our walk; the fourth is a hill across the water covered in gorse (Ulex europaeus), which we saw so much of in Chile. There, it’s definitely nonnative and unpleasantly invasive; here in Scotland, I guess it belongs, but I confess that I still don’t like it.
The mermaid that Cari is standing beside in the fifth picture looks archaic at first glance, but it evidently was commissioned by the last Laird MacLeod in the first half of the nineteenth century. So she’s not yet 200 years old. Well weathered, though, and certainly good for a laugh. The two of them are over there on the right, with Cari taking perhaps greater liberties with her friend. I should say that Cari wasn’t the only one to have her picture taken with the statue.
I’m having a lot of trouble deciding whether it was the landscape that was tilted in the last picture of the left-hand group, or the camera in my grasp. The people look almost vertical, though, and the trees behind are unquestionably vertical. The picture does show that perpetual marching order: Mark next to last, and Jonathan bringing up the rear.
More photos, and I was glad to get a snapshot of a Bluebell. But my journal says virtually nothing about this walk, at least till we broke it for lunch. In the block below, just some nice scenes from this walk, but at the bottom right, something amazing: I’m looking back at people who are behind me in the line of march. Unprecedented!
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| Big image, small. | Big image, small. |
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| Big image, small. | Big image, small. |
And next:
Lunch at Raasay House
It was the seat of the MacLeod, and was very elegant. Doctor Johnson and James Boswell visited it in 1773. It has had a checkered history, though, and in 2009 it suffered a disastrous fire just when it was finishing a restoration. The building has been fixed up again since, and in the new parts I thought it was most ostentatiously fireproof. It is now owned by a public trust, and is being run as a hotel-resort.
We had a pleasant lunch there of soup, sandwich, coffee and dessert, and Lynne Rowe, Resident there, spent some time explaining the house’s history and the hopes of the people of Raasay for the role of the House in the economic success of the island. I have to say that I admire immensely Ms. Rowe’s dedication and intensity.
Ms. Rowe showed us around many of the different parts of the house: there were rooms of all sorts of elegance, including some that were clearly designed to appeal to families with small children. But the one that impressed me most was the very finest of them all, nicely appointed and with a superb view over the fields below. There’s a shot of the interior over to the right, and the two lower pictures in the left-hand block were taken from the balcony. But the best part of all was the price of the room that I believe Ms. Rowe quoted: just £195, thus in the neighborhood of $300.
By all means the most dramatic room in Raasay House is the Library, which was not damaged in the most recent fire. Unfortunately, it’s not filled with books. How I would have liked to have as much free shelf space when we moved to Saint Paul!
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| The very impressive library (big image, small). | |
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Standing outside the House (big image, small). |
Returning to the ferry terminal (big image, small). |
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The lovely view out from the balcony of the fancy (but reasonably priced) room in Raasay House |
From Raasay House, we walked back to the ferry terminal and soon were on our way back to Skye, where we picked up the vans and were on our way to the next stop: the mainland, Plockton, and the Royal Scotsman.
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| The sign welcoming us to our restaurant |
Dinner in Plockton and a night’s rest
on the Royal Scotsman
Walking about Plockton
Midway, roughly, we stopped at a restaurant-hotel in the town of Balmacara for those of us who wished to, to change clothes and especially shoes. We didn’t have all that much time, so that showers were not a possibility. But the idea was to get out of our tramping togs into something a little more appropriate to an informal dinner in a restaurant. The other walkers’ group came in at the same time, and this was the first time that all 35 or so of us were together.
Then back into the vans for the rest of the trip into Plockton. There was a bit of time for us to walk about the town, which is amazingly charming, almost the point of tweeness. The pictures on both sides here and the big one below are among the many I took at this time. This was when I made the iPhone movie up top as well.
Stuart explained to us that the town name means, roughly, “Poorville”, because at one point the only residents were poverty-stricken, over the threshold into destitution. But now, because of the charm, the property values are among the highest in Britain.
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| A lowering sky over Plockton Harbor. |
At the Plockton Inn
When we walked into the Plockton Inn, the revelry, hubbub, and conviviality were already in full cry. There was a more formal dining room with a table reserved for the other walkers’ group, and our group was in a room with a trio of musicians, whom we had a great view of because our long table was in a section of the room a few feet higher than the rest of the space. Here, I took an inordinate number of snapshots, most of no interest or value whatever, but I’ve tried to cull out some that give a feel for the evening.
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The musicians. The leftmost one played bellows-bagpipe, penny-whistle, flute, recorder, soprano saxophone, and maybe more. | ||
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| Big image, small. | Big image, small. | Big image, small. |
| And they started to dance (21 second clip). |
| Just a taste of the socializing that went on | ||
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Joe, Pol, Stuart (big image, small). |
At table: Donna, Judyann, Timo, Manda (big image, small). |
A bit later (big image, small). |
As I understand it, Timo Shaw and Jamen Yeaton-Masi are the two top executives in Country Walkers. Just as Jamen walked with our group, so Timo walked with the others. That’s Timo in the two pictures to the right in the row directly above.
There was a meal, though unlike Mark, I took no pictures of our food. But I had Raie au Beurre Noire, that is, skate, which I had never tried before, and I found it very good. My journal is silent on the other courses, but the meal as a whole was most excellent.
| Another bit of music (21 second clip). |
The last movie clip, below, is long, but includes a complete musical selection, and I think it gives a good feel for the evening’s atmosphere.
| Ninety-four seconds of music. |
| Last pictures from the Plockton Inn | ||
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The one and only (big image, small). |
Sharron and Don (big image, small). |
Mary and Ed going to the
train (big image, small). |
Onto the train, the Royal Scotsman
Soon it was time to leave the Inn and walk to the Royal Scotsman, which was waiting at the station. We were piped aboard by a kilted and uniformed bagpiper, it was all very picturesque.
Once we were onto the train, settled and rested just a bit, the whole group of 33 walkers or so met in the lounge-observation car for a champagne reception. A few nice words were spoken and a lot of bubbly was consumed a very pleasant end to a fine evening and a full, full day.
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