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| Sign alongside the River Ness in Inverness |
Saturday, 4 May: Culloden Field and
travel from Inverness to Portree on Skye
We got up in time for breakfast, which offered a highly varied menu. I opted simply for fruit compote and a kipper; and that was delicious.
We drove off at 8:30 to the Culloden battle field. There’s a modern exhibition hall with a very good account of the relevant history. The narrative was unusual in that it presented the Jacobite point of view and that of the Unionist-Hanoverian side on the right and left walls, respectively, as we walked along.
After a while spent in the exhibit, we went with a guide onto the battlefield itself, which is pretty much featureless except for small stone cenotaphs commemorating various clans, and the “English” troops who fell there as well. One of these is shown at the left (big image, small).
Before we went back to the exhibition hall, we stood by a building dating from the period of the Battle. The top picture of the group of three to the left is one that I took to show the construction of this house: stone up to about shoulder-height, then turf, with a roof of thatch. (Big image, small.)
I didn’t get a lot of pictures of our guides on this trip, but there they are in the second picture of this grouping. Stuart Hall at the left, then Pol O’Colmain. (Big image, small.) Then in the middle distance is Richard Koegl, who split his time between the two groups of 18 walkers, taking pictures for Country Walkers. At the extreme right is the guide from the battlefield staff, whose name I don’t seem to have recorded.
Surely one of the worst pictures I took this trip, making everybody look wet, unhappy, or villainous, that’s the last in this grouping of three (big image, small). From the left, Bill, Jamen Yeaton-Masi of Country Walkers, Harriet, Linnea, Martha, Manda, Pol, and Ed facing away from us.
It was damned cold out there: no rain, as I recall, just raw, with some wind. And so we were glad to get back into the shelter of the exhibition hall.
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The battle field of Culloden. The larger
view gives a better, but still inadequate, idea of the grayness of the day and the desolation and emptiness of the site. (You can also get a much larger, perhaps too large, view.) |
Warmed up, we piled into the van for the ride back into Inverness, where we walked for an hour or so along the River Ness: halfway along one bank, then across a bridge to return along the other. The river is the only outlet from Loch Ness, which is the second-deepest loch in Scotland, and the largest in volume. The river itself is narrow, and thus flows extremely rapidly, as you see in the two shots to the right of a pier of the foot bridge that we eventually used when we returned from the other side of the river. (Left shot: big image, small; right: big image, small.)
As we walked along the river, for some reason I took no pictures; the fact that it was drizzling may have had something to do with this. The river bank was full of big trees, many looked like specimens from the Pacific Northwest to me, but I couldn’t identify any with certainty.
| The fast-flowing River Ness (13-second clip) |
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Don’t ask me why I found this sign across from the street from the river amusing; but I might have preferred “Old folks”. |
From the riverside, we walked to a restaurant in Inverness where we had a pleasant lunch. There was only an hour set aside for the meal, so we were perhaps a bit rushed. I had a dish of pappardelle with a simple tomato and spinach sauce. Then coffee, and we were off on the three-hour drive to Portree, the biggest town on Skye.
We would be staying at the Cuillen Hills Hotel, which is much more elegant than the entrance, seen in the first image to the right (big image, small), would suggest. It’s beautifully situated, with a view out over the Portree harbor (big image, small), with its multi-colored houses on the other side of the water. (You can see a quick closeup by passing your mouse over the farther thumbnail to the right.)
I haven’t said anything about the interior of the hotel yet. It was most comfortable, and as I said above, elegant, just look at the three pictures below.
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| Big image, small. |
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| “Luxe, calme, et volupté” (big image, small). ( * ) (Mouse over the picture for closeup.) |
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| A lifetime’s work for the connoisseur who is so inclined (big image, small). |
Dinner was in the hotel, with a broad menu choice. Mark and I both had crab for appetizer and lamb shank for the main course. The crab was fine, the lamb was wonderful. For dessert, we split a little cheese cake. Conversation was mostly with Cari, who asked how we met, and got a fuller account than we usually give, but yet one with a few details withheld. Then directly to bed, for the next day would be filled with walking.