The Distant Corners of Caledonia

---

"Caledonia is the Latin name given by the Romans to the land in today's Scotland north of their province of Britannia, beyond the frontier of their empire. Modern use is as a romantic or poetic name for Scotland, as a whole." - Wikipedia

When the weather forecast is given on BBC radio, one of the locations in the UK that is mentioned is The Butt of Lewis. Now you would think that the Butt would be at the bottom, wouldn't you? But no, it is the northernmost tip of the Outer Hebrides, on the Isle of Lewis. I suppose if you were from the southern hemisphere where they orient their globes with the south pole at the top (it's true... I couldn't make this stuff up) the Butt of Lewis would be at the bottom That would make more sense to me. And if you look on a map it does not actually say The Butt of Lewis anywhere, so maybe some Aussie broadcaster on an exchange once dubbed it The Butt of Lewis on the air and the BBC just continues calling it that as an inside joke...

After driving across the Isle of Skye and taking a 1.75 hour ferry ride we arrived at the Isle of Harris. Now the Isle of Harris and the Isle of Lewis are actually the same island. The south half is Harris and the north half is Lewis. Nobody seems to know why there are two names for one island. And the Black Isle (another corner of the country that I'll talk about more below) is not an island at all. Never has been. And nobody seems to know why either. When you ask a Scot why they have one island with two names or a peninsula that's called an island, they look at you as if you had said something very surprising that they have never thought about before. Anyway, we drove north from the ferry dock on Harris and at some magical point the island became the Isle of Lewis and we kept going til we could not go any further and we were at the Butt.

There Renee spotted a dolphin in the ocean just off the point - she is amazing at spotting things at a distance that the rest of us would probably have missed. There is a lighthouse at the point and not much else, but back down the road a kilometre or so there are a number of houses in which the strongest remnants of the Gaelic culture live. The ancient language is the mother tongue of about 90% of the population in the villages close to the Butt, more than anywhere else. The only town of any size is Stornaway. In Canada, the residence of the leader of the opposition is called Stornaway. You see, Sir John A MacDonald and his contemporaries thought it was a very funny joke to imply that the leader of the opposition might as well have been in the Outer Hebrides, he was so far from power...

The "Isle of Lewis" is mostly flat peat bog, while the "Isle of Harris" is mountainous in the north, has beautiful beaches that look tropical in the southwest and has a very strange moonscape in the southeast. It was not quite exotic enough for us though I guess, as we took a tiny bridge over to the island of Scalpay, where we spent the night at the MacKinnon's B&B. Beautiful spot, and the owners were Gaelic speakers so we sat up most of the evening and talked about the Gaelic language and culture.

Another corner of Scotland where the road ends is the village of Fionnphort on the Isle of Mull. Great little pub that provided shelter from a cold rain with a roaring fire and great local beer like the Terror of Tobermory. From there the thing to do is to take the passenger ferry over to Iona. This is the little island where the Irish Monk St. Columba landed in the 6th century. He is credited with starting the Christianization of Scotland. So the thing to do is to go over and see the monastery and relics and such. Which we dutifully did.

Back on the mainland, the Rua Reidh Lighthouse is run as a B&B now and it proved to be situated at another interesting corner of Scotland. It's at the end of a 5 km "use at your own risk", one-lane, hug the cliff along the coast type road. Susan and Renee were holding hands in the backseat, conspicuously quiet, and watching their lives pass in front of their faces I think. But we made it just in time for a spectacular sunset over the North Atlantic.

The final corner of Scotland we uncovered was the town of Cromarty on the so-called Black "Isle". Very historical, this ancient port on the east coast used to be home to a huge fishing fleet but now has almost nothing but pleasure craft and a diminuitive two-car ferry harboured in it. Had a little trouble finding our B&B on the Black Isle. OK, we drove around for half an hour or so, then asked at the local convenience store and the woman behind the counter had never heard of it. But would she let us go? No, she had to phone each of her bloody friends and each of them had to look it up in their bloody phone books, until an hour and a half had gone by and it was unanimously decided that it did not exist. So we gave up and drove into Inverness where the first hotel we came to was full. But the woman at the counter listened to our story and pulled out her phone book, instantly found the listing for the B&B and dialed the number for us. Turns out the B&B was down a private lane that did not have a sign for it until you got to the end and turned into a particular driveway. Then you came across the sign above the gate. They were really going out of their way to attract customers....

The next morning we dropped by the convenience store to inform the woman and her network of biddies where the B&B was. Well a different woman was behind the counter and she knew where it was right away...

---