And So To Scotland (country of rainbows)

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November 1st 2010

Published: November 1st 2010

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Slowfeet

Saturday morning in Chester

surprisingly lively

But first a word on Chester.

Chester wasn't really a surprise. One of those places that seems always to be described as a lovely little city. We expected something pretty good and we were pleasantly surprised to find our expectations met. We can't really talk with any knowledge about the nightlife but it is a very pleasant place to walk around. It is one of the only cities in England that still has its complete wall. You can walk around the top of the wall and receive a potted history of the city from the signage, so we did.

The history dates back to the Romans and there is still an amphitheatre in place. It claims to be the place where the mayor banned football and sponsored horse racing with the footy ground turned into the first horse racing track. The mayor's name was something Gee and he is credited as the person who gave his name to to the slang for race horses.

We had good accommodation in a unit that was a nice walk around the walls from the Cheshire County Records Office which is housed in an old heritage building within the old area of

If you're a pigeon in Chester

you know where to go for a feed

the city. The Kirkhams, Eardleys and Willcocks are a troublesome bunch to check up on. No nice neat convicts among them but a whiff of possible scandal, or at the least a bit of a story, that might just be out of the ordinary. Appears that one of the forebears got away with two sisters. Married one but forgot her when he left England. Didn't forget the sister though. Took her off to Australia but then the other sister (his wife) arrived. Need to do a little more checking on this one.

There is now a real need to get back to this part of the country and visit Stafford. We will come back to this part of the country a little later for a bit more work and a trip to Wales.

And now to Scotland.

The population of Scotland is just a little over 5 million. The Scottish diaspora is said to be around 30 million. The Scots, being Scots, may just have a view that, if a reasonable proportion of that Scottish diaspora might be interested in maintaining links with their Scottish heritage, then there might well be money to be made.

We

Edinburgh city

one of the bridges over what was once a volcanic crater, we're told

wouldn't count ourselves as part of that diaspora but we might be described as one out and one back from it. My grandparents were born and raised in Scotland, my mother was very proud of her heritage and many, many New Year's Eve parties at various of the Walkers accompanied by far too many Scotches and even more renditions of 'Flower of Scotland' make Scotland a special place. We were looking forward to going there and we allocated a week in addition to the week for research in Edinburgh. Not enough but, on this trip, as much as we could reasonably afford.

We needed to be organised in Scotland, for a very special reason. Most places we deal with consider public records to be just that but in Scotland things are different. The archives we needed to access are largely held in the Scottish Peoples Centre and it costs you 10 pounds a day to visit. Searching old parish registers, wills, property transfers, cemetery records and the like takes time unless you know precisely what you are looking for and, even then, it can take a lot of time. We, therefore, needed to do any possible preparatory work before

Edinburgh housing

old and older from Calton Hill

we fronted up but we didn't really know what to expect anyway so that was difficult.

The Scottish Peoples Centre is indeed an excellent facility. There is not much need to pore over microfiche, film or even old registers here. The whole lot has been digitised. You can search indexes and then go into the specific record when you find someone of interest. You can access the indexes from outside, or outwith as they say here but, when you find an item of interest you have to pay. When we realised how the Scottish penchant for the use of naming patterns has the effect of generating many, many people of the same names, we found our 10 pounds a day might have been cheap.

It is not so much fun searching on a computer rather than directly with the parish records but the computers are definitely faster. And we really didn't mind paying for a very well set up facility particularly as the Scottish Parliament is currently trying to maintain fee-free universities for undergraduates in the face of that terrible Parliament down at Westminster.

The place we found to stay in Edinburgh was in Rutland Square at

Edinburgh buildings

old and new near Rutland Square

one end of Princes Street in easy walking distance of the Royal Mile, shops, the National Library, the Edinburgh City Library and, most importantly, the Scotland Peoples Centre. We walked along the Royal Mile, checked out some of the shops - and a pub or two - ate fish and chips and did a walking tour focusing on the Secrets of Old Edinburgh. All well worth doing. We looked but didn't buy any of the masses of souvenirs on sale on and around the Royal Mile and Princes Street. Still, with all of the tourist tat, Edinburgh is still a special city. Not up there with the most beautiful but it is interesting and it does have its beauty. I have to say that its beauty may be enhanced if some of the old sandstone buildings were given a bit of a clean. We were told that sandstone buildings would be worn away by high pressure hoses and that this is the cheapest way of cleaning the buildings, so it just doesn't happen.

It seemed very likely that the chances were that the best of Scotland would be outside the cities. We hired a car and headed north. The

Edinburgh Royal Mile

this section was very quiet for a Saturday afternoon

run up the East to Aberdeen provided some picturesque countryside. Nice but not a lot different from the lands further south. We enjoyed the drive. The landlord at the pub in Scone where we pulled up for lunch told us that Aberdeen, the next big town, was a lovely place. We mentioned another town and he told us that it was a lovely place. Then we mentioned Inverness and were told that that really is a lovely city. Aberdeen is built of granite. The place is grey and very breezy. Big and bustling and, basically, just the same as most big towns.

Inverness is called the capital of the higlands. The landlord from Scone was right. It really is a lovely city. The mix of old and new is comfortable. There are obviously rules and regulations in place but they don't seem to operate quite so heavily to restrict the growth of more modern buildings. The result is a blend that seems to work. The heritage is maintained but the place still seems to operate well and the overall look is pretty good. It even has a castle although a pretty modern one. Story is that it has been

For Adam

haven't seen this bloke very often in UK

knocked down a rebuilt a number of times in the power plays in the Highlands over the centuries.

Culloden was fought on a field about 5 miles from Inverness. It was the last battle fought in mainland Britain and was the first time the Jacobites had been beaten. The battle lasted a little over an hour and was the end of the last Jacobite Rebellion. There are a lot of myths and legends surrounding Culloden, a lot of them not really borne out by the facts, but it was the aftermath of Culloden that seems to have had the most dramatic effect. A lot of people killed, families wiped out and people cleared from the land they had farmed for generations. The intention was to put an end to Gaelic culture and all of its features once and for all.

The attempt to destroy the power of the clans was largely successful. Their power as a political force has gone but you would have to say that, on almost every other count, the campaign, apparently enthusiastically prosecuted by the Duke of Cumberland, has been a total failure. Bilingual signage is all over the place particularly in the Highlands,

Into Aberdeen

tartan is now a central part of the national dress of the whole of Scotland - rather than just the Highlands - the bagpipes pretty much symbolise Scotland, children are being taught Gaelic in schools, and people with any Scottish heritage tend to be keen to work out whether they are part of a clan and what tartan they should wear.

As you can probably tell I enjoyed visiting the Culloden battle site. The visitor centre provides a useful and informative presentation, from both sides of the battle. The walk around the battle field on a wet, cold and windy day adds to the experience. It was cold though, very cold, and the fun of trying to imagine what it would be like to be in the middle of a charge of thousands across the bogs and heather after marching all night with very little food was not to everyone's liking.

The country around Loch Ness gave us our first real look at an expanse of heather. It was not the last but unfortunately it had browned off for the winter and, while impressive, could not reasonably be described as beautiful. On the drive up the eastern coast

Aberdeen Chimneys

The evening we arrived was still fine (-ish)

we started into the more special scenery. They don't do really large mountains in this part of the world but the overall effect of the ones that they do have, the wild coast line and the villages and farms tucked into any nook and cranny out of the wind is well worth the drive.

John o'Groats is not the northern most point of the British Isles. For that you have to hop on a boat and head to the islands. We didn't. Not enough time and one look at the boiling seas on the days we were in the area put us both off any vague thoughts we had of hopping in a boat and heading out. John o'Groats, Taigh Iain Ghròt in Gaelic, is the furthest point that you can get on the mainland from another, the other being Land's End. Not a particularly special reason to visit you might think but plenty do and often on bicycles. We met a bloke in the pouring rain who had just ridden 40 miles across the top and was ecstatic to be there. It had taken him 2 or 3 weeks to ride from Land's End I think. Looked fit.

The Granite City again

looking a little lighter in the sun

We did go to what seems to be the northern most point on the British mainland, or perhaps that should be on the main British island. This is a place called Dunnet Head. Not a lot more to recommend it than any other part of the coast but then we found the whole of the northern coast well worth the trip. In such a place, beauty is clearly in the eye of the beholder but we enjoyed the sense of isolation, the wind, rain, rolling hills and the villages across the top and down the west coast.

It would have been good to get out and walk through some of this country but we didn't have enough time on this trip. Just one walk around the site of one of the villages that had been affected over time by the clearances. The people of Ceannekeinne, a village near Dunness, had resisted being shifted for a considerable time. They had originally been moved from the more productive inland glens to make way for sheep and had become tenant farmers or crofters on some much less productive land clinging to the coast. When time came for that land to be

Culloden Moor

cold and bleak and boggy

used for sheep as well the land owner decided to move them on, first having jacked up rents apparently to pay for his poor business decisions. The locals were able to resist for many years. They were eventually moved out but their resistance seems to have focused attention on the issue and was either the beginning of, or a part of, the shift in public sentiment that brought about a change in the law to give the crofters some property rights.

We were intrigued as we moved down the west coast of Scotland, which is more spectacular than the east but perhaps more populated, at the lack of trees. There are some obvious commercial pine forests doing their regimental thing in lines up and down hills, but relatively few other trees and nothing that we spotted that could be called a forest. There is no lack of water in these areas and, while there is a lot of wind, you would expect that some trees would have grown. Apparently, there used to be trees. A lot were cleared, possibly being used as firewood, and the sheep would be likely to clean up any new shoots pretty quickly. We hear

Loch Ness

Spectacular storm just before this

that there are moves in some areas to try to regenerate some more natural forests. At the moment though, for much of the north west there is a sort of wet heath and sometimes heather.
It is not really that far around this island. We were able to make the trip from Castletown near Dunnet Head - the northern most point - to Ullapool in a relatively easy day's drive pulling up a few times to have a closer look or a bit of a walk around. The road is pretty good and traffic, while we were there, was light.

The exciting thing about Ullapool for we Northern Territorians was the morning snow. No one else seemed in any way pleased so we didn't run about throwing snowballs and building snowmen but, as we climbed out of the valleys the snow fall was heavier and we may have taken a couple of photos.

We arrived in Skye a day early although, at the time, we didn't realise that. Britain's brand spanking new nuclear submarine ran aground just near the bridge to the island the next day. We spent most of the day driving around taking the occasional photo.

Far north

arctic winds and so we had snow

It is not a bad place but I would have to say that a few shots of a stranded nuclear sub would have added some interest. Skye has things organised for tourists. Houses seem to be consistently well kept, most painted white with black trim, the whole island gives the impression of being well kept. It seems to be an attractive place to live although on our, admittedly very brief research (in a couple of estate agents windows), you may struggle to get value for money. But then it is not just real estate that is expensive on Skye. We paid well over the odds for a hotel room at Kyle Localsh even though it is not technically on Skye but just on the other side of the bridge.

According to Wikipedia, the Highlands extend down the west coast almost to Loch Lomond - and somewhat further if you are a whisky distillery - so we didn't actually leave the Highlands until we were almost in Glasgow. This is a city that I suspect you need to have grown up with to really know and love but there are some nice places in it. We are staying out of

Did we talk about the wind?

in the north-west

town near Bothwell and, while it is a bit out and a bit suburban, it is fine for us. On the track of old rellies we walked around the inner city area and worked our way through Gorbals and Govan Hill. It seems that Gorbals at least has had a pretty bad reputation. Didn't look too bad in the middle of the day and, although some such places hide their issues well, it seems that the place has changed a lot. The injection of some new, more up-market housing and some immigrants seems to be assisting the change. We did find the address that my grandfather left from. Not too bad but I could see why he might have thought there might be a better place to be.

That brings us up-to-date, pretty much. We will try to be more disciplined in the future and get back to our practice of more regular posts. There are a couple of reasons for the laxity in this department. Being able to understand, more or less, the language and staying in hotels means that we can understand the TV. There is not a lot on the tube that inspires but we do

For very private calls

somewhere in the north

enjoy the coverage of politics and world affairs. A little disappointing to find that, as far as the British media is concerned for most of the time, Britain is the only country to be battling its way out of the effects of the GFC. I suppose they are just the same in that regard as the media in every country but you do yearn for a just a tad more intelligent debate and discussion. Will have to find the time to have a look at a few of the blog sites I suppose.

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