CASTLE DUART
June 6-8, Wednesday through Friday
When Bob opened his two suitcases after our arrival at Thornloe Guest House in Oban, Scotland, the inner plastic wall on one side of each case was splintered. Testimony, that, to the treatment they have been getting. Mine are all right for now, though the outsides are dirty and scraped. These were brand new, quality luggage pieces-at one time. Three months to go yet on this trip. We may be carrying our possessions home in pillowcases.
This is not the first time we have stayed at Thornloe. The last time was in 1992, our first summer in Britain. On later trips, we stayed at other B&Bs, but always remembered Thornloe. So last winter, as I sat at my computer putting this trip together, I Googled Thornloe, and found it. There is a new owner, but she had to be good. She has the same maiden name as I do, McIntyre. Oban is in the Western Highlands, which are rife with McIntyres. Next summer, 2008, there is a gathering of the Clan McIntyre here.
Oban is built on hills that rise from the sea. Thornloe is on the side of a hill. The narrow front lawn steps down in terraces. To get into town, we walk down a narrow alley with a name, Alfred Street. To return to Thornloe, we walk back up that narrow alley, which is a rather steep at one point. Cars also use that alley. When you hear a car, you flatten yourself against the old mossy high stone walls that line the alley and hope for the best. It doesn't do to be careless, as the cars roar up the curving lane to make the grade.
It is the “Land of the Midnight Sun” here. No, not Alaska, a different “Land of the Midnight Sun.” Scotland is 'way north. Get out your atlas and look. Ocean currents keep it warmer than Alaska, but the inland highlands have wicked winters. Right now it is 10:02 p.m. The sun is just beginning to set. It is quite bright and I can see the lone house across the straits very well yet. By midnight it will be dark twilight. By 2:00 a.m. it will be dark. However, by 3:00 a.m. pink will show on the horizon, and by 4:00 a.m. it is fully light. That's when Bob hauls out his red eye patches from Virgin Atlantic Airlines and puts them on to finish the night.
We have been here in Oban four days now. Each day we have stoked up on a “full English breakfast” of eggs, bacon, broiled tomatoes and mushrooms, baked beans, and toast. Then we've slung our daypacks on our shoulders and gone out and about. We've sat by the harbor and watched the swans, strolled on the seaside esplanade, shopped, strolled some more, run small errands, had tea and scones, and generally frittered away the days without knowing where they have gone.
June 9, 2007 Saturday
It is 7:40 a.m. on June 9 right now. A huge Caledonian MacBrayne ferry is floating slowly up the channel between our bedroom and Kererra Island. It will dock in mid-town about half a mile from here, unload, reload, and sail out the channel again on its endless rounds of the Kintyre Peninsula and the Inner Hebrides islands.
Breakfast is at 8:15. The breakfast room has tall windows overlooking the sea, and our assigned table is next to the windows. Each of the five tables in the room is covered with dark blue newly ironed tablecloth. A side table has cereals and milk for your “starter” before the full breakfast. Another table has juice and fruit. Valerie rushes around delivering food and picking up dirty dishes. Her husband Alan cooks. The presentation of the food is inspired. My continental breakfast yesterday of cheeses and ham was arranged in a pinwheel design on the plate. In the center a bright red cherry tomato sprouted parsley leaves, giving color to the serving. A small basket with a large dinner roll and a croissant nestled in a napkin finished the offering.
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Later in the day
At 9:00 a.m. this morning, after stoking up on that full English breakfast, we cut down two alleys (we're getting to know this town) to the esplanade along the sea, and joined the queue to buy tickets for a boat trip. The trip was to the Isle of Mull's Castle Duart by way of some harbor seal haul-out ledges.
The boat, the Kerrera (care-re-ra), is an old fishing boat modified slightly for tourist use. The sides are very high, above the heads of people sitting on the wooden benches along them. There are two or three thin pads scattered along the benches, first come, first serve. Everyone else sits on the white-painted wood. There is no roof, only a white canopy that covers the center of the boat. People for and aft of the canopy, which is most of them, get sunburned or rained on. To get on the Kerrera, one has to step from the cement pier over that high bulwark onto a wooden box step, to the bench, down to another wooden box step, and finally to the deck of the boat.
It was a fantastic day, particularly for Scotland! Temps were in the high 70s, and the sky was a bowl of endless blue. Only small ripples marred the surface of the quiet sea. The seals weren't on the ledges. They were bobbing and bottling in the sea. They swam and dived and played with the boat, to the delight of the passengers.
It was another half hour beyond the ledges to Castle Duart. As soon as a speck on the horizon was confirmed as the castle, I went into action. I climbed over kids and daypacks to get to the port side of the boat. Then I thought we might come in at a different angle, so climbed back to the starboard side. We've been to Duart before, but always by land.
Here was my chance to get pictures of it from the sea. These shots would show the tall, forbidding defensive walls of the fortress, guardians against attack from the sea. The castle came closer. The port side would be best after all, so I climbed back over there and stood on a bench to get a really good view.
It was the best. I clicked off twenty or fifty or so pictures as we glided past the castle to the docking area, which wasn't a dock at all, just a little cut in the grassy shore that was deep enough to nose the Kerrera into.
The owner's father and the cabin boy went over the side. The owner handed a six-foot aluminum ladder down to them. “You've got to be kidding,” I thought. They weren't. To disembark, we climbed up the succession of box steps, then went over the side onto the aluminum ladder and down to sea level.
Once on land, I took some shots of the foreboding castle towering over me, then we climbed the footpath up to the entrance.
I have a special affection for Castle Duart, hereditary home of the chiefs of Clan Maclean. It's not your fairy tale castle with soaring towers, 100 rooms and majestic entrances. Duart is a rock fortress squared off against the wilds and storms of the far north. It sits on a desolate point of land, alone, between sea and mountains, a sentry for the ages.
The castle began in 1100 as fortified stone walls with wooden buildings inside, very primitive. Gradually the walls grew thicker and stone buildings appeared inside as the Clan Maclean grew bigger and bolder. Twice the land and castle were lost to the Macleans for choosing the wrong lord to serve. After the second time, in the 1600s, the castle was abandoned and began to deteriorate. A regiment of “Red Coats” from England in the early 1700s was garrisoned there. By then only one building had a roof, the East Keep. The hated English trashed what they could, and then left. The castle stood alone, abandoned, crumbling for many years.
In 1911, the then Chief of Clan Maclean established claim to the castle and began restoring it. He kept true to the ancient plan of the castle, but also put in modern refinements like electricity and plumbing - modern to 1911-14.
The first time I was in the castle, some fifteen years ago, it was a dull and rainy day. Arrow slits were filled with glass as part of the restoration. They are narrow, small windows, set 'way back in the eight-foot walls. On that day I paused by one of those arrow-slit window overlooking the churning sea below. The wind howled and rain spatted against the window. The stone-walled room was gray and chill.
Spirits of rugged defenders crowded the arrow-slit with me; more rough men and hardy women poured whiskey down their throats and whacked at slabs of boar-meat on the heavy wooden table behind me. Emissaries from a clan sept ran their open boat into the marshy shore and clambered up the steep path to the castle. The winds whipped their long locks and wool capes. They charged into my banquet hall trailing rainwater and shouting greetings. These people are the moors and the sea. The winds wrap around them and the paths rise to meet them. The sea cradle their boats, the rains make them strong. I was with them that day.
They were with me today as we came up to it from the sea. It is still the wild, lonely fortress of my tales and my dreams. I wouldn't trade it for a Disney-type castle ever.
The Maclean family live in a part of the castle today, the East Keep. I could see a bank of windows on a high outside wall, and I suppose that the East Keep has been further modernized to be quite bright and comfortable. The old Keep, the part we tourists see, is still rough stone walls and floors of ancient rock, tiny windows and hand-hewn beamed ceilings, rugged and chill. I love it.
Now, having rhapsodized about my perceptions of the castle, the truth will out. The rooms of the castle are filled with exhibits of the possessions and lives of the Maclean clan. A tea room, toilets, and gift shop are right next to the castle. The door by which we tourists enter the castle was cut out of the wall just for that. Tourists. There's a big parking lot below the castle for visitors and busses.
We had a hot tea with scones and cheese at the tea shop as a restorative before boarding the Kerrera back to Oban. We rather lost track of time. It was only ten minutes from departure time, and we were still sitting with our teacups in our hands. We put them down quickly.
Bob headed for the boat while I ran to the toilets. Finished there, I was trotting down the steep grassy path to the boat when I realized my daypack wasn't on my back. I turned and ran back up the path, across the green, and into the restaurant. There sat my pack, untouched. My passport, money, ID….I almost kissed it.
I ran back down the hill, the last one for the boat. People were standing on the boat watching me, waiting for me. How embarrassing. The tide had come up and the back legs of the aluminum ladder were in water. The deck boy and the father, wearing their wellies and standing in ankle-deep water, steadied the ladder. I streamed up it and over the rail. The ladder and hands came over the bulwark, the engine coughed itself into life, and away we went. I stood and watched Duart grow smaller and smaller, until it was gone. Then I looked toward the sea.
MULL AND IONA
June 10-11, Sunday and Monday
Fáìlte!
(Welcome)
We noticed a rise in Scottish Nationalism since we were here four years ago. The newer street signs are in English and in Scottish Gaelic. The names on the big car ferries have had Gaelic added to their painted names in English, and the big letters on the ferry terminal wall are in Gaelic and English. I've seen a couple of posters entirely in Gaelic. There will be a free class in Gaelic running here for two days at the end of June. I kind of wish I were going to be here to take it. Gaelic is such a different language; you can't get a clue by just looking at it.
Also, we have always in the past simply walked into a Tourist Information Center (TIC) anywhere in Britain and booked a B&B in any other part of Britain that we wanted to go to. Not now. The Travel Information Center in Oban, Scotland, now will not book a bed in any other place but Scotland. I kicked the counter front and whined when they told me that, as we want to go to Durham, England on June 17. We need a place to sleep.
Finally the kid behind the desk got tired of listening to me, dialed the TIC in Durham, and handed me the phone. He could not book with them, but I could, and I did, right there at the Oban, Scotland, TIC counter. The booking papers had to be mailed to me from Durham TIC, and I had to sign them and send them back-all busywork that used to be done by the tourist agents right here in Oban.
The agents at the Oban TIC can still arrange trips and sell tickets on National Express coaches, even though National Express doesn't come here any more. I consulted with the Oban TIC National Express agent about getting from Oban to Durham by the Scottish CityLink and National Express combo. Wonderful planning. The CityLink coach from Oban to Glasgow arrives in Glasgow one hour after the National Express coach leaves for England. We would have to take the CityLink into Glasgow the morning before, hang around there for a day and stay there overnight, then catch the National Express to England in the morning. Not if we could help it.
Bob went to the train station next door. Yes, we could go by train from Oban to Durham, England, in one day, with changes in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The price was only slightly more than going to Glasgow and paying to stay overnight and for taxis to pick us up and take us back to Glasgow's Buchanan Coach Terminal. The convenience is everything. We will go by train, a seven-hour trip. We don't mind the long trips at all. We relax, watch the scenery, read, sleep, and eat, and the time flies by. The getting there is part of the holiday.
Meanwhile, back at Thornloe…
Bob and I decided to stay at Oban another week rather than bop around Scotland as we had originally planned. We like Oban. This past week's weather was warm and sunny, almost unheard-of in Scotland. All of Britain, in fact, has had unseasonably warm weather since we landed on June 4. We wanted more time to sit by the sea in sunshine while we were in The North.
But-Val of Thornloe was booked up solid for the Monday and Tuesday, June 11 and 12, and had only the odd rooms empty the rest of the week. “So,” I said when I saw her date book, “I guess we'll just move on at the end of this week, then.”
“You don't have to move on,” she declared. “Why don't you just go over to Mull for a couple of nights and then come back?”
“Go over to Mull a couple of nights and come back!” I stood transfixed. “Go over to Mull a couple of nights…” She said it so casually.
For years I have dreamed of staying on the Isle of Mull. All we've ever done is ride a tour bus around Mull-twice-in the rain. Rain didn't matter. The barren-looking mountains and isolated little white croft houses called to me. The winding lanes and the sheep-spotted meadows enchanted me. Mull was my Hebridean dream.
“I'll email some places I know over there,” Valerie went on.
She'll email some places. She'll find us a place. She has connections. She'll get us on Mull.
I ran to tell Bob.
Val found a place for us for two nights on the Isle of Mull. We had, previous to all this, booked our usual tour of Mull and Iona islands for Sunday, June 10. We moved the tour to Monday, June 11. We would do the tour, but not come back on the ferry to Oban when the tour was finished. We would take a local bus to Arle Lodge on The Isle of Mull.
Val stored our extra luggage at Thornloe, and we, with only our daypacks and a small suitcase, boarded the ferry for The Isle of Mull. The ferry is named An t-Eilean Muileach - The Isle of Mull. I do know that Eilean is “island” in Gaelic. I learned that a few years back. That is the extent of my Scottish Gaelic. Now you know as much as I do.
These are huge ferries. They carry 1,000 people and cars, busses, fuel trucks, milk trucks anything that might be needed on an isolated island. “Caledonian McBrayne Ferries own the islands,” people say. They are the major, and often only, ferry service to the Hebrides Islands, Inner and Outer, the Isle of Man, and any other spare island that might be out there. Our trip was only 45 minutes. Even then, the cafeteria, the bar, the store, and the snack bar were open for business. It looked as if people who used the ferry regularly bought their papers and had their meal on the ferry as a matter of course.
We got off the ferry at Craignure on Isle of Mull and boarded the waiting tour bus. The sun was shining!! Not only that, but it was 68 degrees! I fairly hugged myself with excitement.
The tour begins with a narrated hour-long bus ride along the southwest side of Mull to Fionnphort. The mountainous landscape streaked with rushing brooks (becks here), and sparsely dotted with croft houses is as gripping as I remembered it. I tried to get pictures through the bus windows. They weren't exactly successful. Either there were reflections of other windows in them, or the heads of other tourists got in my photos.
Fionnphort is a cluster of fishermen houses at the edge of the sea. The tide was out when we got there. Sprawled seaweed defined the shore. Gulls stepped daintily through the weeds searching for mussels. I sucked in a deep breath of the sharp salty-fishy air. The sea! A little local auto ferry carries people from Fionnphort to the small Isle of Iona, including us. It's a ten-minute ride.
Iona is the birthplace of western Christianity. St. Columbo wandered around seeking a secluded and isolated place to commune with God. He chose the tiny island of Iona. Others followed to his hermitage, then carried Christianity back to their homes. Eventually a great abbey was built there, a big nunnery, and a grand Bishop's House. The abbey has been kept up, restored and repaired as needed. It is now home to a non-denominational religious commune. The nunnery is only ruins you can tour with interpretive signage. The Bishop's house is there, but I don't know anything about it.
Scottish kings were buried on Iona for hundreds of years. Huge Celtic crosses carved in stone are in graveyards or scattered about the island. I love the island for its isolation. I love it for those crosses, wonderful winding designs that date back to pre-Christian Pictish times. I really love the used book store.
When I first came to Iona in 1992, I was fascinated by the idea that there was a used book store on a tiny island with a small population. When I went to Iona this time, I wondered if the bookstore was still there, fifteen years later. Tourists come to enjoy the isolation of Iona. Some come to touch the birth of their faith, some come to study the art in the abbey and the sculptures, I come to find a used book store. Bob just follows.
And it is there! It is in the same ancient, but newly whitewashed, croft house. The door is still so low that I had to duck to get in it. The owner, now fifteen years older, still sits at a small table by the door with her dog at her side. (Not the same dog as in '92, I would guess.) The books are much better organized. In '92 there were books on the floor and shelves in a haphazard manner. Now everything was shelved in order in the two rooms of the shop. I was tempted, really tempted, to buy a Charles Dickens book, Edmund Drood, that I already had at home, just to have an English classic from the Iona Book Shop.
I'd have to carry that book for three months, and I already owned a copy of it. Not smart, that. So I looked around a bit more, then left the shop to find Bob. He had been at the island Heritage Museum. We strolled back along the single lane that serves as a road. When it got near time to catch the ferry back to Mull, we turned towards the dock. The more we strolled the more I thought about Edmund Drood. I talked myself back into the book. Bob went on his way back to the dock, and I trotted back to the Iona Book Shop.
I was in such a hurry that I smacked my head on the low door lintel. The owner started, but I breezed by her into the back room. I didn't need to be told that the door was low. I picked Edmund Drood off the shelf. I hefted it. It was heavy. It was just a book, after all, and I already owned one. I put it back on the shelf. I didn't smack my head going out, caught up with Bob, and took the little ferry back to Mull.
The return trip to Craignure was as beautiful as the trip out. There are walking paths throughout the mountains. Some of them come near the road. In a couple of places, there are high arched stone bridges to cross becks when on the walking paths. I tried to catch a photo of one, but I missed.
When we got back to Craignure we collected our one little suitcase and, I will admit smugly, trundled over to a local bus to Tobermory. We didn't have to go back on the ferry to Oban. We were staying on the island!
Footnote:
While in Oban Val McIntyre Bichener, of Thornloe, has been doing some research on my family, and found that not only McIntyres on my father-grandfather's side came from Scotland, but my grandmother's grandfather, named Hobart, was born in Scotland. So I am descended from Scottish Hobart and McIntyre on my father's side (and McNally on my mother's side).
The McIntyres, though they are many here in Argyllshire, are not an historically notable clan as far as land ownership and nobility are concerned. You will find them and their tartans and crest in any clan book, though. They were foresters and craftsmen, wanderers and musicians. In 1921 the then-Chief of the McIntyre clan went to America and never returned. I don't know who is chief now. Not me.
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