Looking Out To Sea

We’re back from our little holiday in the north of Scotland. Five days touring around from town to town, staying in B&Bs and seeing the sights. The weather was great, and I feel like I’ve been away from real life for a hundred years.

We started on Monday morning taking the train to Inverness. We checked into the most beautiful Bed and Breakfast in the Universe. If you need to stay in Inverness you should give Teri a call first before you do anything else. The first thing she said when we arrived was, “will you be going up to your rooms now or are you heading straight out again? Only I’ve done some home baking and they’ve got fresh cream on, so I won’t bring them up if you’re not going to eat them now…”. Oh it was fabulous. It was the nicest place we stayed by a long way, and also the cheapest all week.

On Monday evening we went to Rocpool, which was quite nice but not amazing. I think I was just nervous about being a first night on holiday. Would it work out or would we be wet and miserable for a week? And so on.

In the morning Helen acquired Fergus the Failmobile from Arnold Clark car rentals. Fergus was a weedy Corsa who didn’t like any of his gears and whined in almost all situations. Going at about 30mph in 5th gear on a flat was about all he could manage. Poor Fergus, we put him through a lot that week. :-(

Before heading off for the great unknown we bought a map from Waterstones, some picnic materials from a supermarket and had a walk around Leakeys Second Hand Bookshop. This is a converted church with every nook piled high with books. They also do home made soup which smelled amazing. We never had enough time to check it out further on the way back, which is a great shame. Look it up if you’re ever there. (Unlike most places we visited, this bookshop doesn’t have a website. But nearly everything else does.)

We were touring on whim, guided by a slightly-out-of-date copy of Peter Irvine’s magnificent Scotland The Best guide, the book The Scotsman describes as the only guide worth a damn. Is there anything of this style that covers other parts of the UK? It would be a magnificent find.

We departed Inverness heading west to Beauly, which was a one horse town. That horse was lame and smelled of horse, so we ate some lunch and left. Heading north-west for a short while we ended up in Ullapool, home of more arts festivals than you can shake a panpipe at. There was nothing on when we were there.

We tried our trick of asking Tourist Information for accommodation and ended up in Spindrift, which was okay but a come-down after the heady heights of An Grianan back in Inverness. The water went off for a large part of the evening all across town, but didn’t affect us too badly. It was working again in time for a shower the next day. The breakfast made up for the slightly disappointing rooms.

We had a pint on the shore wall overlooking Loch Broom and then went into the Frigate Cafe for some pizza and pasta. A little bit lacking in sophistication but still very tasty. Got some local beers in the form of An Teallach ales.

The next morning, after our nifty breakfast from the proprietor of Spindrift, we wandered to Highland Stoneware — which was a bit grim really, and had very little I could convince myself to like even in isolation; en masse it was terrifying — and then wandered aimlessly back and forth until we found Ullapool Bakery on an industrial estate at the edge of town. The fellow there was very friendly and chatted for a few minutes about what they did. Clearly the sign on shore front about them happy to receive visitors was more canny marketing than actual invitation! We beat a hasty retreat when the one-armed flour delivery man came and was told that everything had to be carried in… uh… by hand.

Back in town we had tea and cake in the basic but lovely Tea Store. I had a strawberry tart while we watched people enter the fantasy figurines shop across the road. Seriously, if there’s one thing that I have been overloaded with, it’s the tourist tat. We hired a car and had no CDs or mp3 player with us. There are lots of glens where you can’t receive radio. We were sorely in need of musical accompinemt for our epic journey. But we couldn’t find any decent music in shops we visited, unless what we really, truly wanted to hear was Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham.

We left the happy shores of Loch Broom and made our way down the coast, heading in the general direction of Gairloch. We got distracted by the beautiful sunshine and stopped at Inverewe Gardens, a managed garden over a few acres run by the National Trust for Scotland. There was a very persuasive gentleman at the front desk who convinced us to join. This allows us free access to NTS properties and free parking too!

The gardens are quite lovely, and we sat against the trunk of a eucalyptus tree eating chocolate in the sunshine. We both wrote postcards and then moved on down the road. We arrived in Gairloch too late for the tourist information. We consulted Scotland the Best and found a few recommandations — but had no phone signal. We did some driving and came across The Old Inn. Bistro, bar, rooms, all available. We hitched Fergus to a post and settled down for the night.

We shared a langoustine and squat lobster platter, which is probably the most energy intensive way to eat a meal, short of having your hands tied and snapping at your meal while it is dangled from a fishing line above your head. Tastes good though.

The next morning we got up and out early to get a ride on one of the many sea-life boats that leave from Gairloch harbour. Unfortunately there was only one leaving before midday, which was loaded with some kind of school trip. Being trapped on a boat with two dozen 14-year olds and their teacher wasn’t what we came on holiday for, so we left them to it and moved on down the road.

The next place down that road, besides the various Viewing Points, was Eilean Donan castle, the most iconic looking wee castle you could ever hope to visit. You’ll probably recognise from such historical documents as Highlander. It wasn’t so exciting to wander round inside, though the recreated kitchen was interesting. It was, however, a recreation of a 1930s kitchen rather than a medieval one, dating to the period when the castle was restored and occupied.

On the way back over the footbridge from the castle there were two Scottie dogs playing in the shallow waters of the loch shore. It was hilariously twee. We drove inland next and stopped for lunch at The Cluanie Inn on the shores of Loch Cluanie. The fish and chips was nice but there was really no need for the accordion and bagpipe music. No need.

At this point we had to decide between the two tourist towns in the Great Glen — Fort William or Fort Augustus? We chose the latter because it’s smaller so it might be less nauseating for those not interested in buying baseball caps emblazoned with I ♥ Nessie. It probably worked out that way, but it was still pretty dull. The tourist information centre was closed so we just wandered until we found a likely B&B, Lorien House. We managed to resist the urge to ask “is your mum in?” when the owner answered the door.

Every single eatery in town was doing the same tedious Highland dishes, with haggis-stuffed chicken, salmon, langoustines, blah blah, and we were sick of it. Couldn’t get a table in the first place we tried and ended up in The Lock Inn, which wasn’t very exciting at all but we both ate something plain to make up for everything else. We had serious Highland Fare fatigue.

The heavens opened while we were eating and I’d hoped this would send the midges scurrying for the hills, but they were still around when the rain abated and we got back outside. Damn them. We hid in The Lovat Arms, a hotel which actually turned out to be quite funky inside. Had a dram at the deserted bar and read tedious consumer wankmag, GQ Watch. I mean, who wants to read an entire magazine devoted to over-priced men’s watches?

It didn’t take us long to drive up to Inverness the next morning, even taking the single-track road up the wrong side of Loch Ness. So we did a detour and ended up at Culloden, site of the famous battle and now an extensive visitor centre run by the NTS. So with our new memberships we got in for free!

Inside the centre there’s a long walk-through display telling you all about the Jacobite uprising and the political and social ramifications for the Highlands, Scotland and further afield. After that you can get a GPS-enabled PDA device and head “into the field”. As you walk around the empty fields where the battle took place your headphones tell you the story of what happened where you’re standing. It’s really clever and if it hadn’t been a bitter and miserable day I would have got a lot more out of it. Well worth a visit if you like that sort of thing.

Inside the centre we had a nice meal. On the ceiling above the canteen were the names of all the people whose money had gone towards the creation of the centre. Halfway through our lunch Helen looked up and spotted her own parents’ names, directly above our table. Brilliant.

Foolishly, back in Inverness we decided to try another bed & breakfast rather than trying the one we knew. There’s a lesson for you — don’t do this, or you’ll end up in somewhere like Fenton House, the name of our final accommodation. It was run by a pint-sized Basil Fawlty character and the decor existed in some 1980s twilight. Naturally, they do not have a website. We should have known what a miserable place it would be when we heard the magic words “11.30 curfew”…

The breakfast next day was particularly bad. I think the proprietor had heard of crispy bacon but didn’t really know any more; so instead we got leathery bacon. There was another couple staying there (the fools!) and when the left the breakfast room first we skilfully offloaded some of our uneaten food onto their plates.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. On Friday night we booked a last-minute table at The Kitchen, a restaurant with a name eerily close to The Kitchin in Leith. The rain had started in earnest by this point. The booking was quite late so we hurried through the rain to Corner Grill for a drink and a rather nifty meze platter. Try some grilled fennel!

It was the last night of our holiday and that at least was worth celebrating. The Kitchen are quite keen on their fizz, so we went for a bottle of prosecco. I came back at one point and had to convince Helen we should stop at the one bottle… that 11.30 curfew would have been rather difficult otherwise! The meal was really nice, and Helen had a ham-hock-on-toasted-brioche starter that looked great. Service was good, if rather idiosyncratic, and we had a great time. If only we could have stayed longer. Still, we were quite merry on the way back through the town to our room.

We said goodbye to Fergus the Failmobile in the rain. Maybe we’ll be back, though, and go further north from Inverness, to the Black Isle and so on. And maybe next time we’ll try camping too? Here’s hoping.

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