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StevoTrip2006 Friday, September 29, 2006
Ness is More
As you might have gathered, my account is lagging beind where I'm up to, given I'm now in London and this thing is still in Scotland. After Fort William I headed up thorugh the "Great Glen" (the chain of Lochs tha runs diagonlly through the heart of Scotland) to Inverness. This took me along the shores of Loch Ness and past Castle Urquhart.  There was a time, not necessarily that long ago, when you could sort of take the Loch Ness Monster business kind of seriously. I remember a mid-80s edition of National Geographic that gave the whole business a little bit of credence. However, in recent years searches using fixed cameras, sonar sweeps, satellite imagery, thermal imagery, and aerial photography have failed to detect anybody gullible enough to believe in the monster. Given that, I think the Loch Ness monster tourism industry can be very glad it's placed firmly on the route from east coast to west coast, so people like me tend to stop by regardless. And yes, I did go to one of the Loch Ness tourist exhibitions, and I have to say that it was actually kind of fun. Even that, interestingly, basically took the sceptic's view, which really has to be the final nail in the coffin for Nessie believers. If your monster can't be taken seriously by roadside tourist stalls, it probably time to give up the whole business. The other big thing along the shores of Loch Ness was Castle Urquhart, which I had a good look around. It's not in fantastic shape but it has a great location and is very atmospheric. I would say more about it, but I'm afraid it was totally overshadowed by Dunnotar Castle, which I saw the next day. More about that the next time I update. One last bit of Nessieness: my favourite ever Nesie photograph, just because the monster looks so goofy. Apparently this is known as the "Muppet Photo."  Tuesday, September 26, 2006
The Pepsi Challenge of Castles
Well, I've finished my Scottish loop and am back in London. Scotland was great, although a bit exhausting what with all the driving. I'd tentatively earmarked the Friday (the 22nd) for either Skye or the West Highland Railway (aka the Harry Potter Express) but ended up doing neither. Having had to race up through Glen Coe on the way to Fort William I was keen to do some more relaxed exploring and sightseeing, so I headed off into the countryside on a rather rambling route to see Castle Tioram (pronounced "cheer-um"; mispronounced "tee-or-um"). This was a castle I had strong memories of as a kid. The place has been a ruin since 1715 when its owner set it on fire (I assume he was hoping to get planning permission to demolish it and build apartments: Tioram Mews, perhaps). Despite its spectacular location on Loch Moidart, it's lain in ruins since. When I visited it as a kid you could ramble all over it, but in 1998, after a delay of only 280 years, the Highland Council finally put a building order on it and boarded it all up. I knew all this, but it had made such an impression on me that I still wanted to go see it. I'm glad I did. For one thing the drive in was great: well off the beaten track on crazy Scottish single track roads, so I got to see a bit of the real countryside. Scotland has two totally different types of scenery: there's a lot of very green, heavily wooded foresty bits that are more like what I'd picture English countryside being like, and then a lot of classically Scottish stark bare grassland where all the trees seem to have given up and gone off to huddle by a fire in a pub somewhere. What's amazing is the way you go from one to the other over very distances, and my drive in to Tioram saw a fair bit of both. The setting of the Castle is quite something: it's in the middle of nowhere and the edge of Loch Moidart, perched on a sand bar. You walk along the sand bar and then through head high bracken, and then emerge into very atmospheric panoramic views (ad a bracing wind). I sort of don't like posting videos, because I get self conscious about how goofy I am in them, but they give a better idea of the setting of a place like this, so here's another one. So even without being able to get in, it was worth wandering around the outside. The whole place is a little sad, though, as the castle is basically falling down while it's stuck in planning limbo: a big bit of the wall fell over in 2000, and the whole thing has a bit of an Ettamogah-Pub-style "those walls don't look very vertical" vibe. But then, the rejected planning proposal did, according to Wikipedia, apparently include apartments, which sounds pretty horrible. (And Wikipedia is always correct). The fascinating contrast was with my stopover on the next day, which was Eileen Donan Castle. Below are photos of both...  Castle Tioram  Eileen Donan Castle Obviously the second looks much better, and is photogenic enough that it turns up in movies all the time (including an inexplicable appearance as the "Emergency Scottish headquarters" of MI6 in The World is Not Enough). Yet it, too, was mostly destroyed in 1719. Most of what you see was constructed between 1912 and 1932, and a lot of it not especially close to the original plan. So here's the dilemma: which is a better outcome? Back at good old City of Melbourne, we wouldn't allow a guesswork, fake heritage reconstruction of a Victorian terrace, so why is it okay for Eileen Donan? But then, at least it's not falling down. And all these castles seem to have been partially destroyed and rebuilt at some point: in a few hundred years (or possibly already) it will just be seen as another stage in its development. Discuss. Friday, September 22, 2006
London to Edinburgh to Fort William
Well, I'm well into my trip now. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to keep up my contact (particularly the more technologically advanced aspects of it, like posting photos) as internet access has been a little flakier than I hoped. However, today I have struck the double jackpot: an excellent internet cafe in a relatively dull town (Fort William). So before I head up into the Highlands I can do the full data dump. The first couple of days were pretty much solid travel. Firstly there was my wrong way around the world (Melbourne, to New Zealand, To L.A., to London), which amazingly wasn't quite as bad as I expected. I arrived in London in the late morning, and didn't really do anything that first day due to jet lag. However, it was great to catch up with Tim and Rebecca. I only spent one night at their place and was too sleepy to interact much, but I look forward to spending a week with them when I finish my loop through Scotland.
The second day I headed up to Edinburgh on the train (which was great: I've heard all sorts of negative things about British Rail, but it all ran on time. Edinburgh was everything I'd been led to expect: very mediaeval in character, with lots of little laneways disappearing off from the main roads. I was staying in the Old Town, which is the original old bit of it (there's also a later planned New Town from the 18th century, which I should be able to poke around a bit when I come back through on the way back). The main spine is the Royal Mile, which runs up the ridge of the hill to the Castle. My guidebook says the following about the old bit of town:
...An etymology that makes the name of this swanky house in Parkville all the more puzzling. However, there's no sign of such things now. Apparently parts of Royal Mile were pretty slummy even quite recently, but these days it's fully gentrified and very much the centre of the tourist industry. It's remarkably intact, with really only the bottom quarter or so showing any significant number of new buildings. It's therefore amazingly unified in terms of character, but being all so old, also kind of charmingly slapdash in the way it's laid out. So, for example, you get two streets crossing at right angles, but with one about three storeys above the other: and the same old building facing both sides of the corner, with two separate street frontages at the two different levels. At the top of the street is Edinburgh Castle. I spent the best part of a day wandering around the castle (inside and out) and it was well worthwhile. It has cliffs on three of its four sides, and this natural geographic protection gave it an obvious strategic advantage, although this was undermined somewhat by the castle's notoriously clumsy contingent of archers, who in the heat of battle would often literally shoot themselves in the foot (below).
I was impressed by the fact that despite the fact that it has been steadily added to over hundreds of years (the last bits were added in 1927), they haven't screwed it up. If they did an addition to it now, some architect would probably propose a giant glass pyramid in the central courtyard or something. Speaking of such things, at the bottom of the Royal Mile is the new Scottish Parliament building, which was recently completed after years of controversy. It's a nice enough building, although parts of it look uncomfortably like an apartment building to me:
Yesterday I got the car and drove to Fort William, with the main stop being Stirling Castle. Similar to Edinburgh's in a lot of ways, but more fun to explore, with more nooks and crannies, and a couple of big open garden spaces hidden in amongst the walls. I spent long enough at Stirling that I ended up being very late up to Fort William, but it was well worth it. Anyway, my energy is flagging so I'll sign off now. However, if you'd like to have a look through some more of my photos, you should be able to click on the thingamy at the top right and go through to flickr where you can browse some of them. (The uploaded photos may get ahead of these updates).
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Itinerary
So here's the rough plan. September 17: Leave. September 18: Arrive London. September 19-20: Off to Edinburgh. September 21 - 22: Scottish stuff around Fort William. September 23 - 24: Scottish stuff around Inverness. September 25: Edinburgh. September 26 - October 2: London, with Tim and Rebecca. October 2 - 6: Largely undetermined activities in England and maybe Wales. October 7 - 10: Paris! October 11: Leave London, arrive L.A. October 11 - 15: L.A. with Margaret and Chris. October 16 - 19: Yosemite. October 20: Leave L.A. October 22: Return home. |
Because a holiday doesn't actually happen if you don't spend it in internet cafes describing it to other people. www.flickr.com
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Stupidly Beautiful Exploring the LA Cultural Scene Along the Seine No, I Didn't Go There Because of the Cartoon Le Arche de Ridiculousle Grande Louvre At First Sight Eiffel Tour A Day in the Life of Paris Chobham |
