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StevoTrip2006 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. |
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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