Highlands, the heart of Scotland
I was walking in the rain on the stones of the old Stirling Bridge, with the closed umbrella serving as a cane. The smoke from his pipe fought against the moisture trapped in his tweed jacket in glittering droplets as his eyes watched. Stirling Castle, gateway to the Highlands and the place where the paths leading to the Scottish Highlands begin. It was his red beard that led me to ask him where to go in the country of monsters, whiskey and sheep. And he answered me with the laconicism typical of northern people: "The heart of Scotland lies on Ben Nevis."
Following the words of the Scottish gentleman, I went through a sea of brown mountains and narrow lakes like bird's tongues until reaching the feet of a rocky giant. The Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland and Queen of the Highlands (1,345m), stands by the sea very close to the small town of fort-william, and bare chested all the Atlantic storms that sweep the north of Scotland.
Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland and Queen of the Highlands
At its peak I discovered that the heart of this beautiful country is cold, opaque and inclement. In good weather, the ascent provides unforgettable views of the Highlands, but talking about sunshine in Scotland is like asking for rain in Seville. As the barmaid at The Crofter pub quizzically replied, “Here the weather is summed up in rain, rain, and damn rain”.
Water is omnipresent in the Highlands and its inhabitants have always tried to tame it. From Fort Williams you can visit Neptune's Stairs, an interesting complex of locks that is part of the Caledonian Channel, a canal running through Scotland from east to west through its lochs.
Loch is the Scottish word for the bodies of water that dot the mountains, Countless as we head north. Some, like the Loch Ness , have their own legend and others, like the Loch Shiel , they begin to see them being born on its shores. Next to this last lake is the famous viaduct on which the Hogwarts Express runs, the literary train that transports hundreds of young magicians to the school created by the imagination of J.K. Rowling, become one of the most visited places in the Highlands.
Glenfinnan Viaduct
The influences of the author are clearly visible when crossing the wild landscape that leads us to the isle of skye It is easy to imagine sorcerers and alchemists inhabiting castles like the ones that overlook the A87 road, and let no one be surprised if, on a dangerous curve, she appears to him a ghost company of Spanish soldiers. They probably come from Loch Duich, a beautiful lake that houses the famous Eilean Donan Castle in its waters and the bones of the Hispanics who one distant day in 1719 dared to take it to burn the beard of the King of England.
The Spanish expedition ended in failure, but the soldiers are still present in the local pubs, eating haggis and drinking pints of India pale ale. No one warned me that Skye, the most famous island of all that there is in Scotland, was beautiful, wild, unpredictable and independent, close enough to earth not to be isolated and too far away to be part of something other than its own essence. Skye is a wet Mars, a desert of water and moss dotted with swashbuckling houses that defy the fury of the storms.
The elgol port, on the west coast of Skye, it's one of those places that could appear on postcards sent from the End of the World. Its waters are black and the mountains and small fjords that surround it do not invite you to navigate them, even if there is a good reason to do so. In front of the port is the island of Soay, a paradise for seals and birds that live under its imposing cliffs, clinging to a piece of inaccessible land for most of the year.
Cliffs, lakes, waterfalls, plains... nature is the mistress of the Isle of Skye!
If you do not suffer from dizziness, it is advisable take the boat in Elgol that goes around the island of Soay to find out what it was like the world, virgin, wild and cold, before we humans set out to change it. For me, like the Invincible Armada that was shipwrecked in these waters, the elements stopped me: the ship that left Elgol in the middle of a storm had to turn around, shaken by black waves that made me rethink sailing again.
The only way to get over a bad drink on the Scottish sea is to pop into a local pub, lean on the bar and select one of the many beers that the Scots like to drink at any time of the day. Lovers of hops and malt will find their paradise in Scotland, as there is no pub that does not have a barrel of local and craft beer, being able to taste more than fifty in a trip of less than a week.
This is not the place to encourage drinking, and not even the writer resorted to it after almost falling overboard from the ship that never reached the island of Soay, but it is the Scots themselves who encourage it. If the accent doesn't smell like mob to you, you're far from being a Highlander. So when I asked for a glass of water at the Kyleakin's King's Arms , her waitress laughed sarcastically and, winking at me, served me a Scotch accompanied by the following phrase: "In Scotland, whiskey is drunk with water, and water with whisky."
Sunset at Old Man of Storr, a true gift of nature on the Isle of Skye
From the top of cloudy Ben Nevis you can sense A beauty running wild on the Isle of Skye, but that has been tamed with the construction of the Caledonian Channel and the ports on the coast. However, as we continue north, Nature prevails over our desire to transform, and modernization gives in to the overwhelming rule of cold, rain and distance.
The road A837 which connects the ports of Ullapool and Unapool traverses a green and brown landscape, where the houses are the exception, dotted with the ruins of forgotten castles and ports depressed by the arrival of Brexit. As confessed by a fisherman seated in the bar of the nineteenth Culag's Hotel Lochinver, much worse than Nessie is the monster that has expelled Spanish and French fishermen from Scotland, the same ones who gave life to ports that no longer have it.
To complete the visit to the Highlands it is essential to sleep in a lodge , typical house of the area characterized by its modest size, slate roofs and isolated location integrated into the environment. There are hundreds of them in the Highlands, some located in emblematic places such as the mythical valley of Glen Coe or about the durness cliffs, shelters where we can always find a hot fire like the one that can save you from the cold if you visit Inchnadamph.
The mythical valley of Glen Coe
This tiny group of houses that cannot even be described as a town is lost and at the same time accessible, isolated from the world as it was 45,000 years ago, when cave bears, saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths walked the shores of its lake. His bones rest in the caves near Ichnadamph as a reminder that the Highlands have always belonged to Nature. The only human thing that has managed to survive its beauty is, literally and literally, beer.