Scoutmaster trip to Eurpoe 2007

Saturday, August 11, 2007

The river Ness cuts through the town of Inverness; the water moves fast, and I spent a few hours walking along the banks. Suspension footbridges cross the river so I meandered down along one side and back along the other. The weather, I am told, is now excellent, a mix of sun and clouds and temperatures like early fall back home. For most of the summer, Scotland and Britain had been having a lot of rain.

Of course, Inverness has a castle on a hill; today the castle houses the municipal courts and jails. I’m not sure if the jail cells are in the dungeon, but they may be. In front of the castle is a statue of Flora MacDonald, the woman who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape from the British. Much legend exists about Charlie who tried to restore the Scottish monarchy; the British offered a large reward to anyone who would turn Charlie in, but even after three months of hiding in the highlands, no one betrayed Charlie.

Tomorrow, I plan to go west along Loch Ness; my destination is Fort William and the area around Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Britain. Thinking about my past experiences traveling in Europe, I decided to rent a car for the coming week. A car offers a lot of advantages in terms of being able to see more out-of-the-way places. Having access to the Internet makes it easy to do things like renting a car and finding a hostel.

A Scottish band, Torridon, performed at Blackfriars Highland Pub last night; four guys sang energetically and played bagpipe, mandolin, guitar, mandola, drums, bodhran, and accordion. I bought a CD, and transferred the tunes to my computer. Click here to Play a Song. One thought I had was to actually do a Scottish folk song tour with a fellow back home from the Folklore Society. However, his trip was in September, and I’ll be long gone from Scotland by then. My alternative is to simply try to find the pubs that offer traditional music wherever I can.

I rented a four-door Astra, with a manual transmission and steering wheel on the right (wrong) side from Europcar this morning. I’ve driven in the U.K. before, and never really get used to driving on the left; I have a hard time shifting and giving myself clearance on the left side of the car. I am usually close to the left side of the road, especially on two lane roads.

So with British wheels, I proceeded west to Loch Ness and my encounter with Nessie. In a place called Dromdrochit, the Loch Ness Exhibition tells the story from both a historical-cultural perspective and from a scientific perspective. It seems a thousand people have “seen” the monster, and every one of their accounts is recorded and on file in the exhibition archives! Loch Ness is a deep lake formed during the time of the glaciers; it lacks mineral nutrients, and so supports a relatively small community of fish. Scientists say that Nessie would have a hard time getting a decent meal in the lake. Nonetheless, a serious scientific expedition was undertaken in the 1980’s. Using sonar, they scanned the lake systematically searching for signs of the monster. Wouldn’t you know, “they” still cannot say for certain, but they are confident that Nessie is not a real creature?

Further down the road is the Urquhart (urk-hart) Castle, an impressive ruin on a high bluff overlooking Loch Ness. It has been the home to Picts (people who drew pictures on stones), English nobles, and Scottish Clan Chiefs. An Irish Priest, St. Columba, stopped here in 580 A.D. to baptize a Pictish nobleman, and thus bring Christianity to this part of Scotland. Sir John Grant of Clan Grant built the tower and most of what we see now in 1509. Urquhart has also served as a site to film experiments with medieval siege engines, trebuchets. I think I may have seen the film on PBS some time ago.

My destination for the night and the next few days was Fort William, but I had no reservations, and I knew it would be difficult to find a hostel or Bed and Breakfast. I opted to head for the Glen Nevis Campground, and was counting on not have a problem getting a site to pitch my tent. I was right. The campground lies in the glen (valley) at the base of Ben Nevis (Mount Nevis), the highest mountain in the U.K., more than 4400 feet in elevation. While that may not sound high, Ben Nevis is impressive, and the weather can make a hike up the mountain treacherous.

Although I had lived in a tent for three weeks during the World Jamboree, it was nice to be indoors for a while at the hostels in London and Inverness. At the World Jamboree, the American contingent got British-made tents. Scouts, leaders and the staff, like me, got tents. We could keep our tent after the Jamboree, but I did not want to mail it home, and I certainly did not want to carry additional gear weighing 12-15 lbs. My backpacking tent, a Big Agnes, weighs about three pounds, and actually works well. After all, this is now a car camping trip so a lot of my stuff remains in the car, not in my tent, like at the Jamboree. I also brought my backpacking stove and titanium cooking pots, and have been cooking meals for myself too. Restaurant food is very expensive, but supermarket food is reasonable.

My past experience with campsites in Europe has been good. The Glen Nevis Campground is typical, or perhaps a little below par. It’s very clean, and the showers and toilet facilities are excellent, even better than those at the World Jamboree. The shower house here is heated, with plenty of private space in the private shower rooms for my clothes, and toiletries. At the World Jamboree, the shower facility was a huge framed canopy tent with portable showers lined up side to side. Generally speaking, the Jamboree facilities could not be kept really clean as people tracked in mud all the time. In the morning, the Jamboree showers were packed with people, but I generally took my shower in the evening, before bed, when fewer people used the facility. We had hot water for showers most of the time, and we also had adequate water pressure most of the time. Both the showers and the toilets at the Jamboree were manufactured in Holland. I think, if we had only sunnily, dry weather conditions, these facilities would have worked better.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

I woke up to the sound of rain falling on my tent, and decided this would be a good day for riding the steam engine train to Mallaig. It’s the train that Harry Potter rides to Hogwarts. The train ride is considered on of the world’s great train trips, like the Orient Express, except much shorter. At a place call Glenfinnan, there is the incredible viaduct that appears in almost every Harry Potter movie; the viaduct is about a third of a mile long and consists of a series of connected 100 feet tall stone arches. These arches support the railway as it goes around a bend and near Loch Sheil, one of the many lakes in the area. At the end of the ride is the town of Mallaig from which the ferry to the Isle of Skye and the outer Hebrides departs. We had about two hours for lunch and to walk around in Mallaig. The train ride goes through perhaps the most spectacular scenery in the U.K., and Mallaig is a poster town for a fishing village, just lovely.

Philip Sternberg
Scoutmaster, Troop 1131