16 October 2006

October

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Monday 16 October 2006--The ferry leaves Stromness in the dark. The sea is calm, and we sail relatively close to the cliffs of Hoy. In the first hints of morning twilight, we can just barely discern the outlines of the Old Man of Hoy. It's the only look Ron will get.

As the sky brightens, we drive east from Scrabster through patchy fog to Dunnet Head, the northernmost point of the Scottish mainland. We'd have a nice view of southern Orkney from here, but for the fog. We stop briefly at John O' Groats, more famous than Dunnet as the end of the road, 874 miles from Land's End in Cornwall. Fortunately, it's off-season, and early in the morning, to boot--it looks to be quite a tourist trap.

At Duncansby, we take a walk along the cliffs to view the peculiar triangular stacks. Then, just north of Wick, we have a look at Sinclair-Girnigoe Castle. We stop briefly in Wick, which looks quite cheerful on a sunny day. I imagine it's rather dreary under an overcast sky.

The Grey Cairns of Camster sit on a moor a few miles inland from Wick. I've been here several times, in good weather and bad; they present a moody aspect in any case. [My camera has been misbehaving sporadically and chooses this moment not to function at all, which is why the photos below are from 1998.] There are three chambered tombs here, very much like other tombs we have seen, except that two have been covered and joined by the Long Cairn. The other is in a large Round Cairn. Archeologists figure the three chambers were built and used at different times, and the cairns covering them were built up over many years.

A little further down the road is the peculiar Hill o' Many Stanes. This is an array of small stones in numerous rows. No one knows exactly what it's all for, although the usual theory of astronomical observation is often cited. The site is surrounded by flowering bushes that I believe to be gorse. (Botany was never one of my better subjects.)

We drive some miles down the coast to the village of Brora. The Clynelish distillery is there, and I've always enjoyed their product. We don't have time to take a tour, but stop for a look around. A new distillery was built in the 1970s, and for a while the old and new ran side-by-side as Clynelish I and Clynelish II. The older distillery was closed in 1982 and dismantled. Its remaining stock is now bottled as Brora. The old buildings are still there, and no doubt the warehouses are still used. We happen to catch the end of a tour coming back to the shop for a complimentary dram, and the guide invites us to join in. We don't need any arm-twisting.

We're staying tonight in a B&B outside Fortrose, on the Black Isle, which is not an island at all but a peninsula. Fortrose can be reached easily enough by road, but just for fun we opt for the tiny two-car ferry across the mouth of the Cromarty Firth. The cars (or in this case, just the one) are parked on a turntable,which spins 180° as we cross the firth, so that we can drive off the same way we drove on.

After a bit of wandering around, we find our B&B, and then drive into Fortrose for dinner and pints and drams at the Anderson. Jim Anderson of Philadelphia bought this old hotel a few years back, and has transformed it into a mecca for real ale and fine whisky. We meet the man himself and have a lengthy blether in the casual atmosphere of the pub. I like this place a lot, and will earmark it for a night's stay, or maybe two, sometime soon.

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