ALONG THE NORTHERN COAST AND INTO THE ORKNEYS

We had a very long day on Wednesday if we wanted to make it for the last ferry to the Orkneys. We grabbed something for breakfast and lunch at the supermarket, and then began the long drive along the northern coast of Scotland.

There were a couple of stops on our way to the Smoo Caves in order to have a small walk along a mountain creek, where Budgie talked to us about how the forests disappeared due to the war needs in the twentieth century. The weather was lovely at the Kylesku bridge and we could take some good pictures.

By the time we arrived to Smoo, it was almost lunch time. We weren´t sure about going into the caves or having lunch, and we ended up walking down to the beach and trying to get into the boats going to the caves. Mei, the Malaysian girl, didn´t want to wait for the whole group, and she insisted on getting inside before everybody. That caused a delay for the rest of the group. I opted to stay in the beach and picked up a few stones for my collection. I am not so keen on caves unless they are big or you have something to look forward to (such as Proteus in Postojna).

Budgie got everything ready to get lunch, and we had some sandwiches and crisps. We also met two very nice couples from Barcelona, and we shared stories and even some whisky.

Weather was foggy and a bit rainy, and to top it we were under pressure to get to the ferry to St Margaret´s Hope. It was a long drive, and I don´t know if I would have managed it on my own with all the coming and goings and overtakings.

But we arrive on time, and the clouds disappear and we are able to see seals and a school of dolphins and the arrival to St Margaret´s Hope is quite lovely. Our hostel for the night is located right there, and we have it for ourselves.

We cook fajitas (still don´t get this obsession with Mexican food and anglos, specially when it is way too spicy) and then we go to the pub. It´s only ourselves, and we taste the local whisky ( Highland Park and Scapa ). The guys play some snooker and we get back to the hostel to rest after the long day.

Power from the glens

I had to wake up too early on Tuesday morning, because the bus was supposed to be leaving the offices of Wild on Scotland at 8:00 am. We had a very long day in front of us.

So, I paid the previous day, woke up early, and headed out. It was raining a little bit, and I ended up getting a taxi in front of the bus station. It dropped me near the offices in the Royal Mile with plenty of time to grab a coffee, pay for the tour and meet some of the people going on the tour. Most of the people were going on the 4 day trip to Skye, and there were only 5 of us going to the Orkneys. A couple of people joined us. They were going to travel up to Ullapool and up there join the bus going back to Loch Ness, before returning the following day to Edinburgh.

Our guide was called Budgie, and he was really patient with all of us. I should say that the group was most peculiar. By the time we joined with the people coming from Skye, there was two Australian girls, 1 Italian, 2 Catalan boys, 1 girl from Germany, 4 couples from Zaragoza, myself (from Bilbao) and a girl from Malaysia. The German and the Malaysian girl used to hang on their own, and there was a couple of "interesting" arguments later on.

Anyway, we got on our way out of Edinburgh and poor Budgie kept explaining stories about the different places we were travelling through and nobody was listening. He went through a quick who-is-who of the Scottish kings (I guess the Braveheart film did a poor job of explaining what was life back in the Middle Ages) and tried to explain about the Jacobites in order to leave something in our mind before having to explain everything at Culloden field. I swear I could listen some snoring.

We got lost near Perth, and had to turn around before arriving to Hermitage Forest for a quick walk along the river. The water was brown due to the turf fields upstream, and Budgie showed us a small viewing platform, complete with mirrors and a balcony over the river. It was built back in the XVIIIth century by the duke of Athol during the Ossian folly. There was a wave of romanticism across Europe, and the poems of the ancient warrior (supposedly discovered by James MacPherson) swept over writers as Goethe, emperors as Napoleon or musicians as Schubert or Mendelssohn. The pavilion was named in Ossian´s homage. Years later it was discovered that those ancient rhymes didn´t exist.

From Hermitage we continued on our way to Inverness. We stopped at Pitlochry to grab something to eat. A nice, small place in that mock Victorian-Scottish style from the end of the XIXth century. We had to stop at Inverness to pick up Meike, the German girl, and then we took the road to Ullapool. There were a couple of stops on the way at Rogie Falls and Corrieshalloch Gorge. At this last stop we had to walk over a hanging bridge to get to the other side and some good photo ops, but there was a whole bus of German retirees walking and standing and jumping on the bridge, and I am not really fond of that kind of things. If they were planning to die, they could wait until I was long gone.

We drove along some pretty impressive dams. The land had that desolate feeling of the highlands, small bushes, scrubs and stones and a big, big sky. The drive down to Ullapool was similar to a few I had driven down in the Cork coast of Ireland.

Ullapool is a small town where the ferries from Skye stop. There are a few pubs, a small fishing harbor and a good chipper. We met the people from Skye at the parking place from the supermarket, swapped bused and got on our way to do some shopping for dinner and breakfast. The Wild on Scotland tours work on a kitty basis. You put some money before leaving and everyday there is a trip to the supermarket to buy the food for the day. We planned on having burritos and salad for dinner.

When we got to the hostel, we found out that our booking hadn´t been kept, and we were moved to another place, the Ceilidh Place, that didn´t have a kitchen. Budgie gave us some money so that we could go and have dinner on our own, and we dropped our bags. I shared a double room with Chiara, the Italian girl. We went for a walk along the harbour and met my first seal swimming there. We had dinner at the chipper place, scampis and chicken breast and afterwards it was time to get to bed.