Scotland

I have a new driver, Charles Hunter. Charles is very different from Michael. For one thing, he always wears a tie and sports coat. And he speaks English (which, now that I’ve gotten so proficient at taxi-driver-Glaswegian actually disappoints me). He’s also, shall we say, a more conservative driver. One who knows how to use a seatbelt and a turn signal and—this is the most amazing thing—the brake.

Not that Charles is opposed to airing out his Beemer on a country road, mind you. At one point in the drive he asks me if I’m up for “a bit of an adventure,” and then drops off the main highway onto a narrow one-lane country road following the contours of the Orchy River through Glen Orchy.

It’s what Charles calls a GWR—“a Great Wee Road.”

It rises and dips and curls and spoons in on itself as we pass by fly-fishermen standing in icy waters and hikers on nearby hills and even an encampment of tinkers which, until this moment, I didn’t realize actually existed. I thought they were just something from children’s stories. Like trolls and candlestick makers.

I ask Charles if tinkers are the same as gypsies and he says, “Nay, and if you call a tinker a gypsy, you’ll be asking for trouble.”

Passing through one little village after the other, there is a sameness to the buildings. As Charles says about the houses, “You can have any color you like as long as it’s white and black.”

"You can have any color you like as long as it's black and white." Photos by David Lansing.

Our destination is Islay’s Port Charlotte Hotel, which I’ve chosen because it’s just a short walk down the road from one of my favorite distilleries, Bruichladdich, and because the hotel’s small but marvelous restaurant offers up 107 Islay whiskies (including 22 from Bruichladdich alone).

Charles knows I have my heart set on dinner in Port Charlotte and worries that his diversion down the GWR means we might not arrive at our destination before the dining room closes, so while we are on the CalMac ferry from Kennacraig to Islay, he calls the hotel and puts in our order for steamed mussels, Scottish salmon, and a bottle of French viognier (preceeded, of course, by a dram of a rare Bruichladdich whisky called Cairdean—Gaelic for family—that has been aged for 14 years in a sherry cask).

I think Michael was right: Charles and I are going to get along famously.

In the morning, after a breakfast of blood sausage and French toast, we motor past the Isle of Soay and shrouded Cuillin Hills with waterfalls spilling tinted water the color of whisky from the peaty hillsides into the sea. By noon we are anchored at Loch Harport and the Talisker Distillery, the end of my Classic Malt Cruise.

Water, colored by peat, the color of whisky. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

Graham and I spend the afternoon with Charlie Smith, the genial distillery manager, drinking and talking about the whisky Charlie makes. Whisky may have come from the Irish, Charlie says, “but it’s the Scots who took it to heart. Life here is hard and just making a living in Scotland has always been difficult. I suppose you could look on whisky as being God’s consolation to the Scots. It brings us together and gives us warmth on bitter winter nights.”

Charlie Smith of Talisker. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

That night, the distillery puts on a ceilidh up on the hill overlooking the calm sea as slow-flying gulls swoop low over the silvery surface. I sit outside, despite the midgies, and soak it all in. Beside me are Charlie and Graham.

Inexplicably, I feel melancholy. Sad to be off the boat, I suppose. End of the whisky cruise and all that. I even feel like I’m going to miss Graham. In fact, I have this sudden crazy notion to call Michael back in Glasgow and see if he’s able to drive me around Scotland for a couple more weeks. Or maybe I should just stay here, in Loch Harport, and do something purposeful with my life like be a shrimp fisherman. Or open a tapas bar. Everything here just feels so…peaceful. And in its proper place.

View of Loch Harport from Talisker. Photo by David Lansing.

Perhaps sensing my mood, Charlie, who, with his flashing blue eyes and firm chin looks a bit like a kilt-wearing Paul Newman, holds his glass of whisky out in front of him and says, “Sitting here, it’s easy to forget what year it is. It’s just the way it was a hundred years ago. It’s not hard to imagine someone sitting here, a very long time ago, looking at this same view, taking warmth and solace from a wee dram of whisky, just as we’re doing.”

I gently stick an elbow in Charlie’s side, ribbing him for being sentimental. “That’s just the whisky talking,” I say.

“Nay, it’s true,” says Graham. “There’s a kind of sacred notion in the drinking of whisky in a place like this.” Then he pauses for a moment as the three of us take in the magnificence of our surroundings. Far away in the distance, I hear the bleat of a lamb. “I mean, here we are,” he continues in a low voice, “looking at the ageless sea and the green hills, sipping our whisky, and it’s all just…heartbreaking, isn’t it?”

Ever the wise guy, I tell Graham that I’m considering staying here and opening a tapas bar.

“You should think hard about it,” Graham says in all seriousness. “Really hard.”

And for a fleeting moment, I do.

That night, after the ceilidh, I call Michael. He can’t drive me around next week but he’s got a buddy who’s available.

“His name is Charles,” Michael says. “I should think you two will hit it off just fine.”

I’m looking forward to it.

Over dinner last night Graham and I were talking about the Scottish character, which Graham says is generous in a way that’s often misunderstood for simple-mindedness.

Our inscrutable Scottish captain, Graham. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

As an example, he told a story about a man in his small village who asked Graham if he had a freezer and then negotiated to sell him half of a 180-pound deer he’d just shot.

“How much would ya be wantin’ for the meat?” Graham asked him.

“Let’s say a quid per pound,” answered the man.

Done, said Graham.

Then the neighbor asked Graham if he’d be butchering the deer himself and Graham told him he didn’t think so. Well, I could do it for you, I suppose, said the neighbor, for a price.

“How about a bottle of whisky?” Graham proposed.

The villager was happy with that and the next day he shows up at Graham’s with the butchered venison.

“How much do I owe you then?” Graham asked.

“Sixty quid,” says his neighbor.

“Shouldn’t it be more like 90?” Graham says.

“Well, it would have been before I butchered it,” says the villager. “But now it’s only 60. And by the way, that was a lovely bottle of whisky you gave me.”

While I’m still thinking about this story, Graham says, “Speaking of lovely bottles of whisky….” and he goes into the galley and pulls out a cask strength 25-year-old Caol Ila that must go for at least £125, if you could even buy it since only 6,000 bottles were made. He gives me a good pour. It’s as smooth and deep as the waters around us.

“God, that’s lovely, isn’t it?” I say to Graham.

He takes a sip, closes his eyes, and says, “Tastes a bit like a dead skua to me.”

That must be part of the Scottish character as well–you never know when they’re kidding.

It’s been a long and difficult day of sailing in extremely rough conditions. As we continue north late in the day, I suggest to Graham that perhaps we should just take up anchorage in one of the many uninhabited bays we pass.

He looks at me as if I were a madman. “Only a fool would spend the night where it is so peopled by ghosts,” he says.

This has something to do with The Highland Clearances in Scotland (which are always capitalized, just like Ireland’s Great Famine and our own Great Depression). The Clearances, in which the British forced the displacements of the population in the Scottish Highland to the Lowlands and brutal coastal areas along the Inner Hebrides, took place 200 years ago, but everyone in Scotland is still a bit tetchy about it, so while I’d like to tell Graham to bugger the damn ghosts, I keep my mouth shut.

Anchoring at Loch Scavaig.

We coninue on, finally puttering in to Loch Scavaig, on the southern end of Skye. It’s a peaceful, beautiful bay, ringed by rugged hills painted an emerald green. A great number of seals inhabit the Loch, some sunning themselves on the rocks, others popping up unexpectedly around Chantilly, doing a bit of surveillance on us.

Seals at Loch Scavaig watch us watching them. Photos by David Lansing.

Though it’s almost 7 o’clock, there’s still plenty of night left in the sky so a small group decides to take the tender and head to shore to hike the Cuillen Hills to Loch Coruisk. Graham, Topi, and I stay behind and enjoy a glass of wine and some kibble. It is so beautiful out that none of us talk. We just sit quietly with our drinks, smiling at the seals who come to visit alongside the boat.

I am in heaven. And wish we could stay here for days.

The tour of Kinloch Castle on Saturday was interesting in an Addams Family sort of way. Its owner, Sir George Bullough, obviously had some issues (After inheriting the castle from his father, who died from the effects of a London smog in 1891 at age 53, George built a vaulted and tiled mausoleum on the island for his father’s remains. Stung by criticism that the floral ceramics reminded visitors of a public lavatory, he built another—this time a Doric temple—and had the original dynamited. According to our guide, Sir George loved playing with dynamite).

Try not to step on the animals at Kinloch Castle.

The first thing you notice when you come into the castle are all the dead animals. The guide implores us not to step on the lion. Or the leopard. Not some sort of faux lion or leopard, mind you, but the real thing. Smashed and flattened into rugs. Then there are the 20 or 30 deer heads staring placidly at you from the wood-paneled walls like an all-stag men’s choir getting ready to break out into something from the Bambi soundtrack.

There are also innumerable glass cases filled with dozens of dead, stuffed birds that Sir George personally shot. Yuck. Upstairs in the library are strange photo albums full of sepia shots of Sir George at beheadings in China or admiring torture devices in the Far East. And more than a few albums full of Victorian pornography (the guide would only allow me to take a “quick glance” at the albums).

A portrait of Sir George Bullough.

Obviously Sir George was a bit kinky, which, perhaps, explains why he spent the equivalent of $27 million in today’s terms to build a castle far, far away from civilization.

I can just imagine him back in London saying to his wife, Lady Monica (a bit of a tart herself; she was reputedly the lover of many rich and famous men. Her first husband divorced her after he discovered she was having an affair with Sir George), “Darling, do you fancy spending the weekend at the castle trying out that stretching rack I brought back from Shanhai?”

“Oh, no, dear. You go ahead without me. But don’t spend too much time in the dungeon. You know how out of sorts it always makes you.”