Scotland

Saturday we sailed in high winds and 12- to 15-foot seas past the Small Isles (yes, that’s what Muck, Canna, and Eigg are called) to Rum, population 30, to visit Kinloch Castle, sort of the Hearst mansion of the Hebrides. Built in 1897 by a crazy industrialist named Sir George Bullough, this wildly extravagant turreted estate is open for a quirky tour once a day only in summer. On Saturday the tour was scheduled for 2pm.

Kinloch castle in the Isle of Rum. Photo by David Lansing.

Having arrived around noon and not really knowing what to do with ourselves, we walked along the heavily forested coastal road to the community hall-slash-general store where Lewis, who is 9-years-old, sat on a tall stool behind the counter watching over such items as canned chocolate sponge pudding, Scrumpy Jack English cider, and, on the top shelf, three bottles of whisky. On the counter next to Lewis was something called an anti-midge hood, which looked a lot like a beekeeper’s bonnet. Thinking I might give it to Graham, I asked how much it was.

“You don’t want that,” said Lewis in his little boy voice.

“Why not?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t work. Midgies just fly right through it.”

Thinking that, at the very least, it would make a nice souvenir, I told Lewis I’d take it anyway.

He refused to sell it to me. “Wouldn’t do to sell you something that doesn’t work,” he said.

Since he wouldn’t sell me the midgie hood, I went next door to the community hall which also serves as a sort of ersatz café. Lewis followed me in and stood silently at my table holding a pad of paper at his side. Evidently he’d switched hats from general store clerk to waiter.

When I asked him what was on the menu today, he said, “Tea and Scottish pancakes.”

“What else?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Tea and Scottish pancakes,” he repeated.

“Well, everything sounds good, Lewis, but I think I’ll just have the tea and Scottish pancakes.”

He slowly wrote the order down in very large letters on a pad of green paper.

While waiting for my tea, I took a stroll around the community center/cafe, stopping before a bulletin board which had a chart detailing every islander’s role for the week.

Bar staff: Fliss, Niall, Sean, Ed

Boat duty: Leslie, Karl

Butchering, mincing: Derek, Gordon

Store, café: Lewis, Rhys, Porta.

So I guess Saturday was Lewis’ day to work. Made me wonder if I’d come on Sunday if Rhys or Porta would have sold me the midgie bonnet.

We anchored late this afternoon just off the island of Coll. A stiff westerly wind made it cold enough that most everyone had their sunset cocktail below deck. Except Graham and me.

I asked Graham if he minded the cold wind and he said no. “It keeps the midgies away.”

Graham is obsessed with midges, those nasty gnat-like biting flies that always seem to travel in swarms. They’re like Dracula, Graham says. They can’t stand the light. But once the sun goes down, “They’ll eat ya alive.”

They’re worst the further west you go, says Graham as he spreads a little Avon “Skin So Soft” on his arms. Then, noticing two large seabirds flying overhead, he starts in on his second-favorite topic, great skuas.

“I fuckin’ hate those birds,” he says, sipping on a smoky Lagavulin. “I’ve seen ‘em attack a baby lamb,” he says dramatically, “dive bombing them from behind and plucking out their eyes and then killing them.”

He looks up at the burnished sky. “Bonxie bastards,” he says.

Great skuas attack a hiker on Orkney.

I can’t help it; I have to ask Graham the obvious question: Has he ever been attacked by the birds?

“Aye,” he says quietly. He looks down at his feet. “Hit me from behind. Reminded me of getting whacked with a ruler on the back of the head from the nuns,” he says with a little smile.

He pours himself another finger of Lagavulin and holds the bottle out towards me. I wave him off. “I think Topi has dinner on,” I tell him, standing up. “Fish cakes and sweet potatoes.”

“I’ll be there shortly,” he says. And I leave him alone in the gloaming with the midgies and his whisky.

Yesterday afternoon we anchored off Iona, a smallish, rocky island near the ragged tip of the Ross of Mull. Iona has absolutely nothing to do with whisky. It is, however, the cradle of Scottish Christianity, the place where St. Columba established a church in 563 A.D.

Graham ferried me ashore in a tiny rubber tender, dropping me off on a treacherous stretch of rocky tidepools with instructions to just “Hike through the green ‘till you find the road.”

The hike to Baile Mor on the island of Iona.

The “green” turned out to be a mushy, steep slope of cow pasture, full of all kinds of bovine souvenirs, and not only did the grazing herd take offense at my sudden intrusion, so did their owner who stormed out of a small stone farmhouse yelling indecipherable Scottish epithets at me.

Sneakers wet and oozing remnants of smelly pasture patties, I quickly scrambled over a barbed-wire fence, cutting my thumb in the process, certain that Graham was sitting comfortably aboard Chantilly, binoculars in one hand and a single malt in the other, chuckling to himself as he watched me.

Arse heid.

It was a short walk down an unpaved country lane into the village of Baile Mòr, a mecca for pilgrims from around the world who come here to find solace in the restored medieval abbey or the peaceful ruins of a nunnery. Feeling damp and wanting to get out of the harsh winds, I stepped into tiny St. Oran’s Chapel, the size of a garden shed, built in the 12^th century. At the front was a simple stone altar and next to it a wooden cross. Scribbled notes, on the back of matchbook covers or torn slips of paper, were mounted on the cross with push pins.

I want to live here forever. –Ailigh, 6

If you can’t find Inner Peace on this island, you’ll find it nowhere. –Kam

St. Oran's Chapel on the right.

Several hours later, Graham picked me up from the same rocky shore. With a smirk, he asked me how the hike was to Baile Mòr.

“Lovely,” I lied. “Absolutely lovely.”

He glanced at my ruined shoes, noticed my bloody hand, but didn’t comment further. We motored back to Chantilly in silence.

That night, after I’d gone to bed, he carefully washed my muddy red Chuck Taylor sneakers. In the morning, they sat good as new, drying in the sun on the deck.

Neither of us said a word about the transformation.

Well, someone on the boat made a big stink about passing by the Lagavulin distillery without so much as a wee taste (who knows, maybe it was me), so a decision was made to hire a car and go for an afternoon visit.

Our driver, Martin, drove remarkably restrained (compared to my Glaswegian driver) down a one-lane country road through fields of peat across to the other side of Islay. Because the road was so narrow, every time a car approached from the other direction, one of us would have to pull over.

Photo by Christine Spreiter.

There was a certain island etiquette to the whole thing. First Martin would pull over and then, as the other car approached, he’d give him a particular type of wave. If Martin felt he knew the driver, he’d raise a single index finger off the steering wheel. If he thought he knew the driver but couldn’t be certain, he’d lift four fingers off the steering wheel. And if he didn’t know the driver from Adam, he’d raise his hand, palm up, like a Cherokee in an old John Wayne movie.

Now you might think that a business like Lagavulin, which has officially been distilling whisky since 1816 (they were brewing up the illicit stuff as early as 1742) would be quite modern and evolved. But you’d be wrong. In fact, if you were to make a Scottish version of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” you couldn’t do better for a setting than the offices of the Lagavulin distillery with its creaky, well-worn wooden floors and tongue-and-groove ceiling and ancient leathery wing chairs. As we waited for the distillery manager, Donald Renwick, to come in and give us a tour, I kept expecting Jimmy Stewart to walk in the door carrying Zuzu on his back.

The Lagavulin office. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

We sat in the old wing chairs and nosed various Lagavulin iterations, all of them showing that typical smoky-sweet Islay character, but my favorite whisky was actually a blend Donald had hidden away called Celtic Pillaged. The “pillaged” malt was liberated from 40 litres of cask strength 12-year-old whisky from nine distilleries on Islay and Jura (as well as Bushmills in Northern Ireland). Then the whisky was vatted together and married at Lagavulin. I got only the slightest sip of the whisky (the sale of which goes to support children’s hospitals in Scotland and Northern Ireland), but I can tell you it was truly the nectar of the gods.

A cask of Celtic Pillaged. Photo by David Lansing.

Nothing like a nosing at 9 in the morning. To prepare for it, Topi pours us all a shot of Dalwhinnie (“It’s a breakfast whisky”) to go along with our bacon butties. Then it’s off to the distillery.

Whisky and bacon butties for breakfast. Photo by Christine Spreiter.

Our group of whisky tasters includes several Brits who have been sailing aboard a magnificent 56-foot gaff-rigged cutter, Eda Frandsen. A tall chap, with a walrus mustache and wearing a cotton candy-colored polo shirt with the collar turned up, the way they used to do in the 80s, sniffs an 18-year-old whisky Billy has just poured us and, in a very proper British accent, says, “I’m getting dried prawn shells in the nose on this one, Billy.”

Dried prawn shells? It’s all Billy and I can do to keep from snorting this fine whisky out our nose as we try and hold back our laughter.

Is it dried prawn shells or shellacked sandalwood you be smellin'?

In a show of one-upmanship, another British noser, an old guy who looks a bit like Peter O’Toole after a long night of boozing, says, “I don’t think it’s dried prawn shells at all. More like smoked haddock, I should think.”

“Typical toff nonsense,” Billy whispers to me.

“What’s a toff?” I whisper back.

“Upper-class British arse heid,” Billy says.

The British toff, who is actually a rather well-respected whisky writer from London who shall go nameless, makes similarly ridiculous comments about various expressions of Caol Ila whisky. He finds the 12-year-old tastes of “shellacked sandalwood” and a rare cask-strength whisky to have a “lot of fruitcake taste, although now that I think of it, it’s more the smell of the mix before you actually bake the cake rather than the cake itself.”

What I want to know is this: How would anyone know what shellacked sandalwood tastes like?