July 14, 2018 — travelling from Dornie to Blairgowrie

Sadly, it was now time for Clan MacDonald of Glenside to wave good-bye to our picturesque stone schoolhouse accommodation and the pretty village of Dornie with its iconic Eileen Donan Castle.  It has been a fantastic stay here and we would have loved to extend our visit, however, 

Edinburgh was calling us onward.  While Dusty and Cheryl, with Allen and July, were heading all the way to the city today, we were going part-way (to Blairgowrie) with Mom accompanying us.

Our drive provided us with a steady stream of beautiful scenery.  Along the way, we saw the "Well of Seven Heads" on the shores of Loch Lochy (see June 30th posting for the historic notes), a grazing herd of shaggy-headed Highland cattle, the scenic town of Pitlochry (we remembered visiting here back in 1980, and it's still just as nice-looking though much, much more crowded in 2018), and a red telephone box that's cleverly been converted to a roadside library, giving away books — of course, Mom stopped to check it out and found an interesting paperback that she picked up (some reading for the plane ride home in a couple of days)!

We completed the day with a comfy night's stay at the charming Rosebank B&B.

July 13, 2018 — Dornie — Isle of Skye

Isle of Skye—Take Two!  We were up and on the road to Skye by 9:00.  The roads in Skye come in two forms:  narrow two-lane and extremely narrow one-lane with passing spots. Both are paved with Scottish prudence, ending abruptly with no shoulders.  The traffic in Skye is heavy mainly because of us tourists with our attempts to outsmart everyone else and travel the road less taken.  Today that road was the single tracks of the Waternish Peninsula.

By 11:00 we had reached our quota of sheep, ruins, and heather and had stopped in the quaint village of Stein on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.  The Stein Inn is the oldest inn on Skye and dates back to 1790. It had everything we were looking for: character, coffee, and most importantly, bathrooms.  Next we pushed on to a tannery, where sheep skins are processed and sold around the world.

With backdrops of rugged seas and massive green mountains, the scenery is bleak and beautiful and often both.  We planned for a picnic lunch and stopped by the windswept ruin of Trumpan Church to eat our sandwiches.  Let me be clear, this stop was for nutrition purposes only and not historical—we had all become pretty immune to the allure of stone ruins, which are almost as numerous as sheep.  However, when we read the plaque, it was clear that the roofless church was the site of yet another MacDonald massacre.   The MacDonalds were top dogs of the Isles and everyone was looking to topple them.  This grim tale involved the MacLeods.  

The Massacre at Trumpian Church

In 1577 a group of MacLeods killed some 395 MacDonalds by suffocating them with smoke while they took refuge in a cave on the island of Eigg.  The MacDonalds of ClanRanald planned their revenge, and one Sunday in 1578 they sailed across the Minch from South Uist and landed at Trumpan, near Ardmore Bay, where they found a group of MacLeods at worship in this little church. The MacLeods inside the church were unarmed and defenceless as the MacDonalds trapped them inside the building and laid a fire around the outside walls. When MacLeods from the Dunvegan village arrived they found the church a smoking ruin, and those inside dead.  A terrible battle ensued and the MacDonalds tried to retreat to their boats on the shore, only to find they had been stranded by the incoming tide. The invaders were slaughtered, though a single galley escaped and carried the tale of the massacre to Uist.

We left Trumpan Church and leap-frogged along single-laned roads from passing spot to passing spot until we arrived in Dunvegan, where Jim hiked up to an old Celtic rune stone on the hill while the rest visited a craft shop—being careful not to mention that we were MacDonalds.  Then on to the Fairy Pools, a short hike along a series of waterfalls and pools at the foot of the Cuillin Mountains.  Back in the cars, we drove around to the other side of the mountains and stopped at Sligachan Bridge to wash our faces!  Legend has it that if you submerge your face for seven seconds in the icy waters of the Sligachan River near the bridge (and up stream from the sewage pipe!) and you did not wipe your face and you let it air dry, you will be granted eternal beauty.  The legend is a little vague and fantastical and beauty probably has an asterisked footnote attached to it, but that didn't stop Dusty, Cheryl and Jim from giving it a go.

Supper in Broadford and back to watch the sun set over Dornie and Eileen Donan Castle.

July 12, 2018 — Dornie — Isle of Skye

Happy 83rd birthday, Mom!

The sky was truly the theme for today, as we crossed the bridge to the Isle of Skye and traversed the scenic island.  Before setting out for the day we observed that the morning weather was overcast, but looking westward from our apartment in Dornie towards the island, we felt optimistic that blue sky would appear.  And it did!  As the day went on, and as we travelled up and down the island's winding narrow roads, the sky revealed itself more and more to complement the wonderful vistas, until finally the sun set in a glorious show of pastel hues.  Our scenic views included Eileen Donan Castle first thing in the morning (just at the end of our street), the arching Bridge to Skye, sheep and white-painted crofts dotting the incredibly green hills, the dramatic Cuillin Mountains looming larger and larger, the town of Portree with its pretty harbour, the Old Man of Storr (a mountain outcrop), Plockton's palm-lined harbour, and sunset viewed back across to the Isle of Skye.

On the Isle of Skye, we also stopped at the grounds of Kinloch Lodge (the home of the current Lord and Lady MacDonald), and toured Armadale on the Sleat Peninsula (the main site of the Clan MacDonald and the Lord of the Isles during their dominant period centuries ago).  The castle is now only a ruin, but the museum tells the dramatic story of rise and fall, battles won and lost, clearances, emigration, and changing society.

In the evening, en route back from the Skye Bridge to Dornie, we detoured around via Plockton and enjoyed a delicious seafood supper at the Plockton Inn.  It was while driving from there, at the very end of the evening, that we were treated to the gorgeous sunset. 

July 11, 2018—Dornie

Scotland was beginning to live up to its reputation as a wet and misty place as we woke up to rain and cloudy skies for the second day in a row.  Inverness would soon be in our rear view mirror.  We packed up, checked out of Woodbourne House and headed down the road to Lewiston, a place where the MacDonalds once lived in the 1700s.  A walk through the damp cemetery confirmed that many MacDonalds lived and died in Lewiston in that time period, but no direct ancestors were identified.  One more stop at Carrachan House, a MacDonald birthplace just outside Lewiston, and then our group split up with Dusty, Cheryl, Allen, and July driving to Fort Augustus to root around Cheryl's family tree and the rest of us heading toward Dornie, our next home in Scotland.

The trip to Dornie was beautiful, and also exciting as we mostly followed a network of secondary roads (single track lanes with periodic wider spots to allow meeting on-coming traffic).  Arriving in Dornie was spectacular, as Eileen Donan Castle dominates its setting and even the mists held back so that our view of the castle was not obstructed.  Checking into the School House, our new accommodation, and a walk towards the Castle was all we had time for before the other gang arrived.

While waiting for a late dinner table in The Clachan, a cozy pub down the street, the ladies walked to the castle while the men watched England fall to Croatia in the semifinals of the World Cup.

July 10, 2018 — Newtonmore (Inverness)

Though the early morning weather was overcast and rainy, we stuck with our plan to visit the open-air Highland Folk Museum at Newtonmore in the Cairngorms (a short drive from Inverness).  When we arrived there, the sky was still grey and the mountaintops were obscured by mist, but it was not raining.  Our stroll through the museum was a trip back in time; the thirty-some historical buildings show how Highland people lived from the 1700's up until the 1950's.  We could enter each building and browse through the rooms which were furnished with items appropriate to their time period, while interpreters in some locations, wearing traditional attire, were on hand to inform visitors and answer questions.  Buildings ranged from croft and blackhouse (home of a small tenant farmer), bothy (stone barn and labourers' housing), houses, school, church, store, weaver's shop, tailor, bicycle and clock repair shop, shinty club (Scottish game similar to field hockey and might be the origin of shinny) and more —even two typical camps of "travelling people" (Scottish gypsies, who also had clan affiliation).  The bothy in the museum appears to be the same style as the now-unused one on Tillybo Farm that we had stopped to visit.  Seeing this one, set up as it would have been long ago — animal stalls in one room, dairy processing gear in another (milk separator, butter churn, etc), communal kitchen in the corner, and so on was very interesting.

We then continued our museum tour by walking along a path through a pretty treed area, which led us to the highland township area of 1700.  This area consists of six crofting buildings loosely arranged in a semi-circle and constructed with timber chuck-frames, earth walls atop stone foundations, and thick thatched roofs made of heather (reaching low down, near the ground).  After stooping slightly to enter, our eyes had to take a few minutes to adjust to the dark interior; there were no windows.  In the very centre of the house, there was a small round shallow fireplace in the dirt floor with pieces of peat burning; the smoke could be smelled throughout the building, but most of it rose to an opening in the roof directly above.  There was simple wood furniture and a few household items, like dishes and blankets.  The cattle were kept, during winter, at one partitioned end; during spring and summer, they were taken to a communal meadow to graze and fatten up; in fall, a drover took them south, to market.  What a challenging physical life people had!

We also learned that this had been used as a set in filming of "Outlander."

Our day finished up with a late lunch in Kingussie, a scenic drive back to Inverness via Aviemore and Forres (saw the ruins of the Ruthven Barracks and five deer along the way) and finally, another tasty supper in the Scandinavian BBQ Lodge in the backyard

July 9, 2018 — Inverness

Despite how CSI portrays it, any good detective will tell you that solving a case is 90% meticulous, mundane research and 10% adrenaline pumping procedures.  Today we begin the Case of the missing MacDonalds and it will not involve zip lining through the Glens of Inverness or scaling the heights of Ben Urquhart but rather a visit to the Highlands Archive Centre and more than 2 hours of maps, books and microfiche!

This case does not suffer from the dearth of suitable suspects as our last case did (The Case of the Lost Lawries) but from the opposite.  Everyone seemed to be a Donald, MacDonald, McDonald, Ranald, MacDonell, or married to them and often both!  Muddling this surplus of prime suspects was the fact that they also shared a limited number of Christian names—John, Alexander, Donald, William, Catherine, Margaret, or Elisabeth.  The archivist assigned to our case cringed when she heard we were MacDonalds and made a cross with two fingers to ward us off. Only Betty and Jim took the hint and peeled off to investigate the nearby Botanical Gardens.

After intense digging, Dusty, Allen, Laurel and the archivist had eliminated more leads than they had generated.  We weren't sure where to go next but we were pretty sure where not to go.  Cheryl, meanwhile, had located some useful references to take back to her dad, for finding out more about their Scottish family background (Campbell and other).

At this point, our group split with Cheryl and July opting to explore the environs of Inverness's High Street and the rest of us venturing out to Culloden and to find Old Petty Church.  Culloden is the site of the last Jacobite battle where 1500 Scottish supporters of James VIII were slaughtered by the British forces led by Cumberland.  The area is as it was back then, pasture and moor and bog and the cloudy skies added to the bleakness of its history.  After touring an extensive interpretation centre we walked the paths that followed the front lines of the British and then the Jacobites to find the marker for the Clan Donald mass grave.  Although walking the battlefield was free, exiting through the gift shop was not.

Finding Old Petty Church was an adventure with high profile landmarks like Stuart Castle to guide  us.  However, after driving the single laneways frontwards and backwards and making a u-turn in a farmer's yard we asked a local for directions and finally found the Kirk and cemetery right beside the castle.  Allen found a stone that matched the name and dates for the surname of one ancestor (Falconer), but again since many people shared this name we could not be sure.  It would require more research to determine if this was, indeed, a distant relative.

Back at the Manor, Dusty fired up the BBQ in our Swedish Cook Lodge in the backyard and grilled us some delicious pork chops to end the day in style.