The Wonders of Scotland

[Luke]

Damn...I don't know what to say, but I hope she makes a full recovery. It seems such horrible things happen to such good people. So sorry to hear about all of this.

Thank you very much. She is slowly getting stronger; she will recover, but it is going to take a long time.

[Elgarian Redux]

I'll post some photos of my most recent trip later tonight if anyone wants.

I don't think anyone is likely to say no to that offer, Luke!

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

The Seaforth restaurant in Ullapool is a good place to go. Excellent haddock/cod and chips is available (but don't neglect the haggis), as I recall, eaten in a slightly rough, Scandinavian atmosphere that seems appropriate to a place close to the Northern Edge of The World.

I love fish and chips (and stout beer). I'll visit Ullapool!

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

If you go you could always catch a wild haggis to eat

Ok, I would like to try!

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Thank you so much, that's kind of you. To tell the truth, she recovered from the cancer but is currently suffering from something as bad, in its own way - the sudden onset of a neurological condition that has left her unable to move from the bed for almost a year now. Poor thing, she has gone through some unimaginably horrible times. She is very brave.

I'm sure she still has some fun and joy spending time with you. Hope she will get better.

[Luke]

Thank you for those kind thoughts 

[Mandryka]

Thank you so much, that's kind of you. To tell the truth, she recovered from the cancer but is currently suffering from something as bad, in its own way - the sudden onset of a neurological condition that has left her unable to move from the bed for almost a year now. Poor thing, she has gone through some unimaginably horrible times. She is very brave.

That must be hard - I wish you all well.

[Karl Henning]

If you go you could always catch a wild haggis to eat

I just hope they're sustainably harvested!

[Luke]

@Mandryka
Thank you very much, I truly appreciate it.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

If you get there, I'd highly recommend a visit to the Gille Brighde Restaurant, where not only is the food superb and the atmosphere incredibly friendly, the setting on Loch Torridon is gorgeous, looking out over Loch Torridon after the meal was very special. It's off the beaten track and takes a bit of getting to through winding roads and spectacular scenery, but it always seems to be full because of its reputation and is well worth it.

https://www.gille-brighde.com/

(Actually Beinn Eighe, mentioned by Luke in the Elgar Hillside thread, is not far behind the restaurant as you see it on the website homepage, but out of sight in that pic .)

Nice web site and the town looks good. Sea trout on the menu looks interesting!

[Luke]

If you go you could always catch a wild haggis to eat

As well as being a great/evil occultist, the infamous Aleister Crowley was a hundred other things, including poet, spy and mountaineer - in fact, he was a pioneering mountaineer, who followed the classic British climber's ascent from Skye to the Alps to the Himalaya and who was involved in early attempts on K2 and Kanchenchunga, in both of which he was involved with controversy, to say the least.

Crowley lived at Boleskin House, on the south shore of Loch Ness (obviously there are some out-there theories that Nessie was conjured up by him during one of his rituals...). Boleskin, BTW, is an ill-fated house, supposed to be haunted and possessed and the victim of a few fires over the years, including recently. After Crowley it was owned by the Lez Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page...

Anyway, on the subject of haggis-hunting I love this section of Crowley's wicked(ly funny) 'autohagiography' The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. Sorry for the length...

On April 27th, the good Tartarin [mountaineer and companion of Crowley's during their attempt on K2 in 1902], who had published a book (in the Swiss language) on our expedition to Chogo Ri [Crowley's name for K2], illustrated with many admirable photographs but not distinguished by literary quality or accuracy (in many respects), and had lectured in Paris and other capitals on Chogo Ri, dropped in [at Boleskin]. I was heartily glad to see him. He was the same cheerful ass as ever, but he had got a bit of a swelled head and was extremely annoyed with me for not leading him instantly to stalk the sinister stag, to grapple with the grievous grouse, and to set my ferrets on the fearful pheasant. He could not understand the game laws. Well, I'm a poet; I determined to create sport since it did not exist. More, it should be unique.
I opened the campaign as follows. Tartarin knew the origin of the wild buffalo of Burma. When the British destroyed the villages, their cattle escaped the bayonet and starvation by taking to the jungle, where they had become practically a new species. After the '45 the British had pursued the same policy of extermination—I mean pacification—in the Highlands, and I thought it plausible to invent a wild sheep on the analogy of the wild buffalo. And more, the beast should be already famous. I described its rarity, its shyness, its ferocity, etc., etc.—"You have doubtless heard of it,' I ended; 'it is called the haggis.' My '52 Johannesburg completed that part of the 'come-on'. Tartarin dreamt all night of scaling a lonely and precipitous pinnacle and dragging a lordly haggis from his lair. For my part, like Judas in the famous story of the Sepher Toldoth Jeschu, I did not dream at all: I: did better!
Two mornings later, Hugh Gillies, with disordered dress and wild eyes, came rushing into the billiard room after breakfast. He exploded breathlessly, 'There's a haggis on the hill, my lord!'
We dropped our cues and dashed to the gun case. Trusting to my skill, I contented myself with the .577 Double Express, and gave Tartarin the principal weapon of my battery, a 10-bore Paradox, with steel-core bullets. It is a reliable weapon, it will bring an elephant up short with a mere shock, even if he is not hit in a vital part. With such an arm, my friend could advance fearlessly against the most formidable haggis in the Highlands.
Not a moment was to be lost. Gillies, followed by the doctor, myself and my wife, tiptoed, crouching low, out of the front door and stalked the fearsome beast across the Italian garden.
The icy rain chilled us to the bone before we reached the edge of the artificial trout lake. I insisted on wading through this—up to the neck, guns held high—on the ground that we should thus throw the haggis off our scent!
We emerged dripping and proceeded to climb the hill on all fours. Every time anyone breathed, we all stopped and lay low for several minutes. It was a chilly performance, but it was worth it! Tartarin soon reached the point where every bent twig looked to him like one of the horns of our haggis. I crawled and dripped and choked back my laughter. The idiocy of the whole adventure was intensified by the physical discomfort and the impossibility of relieving one's feelings. That interminable crawl! The rain never let up for a single second; and the wind came in gusts wilder and more bitter with every yard of ascent. I explained to Tartarin that if it should shift a few degrees, the haggis would infallibly get our scent and be off. | implored him to camouflage his posteriors, which arose in front of my balaclava, heaving like the hump of a dying camel. The resulting wriggles would have driven Isidora Duncan to despair; the poor man was indeed acutely conscious that, anatomically, he had not been constructed with the main idea of escaping notice.

However, after an hour and a half, we reached the top of the hill, three hundred feet above the house, without hearing that hideous scream-whistle of alarm by which (so I had been careful to explain) the haggis announces that he has detected the presence of an alien enemy.
Breathlessly, we crawled towards the hollow space of grassy and heathery knolls that lay behind the huge rock buttress that towers above the garden and the lake, that space whose richness had tempted our distinguished visitor to approach so near to human habitation.
The mist drove wildly and fiercely across the hillside towards us. It magnified every object to an enormous size, the more impressively that the background was wholly blotted out. Suddenly Gillies rolled stealthily over to the right, his finger pointed tremulously to where, amid the unfurling wreaths of greyness, stood ...
Tartarin brought forward the 10-bore with infinite precision. The haggis loomed gargantuan in the mist; it was barely fifty yards away. Even I had somehow half hypnotized myself into a sort of perverse excitement. I could have sworn the brute was the size of a bear.
Guillarmod pressed both triggers. He had made no mistake. Both bullets struck and expanded; he had blown completely away the entire rear section of Farmer McNab's prize ram.

[Luke]

A couple more of my Skye pictures...

5) Looking west at Neist Point at sunset, the Hebrides on the horizon
6) Classic Scottish Passing Place sign, blasted blank by the elements, the Cuillin in the background

[Luke]

And from my trip in February 2023, for my book

1) Calder House, where Chopin stayed for most of his Scottish tour, 1848.
2) The cobbled lanes around Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh
3) A very Scottish view across Edinburgh, including all the classic elements: mouldering graveyard (the graves of the lighthouse Stevensons are visible in this photo); Holyrood parliament (modern) and palace (ancient); Arthur's Seat
4) Holyrood Abbey, in the palace. This is where Mendelssohn stood and, amidst the ruins, conceived of the opening of his Scottish Symphony.

[Karl Henning]

And from my trip in February 2023, for my book

1) Calder House, where Chopin stayed for most of his Scottish tour, 1848.
2) The cobbled lanes around Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh
3) A very Scottish view across Edinburgh, including all the classic elements: mouldering graveyard (the graves of the lighthouse Stevensons are visible in this photo); Holyrood parliament (modern) and palace (ancient); Arthur's Seat
4) Holyrood Abbey, in the palace. This is where Mendelssohn stood and, amidst the ruins, conceived of the opening of his Scottish Symphony.

Nice!

[Luke]

...more (please ignore if I'm getting boring)

5) This is the bridge at Tummel Bridge, a tiny settlement at the end of Loch Tummel, in the shadow of Schiehallion. Mendelssohn stayed here after leaving Edinburgh, and drew the bridge.
6) - I decided not to attach no 6...
7) On Orkney, as Yesnaby (as referred to by Maxwell Davies in one of his best known pieces)
Looking in the other direction - the bleak treelessness!
9) A couple of miles away - this is the Ring of Brodgar. This tiny scrap of land, from here to the Stones of Stenness, a few hundred yards away, is intensively packed with incredible ancient monuments of massive importance.

[JBS]

Not in the least bit boring.

[Luke]

Still on Orkney, but on the island of Hoy this time:

10) this is the landscape that the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown called 'the valley of the shadow of death.' It is the road to Rackwick, where Maxwell Davies lives for over 25 years in a tiny croft, high up on the cliffs.
11) This is in Rackwick, but looking east. Max lived on the opposite cliff.

On Sanday
12) This was Max's next home, on the island of Sanday. His house is behind me; these islands, the Holms of Ire, figure in much of his late music.

Back on Mainland (not the mainland, this is Orkney's central island)
13) Leaving Stromness on the ferry back to the actual mainland. Max's most famous piece, probably, is Farewell to Stromness, and it describes travelling over approximately this stretch of water.

[Luke]

14) Still on the ferry, we sailed back past Hoy as the sun set. You can see the Old Man of Hoy (sea stack). Max's croft was not far from it.

15) Back on the mainland, I drove through the night across the entire north coast, then down to the brink of Assynt, where I parked in the dark to assure myself of this view when I woke up. The airy arc of Kylesku Bridge to the left; the bulk of Quinag to the right.

16} Loch Assynt looking very bleak. This is the same loch as in Elgarian Redux's first post on this thread. Suilven is a few miles behind this, lost in the fog.

17) Stacc Pollaidh. David Bedford wrote a couple of short pieces inspired by climbing it. Thus giving me an excuse to make this whole gorgeous west coast trip. Were I to have climbed it, and were the weather better, I'd have had a great view of Suilven from the south.

[Luke]

18) An Teallach - the forge
19) Slioch - the spear
20) Beinn Eighe
21) The Torridon Hills, including Beinn Alligin and Liathach

[Luke]

22) is one of the ones I posted of Bealach na Ba; 23) is another photo of the same location

I then went to Skye for a bit, and then the next morning across to Mallaig. From there to Morar, where Bax stayed and composed

24) The Tale the Pine Trees Knew
25) This is very close (as in a few metres) to the Prince's Cairn, from where Bonnie Prince Charlie left the country. Speed Bonnie Boat and all that.
26) In Oban, looking at Castle Dunollie. A very important place in the history of music. Anyone know why?
27) Another very important place in the history of music, although this is a little more tongue in cheek. The clue is in the photo.

And that's it. I'll leave off now.