Highland Games and Glencoe (08-12-19)

All 4 of us enjoy Highland Games, and were definitely excited, as we headed to the Abernethy Highland Games in Nethybridge.






Along the way: We stopped at the Glen Morangie distillery. This is one of Mike and Julie's favorite Whiskies.  So sad that it was 11 am and we were driving- they settled for buying some new Glencairn whisky glasses.

Although we are no strangers to Highland Games, for Paul and I, these were the first we have been to in Scotland. Here there are games almost every week in the summer.

Most are small, local games, a few are bigger and last more than one day. This was a relatively small one, but extremely well done, and a lot of fun.








Our rooms were at the historic Nethybridge Hotel, built in the late 1800s. The hotel let us park our cars in the lot, even though it was only 10 in the morning.  From there we could easily walk to the games.

 One of the dancers was sitting next to us, with her dad, so I chatted with them a bit, and enjoyed watching her compete.












The outer track hosted numerous races, for people of all ages.

In addition to the piping and drumming competitions, there were, of course, the traditional heavy weight competitions. 

 One of the favorites  is the Caber toss.The athlete walks forward, holding what is essentially a telephone pole. When he has it balanced, he throws it.

 The first requirement is that the pole has to flip, end over end.  If it does, the goal is to get it to fall as close to straight as possible. In other words, using a clock analogy, if the athlete is standing at 6 O'clock, he wants the caber to fall at 12 O'clock.

Whoever gets the closest, wins. 

A new world record was set when Colin Dunbar, from the U.S., tossed a 56 lb weight 17.5 feet in the air. Yikes.

Once the games were over, some of the pipe bands marched to the hotel, and set up in the garden, where they played several traditional Scottish songs before disbanding.

From Nethybridge, our next destination was the historic town of Glencoe.

These days, Glencoe is a haven for hikers, however, it has a very sad history.  This area was inhabited by the MacDonald clan in 1692 when King William lll offered a pardon to all who had fought against him.  

The MacDonalds were delayed in swearing their allegiance and missed the deadline.  In February, they were housing a group of soldiers, including many of the Campbell clan.  After 10 days, on the night of February 12, the Campbells received an order from the King to kill all MacDonalds under the age of 70. In the middle of the night, they started the slaughter. While many escaped into the night, most of those died of exposure. 

On a more fun note, that first night Julie and I went for a short walk, and ended at the site of a Harry Potter filming location- Hagrid's Hut.

With one day to hike, Paul and I chose the Lost Valley Trail.

For several miles we hiked along numerous waterfalls, climbing up about 900 feet of elevation.

At the end, our reward was a view of the Lost Valley....

On our non-hiking day, we explored the nearby town of Kinlochleven.  The drive to get there was pretty spectacular.....

The town itself is picturesque and owes it's beginnings to the aluminum industry,  of all things.

In the early 1900s, because of the availability of water and hydro power, an aluminum company built a smelter here, and what was a place with two hunting lodges, grew to a town of thousands. It is still a decent size town, known for it's climbing, and winter sports.

Interestingly, during World War I, prisoners of war helped build the infrastructure of the town, and were housed with the locals.

On our final day, I took a day off, and Paul went exploring with Mike and Julie..

The Isle of Barra (08-01-19)

Driving lesson #2: No sooner had we gotten the hang of driving on the left side of the road, than we were introduced to single track driving.  On Barra, most of the roads are single track- a one lane road with pull offs about every 50 yards or so.

When a car is headed towards you, whichever one is closest to the"passing place" pulls over, so the other car can pass. On Barra it was reasonably easy- the roads aren't too busy and are well marked.

The biggest issue was the speed at which the locals drive- and I bet they complain about how slow the tourists drive!

We only had two days on the island, but the weather was pretty cooperative, so Paul and I set out to hike "the Heaval".

 This is the tallest hill on the island, with an elevation gain of about 900 feet.



There was no specific trail up the hill- just lots of intersecting paths, so we had to figure it out as we went.

Although the clouds kept coming and going, we were able to get good views of the town of Castlebay.

One of the highlights of Barra were the beaches.  One after another, they were absolutely gorgeous..

 Our meeting  with Colum, the local genealogist, had netted us the information as to where my ancestors had lived on the outer Hebrides islands.  

We were able to drive past the lands where the MacMullin branch of my family lived...

Being such a small island, we didn't need much time to see all the sights, so two days was enough for the highlights.

Our next real destination was the Isle of Skye, but we needed two days to get there. The trip involved two more ferry rides- one from Barra to South Uist, and one from North Uist to Skye, so we spent the night on North Uist to break up the trip.

Along the way we drove past the ruins of the MacDonald Castle, Borve, which is located on the island of Benbecula.  The castle was built in the 1300s, and abandoned by 1715. According to Colum, this was the castle of my MY MacDonalds.











We stopped for lunch at the restaurant The "Am Politician" on the isle of Eriskay. We were happy to eat at this particular restaurant, but the reason WHY, involves the telling of our story about Whisky Galore:



In 1941, the SS Politician, a cargo ship carrying 264,000 bottles of whisky was en route to Jamaica from Liverpool.  On February 5th, it ran aground off the coast of Eriskay.









Before the boat sank, most  of its cargo was recovered happily by nearby island inhabitants.












The story was written as a novel, and then made into a movie in 1949.  The movie was remade in 2016.  Long before we started on this trip, we looked for the 1949 version of the movie and could never find it.
We ended up watching the 2016 version with Mike and Julie months ago.












 While we were on Barra, our hostess thought she found the original on YouTube, and set it up for us to watch- but about 15 minutes into it we realized it was a sequel- Rockets Galore!- which we were happy to watch, but wasn't what we were looking for.

The restaurant Am Politician celebrates the story of the SS Politician ( everyone survived) and they have several pieces from the original ship, including a whisky bottle with some of it's original contents still in it!

 After that huge lunch,  we walked to the local store to pick up cheese and crackers, which served as dinner, on the back deck at our B N B.














The views, and the sunset, were amazing.