The Northern Highlands


Bright red, two-doors.  Perfect.  Onto the pavement of an Inverness parking lot, we spill the contents of two blue plastic barrels, our river gear of the past five days.  Coming off the River Spey, Kelly and I are headed towards the northern coastline of the Scotland.  But we are going to spend the first half-hour puzzling our river gear into the back of this micro-economy rental car.

The last in a sequence of narrow glacial lakes is in fact a saltwater fjord, open to the sound behind the Isle of Skye.  In the long evening shadow of a coastal peninsula, we turn off onto a tight one-lane road that rises aggressively above the fjord.  Up the bare, rocky hillside the road climbs, then into a tight cirque and up a daunting face of switchbacks.  We push on, trying to catch the last minutes of light illuminating the ridge above.  We crest into spectacular orange-pink sunlight and hike out on a ridge in the last moments of the day.  For three minutes, we are glowing head-to-toe.  Then the sun leaves us behind and we walk back to the car in the wind.  We descend to a small village and a remote pub down on the water, and make camp above a beach.  From the River Spey to a saltwater sound in a day.




Over the next days, we work our way up the single-lane coastal road, scanning the narrow band of pavement for oncoming cars and tucking into pullouts to let them pass.  In the spitting breeze, we board a rigid inflatable boat and cross to the bird sanctuary of Handa Island, then hike around the island top, peering down cliff faces at hundreds of gull nests and big Skuas wheeling in the wind.  Later, camping near the shoreline a few miles north, we're faced with choking clouds of tiny biting midges, or no-see-ems, and I spasm between zen-like acceptance and neurotic face slapping.  Cooking dinner on this amazingly buggy evening, we take turns ducking down to quickly stir the pot, and running around trying to simulate a stiff breeze.  Great teamwork, but largely ineffective.  Along the coastline we find bright sand beaches, rugged black cliffs, and inter-tidal zones populated by mussels and thick seaweed.

As we near the northernmost edge of Britain, the population of Scotsmen dwindles while the population of Euro-caravaners soars.  We look around at the scene and bail inland, to the wide expanses of forest and moor.  It is an amazing relief.  Timber harvesters and peat cuts--inland, this is no calendar landscape, but beautiful productive country.




Alone amid the empty expanse of grassy swales and clear-cut hills, we come to the Crask Inn.  It's marked on our Scotland map, like a town, but it's only a pub and some rooms, the lone feature for fifty miles.  In a cloud of midges as thick as smoke, we scramble to set up our tent in the yard, then retreat inside for whisky and company.  Inside the Inn, the midges are still biting, but we buck up to enjoy our pints and Famous Grouse.  In clear futility, I swat a few, and one Scot enigmatically points to the ceiling, which I then realize is black with bugs.  It's not worth bothering yourself with midges--embrace the midges, or get lost.  There are no campervans here, and I'll take the bites.

Our last evening in Scotland is spent camped out above a reservoir.  We drive down a short maintenance spur, then hike down a hundred yards to camp on a strip of abandoned highway.  Some very scenic blooms had pressed up through the asphalt, and an occasional breeze keeps the midges mostly at bay.