May 18, 2005 – In The Home of The Clan MacLeod

May 18, 2005 – Visiting The Home of The Clan MacLeod

During our visit to Scotland in August of 2003 my wife IM and I spent a week touring the Highlands: a couple of days with IM’s brother and sister-in-law and the rest by ourselves. Our companions left us after we had spent a few days in the town of Strathpeffer slightly north and east of Inverness. The road from Strathpeffer to Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye off the northwestern coast of Scotland takes under a half day to drive. We left early on Wednesday August 13th. IM’s brother and sister-in-law accompanying us as far as Beauly, where they took the A831 east the short distance to Inverness to return the way we came. We took the A833, which headed south and west toward Drumnadrochit. There we stopped briefly to take photos of Urquhart Castle, a medieval fortress set in a strategic Lochside location, midway the length of Loch Ness's western shoreline.

Urquhart Castle is built on a rocky promontory jutting into Loch Ness and commands extensive views. Surrounded on three sides by the deep waters of the loch and easily defended from the landward side it is an ideal site for a fortified residence. And, the surrounding fertile lands and waters provided plentiful crops, fuels, fish and game. Occupied for 500 years, it was abandoned after The Revolution of 1689, during which the castle was badly damaged and never repaired. We drove on from Drumnadrochit on A82 the length of Loch Ness, a narrow long Loch famed for housing the Loch Ness monster—no sighting on this trip. IM and I had driven this road before but what we had noticed this time was the large increase in visitors to nearly every site along the road. The larger numbers could be attributed to the time of our visit—August is the busiest month for tourism throughout Europe, Great Britain included. The Highlands are lush green and the sun is usually shining which also increases the numbers. Packed tour buses were our constant companion along the road and at all the stops along our drive.

We continued on the A82 through Fort Augustus at the southern tip of Loch Ness and on to Invergary, where we turned west on the A87, a two-line winding road through lush purple-heather-laden mountainous terrain. I’m always amazed at the amount of water washing off the mountains of Scotland, clear, fast flowing, and seemingly endless. We pulled off the road driving down a slight incline that took us several hundred yards away from traffic. We got out of the car and felt the solid rock beneath us. We were at the base of a mountain looking up at its gentle gradient rising steadily to a blue sky intermittently hidden by clumps of lazily moving, mist-laden puffy clouds. Near the top of the mountain we could see a steady flow of white water rushing off to the right toward the open water of the Atlantic.

The Isle of Skye is an island accessible by ferry in the south and by the Skye Bridge at the Kyle of Lochalsh in the north, our entry point. The toll bridge, a sleek two pillar structure that arcs in a smooth low-profile curve over the narrow stretch of water separating the Isle of Skye from the Highlands of Scotland, opened in October 1995. From above, the Isle of Sky resembles a lobster with its left claw missing, its tail at the Kyle of Lochalsh. The A87 takes you across the Skye Bridge and up the body of the lobster shaped Isle. It meets up with the A863 at Sligachan that carries on around the western coast of the Isle to Dunvegan. We stayed with the A87, which wound up the eastern side of the Isle through Portree, one of the larger villages on the Isle. A short distance north of Portree the A87 joins the A850 which heads west toward Dunvegan at the northeastern tip of the Isle, while the A87 continues northward on the right claw of the lobster-shaped isle to the town of Uig. We would take that road on Thursday, but today, the A850 delivers us to Dunvegan.

We took our first trip to the Isle in the company of IM’s mother and father in the early 1980s when our two daughters were young girls. We arrived by ferry from Malliag landing on Skye at Armadale. The A851, some of which was one-lane road, ran from the ferry to Broadford, where we picked up the A87 to Sligachan. There we took the A863 north to Dunvegan. We arrived at the town of Dunvegan, a long walk to the castle and took up residence at the Dunvegan Hotel. When I checked in and presented my credit card, upon seeing my last name, the hotel desk clerk smiled and said “welcome.” How much MacLeod I have in me is debatable as my family is descended from freed slaves of mixed heritage as the European features of my grandmother and her ancestors attest.

Our destination this trip was a bed and breakfast inn a few miles south of Dunvegan Castle. We arrive too early to check in so we park in a lot beside the Dunvegan Hotel at the junction of the A850 and A863 and walk to a small row of shops just beyond the hotel on the road to the castle. There we find a small café serving coffee and bakery goods. It’s a most unusual café because upon entering we are confronted with a room full of wooden sailing ships of varying sizes each encapsulated in its own bottle. Beyond the display of ships we find a small seating area with two tables occupied. We take an empty table besides the display of bottled ships and continue our gawking as we wonder aloud about the person with the patience to painstakingly create this flotilla of ancient sailing vessels. Our query is answered with the arrival of the café owner who proudly exclaims that what we were viewing was the product of his labor.

He’s a big-framed Scotsman with longish salt and pepper dark hair wearing a starched long sleeved white shirt with dark trousers. His rectangular face with prominent nose has a small cyst on the right side. We learn his grandmother was from Skye but moved to Glasgow with his mother during the Great Depression. In Glasgow, he recalls his family lived on a street leading to the docks. When he turned 17, he became a merchant seaman and left home to discover the world. He was a construction worker for a time in Australia and Glasgow. A few years back he brought his family to Skye where he learned to be a baker and then opened the café. He had a flare for story telling and managed to string all of this together while bringing us our coffee and pastries and tending to the needs of his other guests. His young son Ian was helping out as well.

When we left the café it was still too early to check in so IM and I drove up for a tour of Dunvegan Castle, which was first built in the 1200s and has been occupied by the MacLeod clan since, possibly the longest occupation by one family of any of the great houses in the British Isles. We parked in the gravel parking lot across from the castle entrance. The castle was just about to open for tours so there were plenty of parking spaces. We queue up at the ticket counter waiting to purchase tickets. Ahead of us was a small boy and his mother, an older man with a young girl—his daughter no doubt, and behind them a young man and woman—German if I guessed their accents correctly—dressed in the garb of touring students (jeans and tee-shirts with backpacks). Behind us is a stylishly dressed Italian couple—older man with attractive woman. The group of us will follow one another around the Castle for the next 40 minutes.

Like most of the great houses of the United Kingdom, Dunvegan Castle is a time capsule of the family that has occupied it for so long: larger than life pictures of the husbands and wives that raised families within its confines, all dressed in the attire of their day. When we first visited the castle in the early 1980s, it was not nearly as busy and there was no ban against flash photography as there is today. I have this one picture taken back then of our oldest daughter beneath a larger-than-life, head-to-toe portrait of Emily Caroline, daughter of Sir C. Ishan Bart and wife of Norman Magnus, 26th Chief of MacLeods. It’s still hung in the same place. An incredibly beautiful woman, Emily Caroline is wearing a broad brimmed pastel colored hat that perfectly frames her long narrow face. Our hatless eldest daughter, ME, also possessing a lovely long narrow face, is pictured at the bottom of the photograph looking toward the camera over her left shoulder, her expression so similar to Emily Caroline’s that you would think they were related.

When we first visited the Isle of Skye, I kept wondering how I would feel coming to a place where those bearing the name MacLeod have their origins. I did not feel the sense of attachment that I thought I might experience. Skye had no more claim on me than the Philippine Islands where I was born, the former being the place where the name I bore originated, the latter the place where I first set foot on earth. Besides California where IM and I have planted roots, the only place that held an attraction to me was the home where my mother and father still lived and where I have spent an ever-decreasing fraction of my time on earth. However, I like this castle and the family who live here. They remind me of endurance and steadfastness. The clan motto is “hold fast” and the family is certainly true to that adage. Dame Flora McLeod, the 28th Chief headed the clan when we first visited in the 1980. She was the driving force behind establishing Clan MacLeod Societies in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. She inherited the estate from her father Sir Reginald MacLeod of MacLeod, the 27th Chief. Sir Reginald inherited it from Emily Caroline’s husband, Magnus.

Dame Flora had two daughters and the youngest Joan had an older son and twin boys. On the death of Dame Flora, the eldest of the twins, John, changed his name to MacLeod and became the 29th Chief of the clan. Just as Dame Flora before him, the new Chief found the title came with immense responsibility. Like most of the large estate of Great Britain, this one had a high cost of upkeep and though the fees charged for tours were offsetting some of the costs, they were not covering them all. Going back to the 1200s, the clan can lay claim to significant lands on the Isle of Skye’s 670-square-mile area (1,735 sq km). This includes a portion of what the people of Scotland consider a national treasure, the Cuillin Hills, which rise to more than 3,000 feet (910 m) and are seven miles in length—a favorite of hikers and mountain climbers. To raise the funds to maintain the property, the Chief offered up the Clan’s portion of the Cuillins for sale. The objections to the sale was swift and loud with the result that a coalition of groups including the Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) and The Highland Council, in association with the John Muir Trust began working with the Clan to provide funds for the upkeep of the castle and estate and the Cuillins would be deeded over to a coalition in some form. As the MacLeods are wont to do, “hold fast.”

We leave the castle following a leisurely walk around the grounds and a tour of the interior. There are a good number of visitors to the castle as the tour buses and full parking lot attest when we left. To get to our hotel, we drive south on the A863 about three or so miles and then turn right into a narrow one-lane dirt road providing access to several farms we can see in the distance. We drive a quarter of a mile on the narrow road dipping into a small valley before rising again, The hotel is on the right as we climb about a third of the way out of the small gully we’d driven down. On a run later in the day, I followed the road as it wound back to the A863, ran south the short distance on the main road to where the one-lane road began and returned to the hotel. The round trip distance is just about 6 miles, which my legs determined was accurate as it took them an hour to make the journey. The view along the rural road south of Dunvegan Castle is of magnificent panoramas across Loch Roag to the Cuillins.

The Dunorin House Hotel where we’re staying,is owned and run by the husband and wife team of Joan and Alasdair MacLean. Their youngest son was tending bar and waiting tables during our stay, a bright young man on his way to college in the fall. Alasdair a jovial stout Scotsman was nearly a foot taller than my five feet, seven inches. His lovely wife Joan handled the greeting of the guests while Alasdair manhandled the kitchen. Both had returned from professional lives to the quiet of this new built rural dwelling they shared with a maximum of ten couples. In our spacious room equipped with modern amenities, we both fell asleep while reading in bed, awakening just in time for dinner, which began and ended in the bar. It was a great meal as I recalled though the dishes we had escape me—I want to say one of us had salmon and the other a game dish: duck or quail.

On Thursday we rose early, had a wonderful breakfast then took a drive up to Portree to spend some time in this much larger town. It is just past 10:00 when we arrive. Portree has a Royal Bank of Scotland with indoor tellers and a walk-up ATM where IM and I replenish our supply of British Pounds. As we approach the bank, we notice the ocean off to the left just beyond what appears to be a drop of a 20 or 30 feet, I’m guessing. I do not venture over to see as we leave the ATM and meander through shops in the town center. Above us is a mixture of clouds, blue sky, and sun lighting everything with an early morning reddish glow. We’re being rained on occasionally as we walk from one shop to another. The rain only adds to our festive mood—just enough to be whimsical, not enough to get us wet. We purchased the usual tourist items, cards, toys and clothes for the grandkids, and small pieces of jewelry—some earrings for our daughters, a ring for IM, etc.

Our urge to shop sated, we decide to drive up to the seaport of Uig the northernmost town on the Isle. You enter the town on the A87, which curves, to the left while hugging the side of a hill. Below is the dark blue water of the North Atlantic. In the distance—at the end of the long left-arcing curve of the A87—is the town and port of Uig with its ferry service to the Western Isles. We arrive around 11:30 and walk about the small village with its tourist shops then walk along the working dock. There is a long queue of cars, caravans, and trucks waiting for the arriving ferry. Here, unlike in Portree, the sun is shining bright and there are only a few hints of clouds painting swatches of white across an otherwise perfect blue sky.

About half-past noon, we end up at a small pub and restaurant with outdoor tables between the tourist shops on one side of the dead-ended A87 and the dock with its large ferry berths on the other. We have a bowl of their fish soup, which was very good. After spending nearly the whole lunch hour at the pub, eating soup and recounting our trip so far, IM and I drove back down to Dunorin House for an evening of fine dining and a restful nights sleep before we head back to Cumbernauld on Friday to prepare for the wedding on Saturday afternoon.