June 20, 2005 – Homecoming: The Isle of Skye

June 20, 2005 – Homecoming: The Isle of Skye

I have a collection of photos from a trip my wife IM, my two daughters ME and RD, and I made in 1978. IM and the girls departed San Francisco International at 8:00 PM on June 1st, aboard British Airways flight 286. I left on the same flight on June 16th to join them. I would be gone three weeks, one of the longest vacations I’ve ever taken—though in reality a couple of days would be spent working. I was then employed at the Regis McKenna Advertising and Public Relations agency in Palo Alto as the account executive for Apple Computer and Intel Corp. The agency’s PR operation was small, three AEs reporting directly to Regis, which made a trip such as my family and I were taking possible. I had asked Regis if I could go and check out the Intel operation in Brussels and the UK and he said yes—with good reason since he was being asked to expand into Europe to support his clients’ growing international business.

I arrived on British Airways flight 286 into Heathrow just before noon on Saturday June 17th and had a few hours lay over before I caught a British European Airways flight to Glasgow at 2:00 PM in the afternoon. IM met my plane and we took a cab back to her parent’s home in Condorrat, where we would spend the weekend before our journey would begin. Right after I arrived we rented a Volvo station wagon, ideal for hauling our two small daughters—ME was then 10 years old and RD almost 7 years old, IM’s parents, and IM and me.

Scotland had more claim on our two daughters than me with my Highland surname. They were one half Scottish from their mother, who had been born less than thirty miles from where we were staying of hearty, generations-old, Scottish stock. Our daughters’ genes were from those Scots who sporadically battled their English neighbors for nearly a thousand years, with armed conflict giving way to political battles in more recent times. In the last major military conflict, the English emerged victorious in 1746, when the Duke of Cumberland put down the Jacobite Revolt. In the aftermath, the Highland Clearances gained momentum and by 1773 resulted in 20,000 highlanders emigrating to Canada and the Southern United States, the ancestor bearing my surname perhaps among them.

The Saturday evening I arrived, we had unexpected guests show up at IM’s parent’s home in Condorrat, a female workmate of mine from the agency DM and her traveling companion, a woman of the same age, though a bit taller. A couple of weeks earlier, I had casually mentioned to DM at the agency that I was staying in Condorrat with IM’s parents and if she were backpacking through Scotland during her vacation to stop by. It was the kind of remark you never expect anyone to take you up on, but here they were knocking on the door. My mother-in-law was beside herself with glee to have American visitors knocking on her door. IM was beside herself for another reason—annoyed that I had invited someone (especially a female someone) from the states to visit us in Scotland. My workmate, a lovely young woman starting out her professional career asked if she and her friend could spend the night—they had their own sleeping bags. My mother-in-law said of course they were welcome.

The following morning DM and her friend were off to the next stop on their rail-pass tour of the UK and Europe. I have a picture of the two of them at the train station. My youngest daughter RD is in the picture with DM on her right and DM’s friend on her left. The three are standing at the left of the Volvo’s open rear door with the train tracks in the background. RD had insisted on coming with me when I drove the two to the train station and she had insinuated herself in the picture when I asked the two to pose before leaving. I think RD was taken with two young women wandering about Europe on their own.

On Monday June 19th we began our trip north to the Isle of Skye. We made our first stop at the Stage House Inn in the town of Glenfinnan, arriving just before dinner. The Inn is now called the Prince’s House Hotel. ME and RD had their own room and they would tell us the following morning of waking in the night and searching together for the bathroom outside their room. The Inn was completely engulfed in darkness and a silence that was unnerving to suburbanites accustomed to street noises and lights. The two managed to find the bathroom and to return to their room without waking anyone in the process. IM did not report any experience of otherworldliness, a surprise because of her acute sixth sense. To illustrate, I remember her waking one morning describing a dream in which she saw a car accident on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto near the entrance to the Hewlett Packard Campus. Later that day IM and I met with a business associate of mine from the UK who we were taking into San Francisco for dinner that night. He recounted having a fender bender near the entrance to the HP facility on Page Mill Road.

That IM had no similar dream during our stay at the Stage House was a surprise since the Inn has been around since 1658, standing in mute witness to hundreds of years of history, including the start and end of the aborted Jacobite Revolt that sought to restore James VIII of Scotland and III of England, to the throne of England. The deposed king’s son Bonnie Prince Charlie entered Scotland from France at Loch Nan Uamh, near Arisaig some miles west of Glenfinnan before making his way to Glenfinnan by a roundabout route. On Monday 19 August 1745 a small boat carrying the prince landed at the north end of Loch Shiel just south of Glenfinnan. He stayed with a small number of supporters in a barn nearby waiting for word from Highland clans rallying to his cause. Eventually he raised his standard in Glenfinnan. Today there’s a monument where the standard once stood—a stone tower surmounted by a statue of a kilted highlander (not the prince himself as is often thought).

Less than a year from its inception, at Cullodin, the English under the Duke of Cumberland brutally put down the rebellion the Prince began. On April 20, 1746, the Prince retreated to the region around Glenfinnan eventually setting off for the Outer Hebrides. On Sunday 29th June 1746 Dame Flora MacDonald took the Prince by small boat from the Outer Hebrides to what is now known as Prince Charles's Point north of Uig on the Isle of Skye. He would leave Skye for the Scottish mainland and elude the English forces until September 19th when he boarded a ship back to France.

Next morning after a hearty breakfast, we left Glenfinnan and drove west on the A830 passing Loch Nan Uamh along the way eventually ending at Maillaig. There we queued up the Volvo to catch the ferry to Skye. We had an hour or so to wait and the girls, IM, and I wandered about Maillaig near the ferry dock sightseeing in the misty overcast morning. IM’s mom and dad retired to a nearby pub to relax. The pictures I have of the crossing show blue-jacketed ME and red-jacketed RD standing on deck posing singly and with their grandfather—their cold-reddened cheeks and bright smiles enlivening the overcast day. We arrived at Armadale an hour or so later and the kids and I set foot on the Isle of Skye for the first time. We drove north along the one-lane A851 eventually reaching Broadford where we stopped and called ahead to the Dunvegan Hotel for reservations—three rooms.

After Broadford, the A851 T’s into the two-lane A87 and we head northwest toward Dunvegan thankful to be off the single lane road we'd taken from Armadale. From Broadford to Sligachan, the A87 is pinched by the Caolas Scalpay, a narrow body of water between Skye and the small island of Mullach Na Carn on the Northeast and by the towering Cuillin Hills on the Northwest. At Sligachan, the A87 heads due north while the A863, which we take, heads northwest. We pass the small mist enshrouded towns of Drynoch, Bracadale, Roskhill, Lonmore, and Kilmuir before finally reaching Dunvegan at the junction of the A853 and A850.

The A853 meanders alongside fast running water finding its way around and over the mountainous terrain of this heather encrusted isle. Along the drive we have seen water running off tall purple-green-sloped uninhabited mountains in abundance. The only people around us are those we pass on the highway. At stretches along the road we gaze in wonder at tall waterfalls rushing over the side of a cliff in the distance. Periodically during the drive, we have to give way to sheep crossing the roadway and on one occasion we slowed to watch and strained to hear a lone piper in his kilt serenading the mountains off the right side of the road and up a slight rise. Near the end of our two-hour drive a remarkable thing happens: the sun begins to break through the misty rain and there are stretches of road where no rain is falling. We take this as a good omen for our stay in Skye.

By the time we reach the hotel, the rain has passed and the sun is shining. The Dunvegan Hotel though not quite as old as the Stage House Inn has been around for some time. It sits on the side of a hill overlooking Loch Dunvegan. The hotel is one of the larger buildings in town, which consists of about a quarter-of-a-mile stretch of the A863 south of the hotel. There is a small shop selling groceries and dry goods, a post office and a few other shops. Just up the road toward the Castle sits a wooden Church on the far side of the road and a couple of homes on the near side.

Having arrived at the family home of the Clan McLeod, I was struck by the sense of connectedness I felt to the place. Here the name I bore was as common as “Smith” or “Jones”. And bearing the name made you feel part of this place, the descendent of a wandering castoff sent away on a voyage of discovery 200 years ago returning to his ancestor’s origin, like a migrating salmon. I was reminded of lines from “Death of the Hired Man,” the Robert Frost poem: "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."