The Isle of Skye

Skye Bridge

Are you ready to see my new favorite place? Follow the A87 out to the west and hit Skye Bridge, connecting mainland Scotland with the Isle of Skye. It's one of those places that just sounds gorgeous and kind of mystical. And it's even more beautiful than you can imagine. This is totally a hiker/nature-enthusiast's paradise, and deserves a couple of days to explore- just keep your fingers crossed that the weather cooperates. We lucked out and got some clouds but no rain. Skye is one of the Hebrides Islands off the western coast of Scotland, all known for their picturesque natural beauty.

 

Check out our hostel! We only kind of picked it for the name- it had really good reviews and it did turn out to be the  nicest of the hostels we stayed at. Saucy Mary's is located in Kyleakin on the eastern coast of Skye, just over the Skye Bridge. And at maybe 5 square blocks is actually NOT the smallest town we stayed in. It isn't a youth hostel, which means older folks can stay too, and they have some double/family rooms that aren't the traditional bunk beds if that's something you're interested in. Those obviously cost more than a standard bunk, but can still be cheaper than a proper B&B. They also have a good hot breakfast that costs a few pounds extra, do live music in the bar area in the evenings and have a convenience store attached. The guy who runs/owns the place is fantastic, and lives at the B&B next door, Plus, don't you just want to say you've stayed at a place called Saucy Mary's? Alright, moving on.

I've got a whole ton of pictures from Skye, so I'm attempting to be selective, but if you want to see more, head on over to my flickr page and check 'em out. 

Like I said, Skye is an outdoor wonderland. You'll probably want to have a car to get around the Isle, because it is pretty big, but you'll also want to pull over and hike around. There's any number of guides to hiking on Skye, so it's not a bad idea to invest in one. But the immediate impression you get of Skye is mountains, sky and sea. 

There are some neat geological formations and Neolithic and Iron Age sites. Skye is also the seat of Clans MacLeod, MacDonald and MacKinnon. The seat of clan chief of the MacLeods is Dunvegan Castle on Skye and is still in use today, making it the oldest continually-inhabited castle in Scotland (800+ years!). Dunvegan is the home to the Fairy Flag, a yellowy-brown scrap of silk originally from the Orient, and how it got to Dunvegan is a bit of a mystery. Theories have included that it was a prized relic of a now unidentified saint, it was brought back during the Crusades, etc., but the traditional stories hold that it was a gift to a MacLeod from the fairies. The flag is said to assist the clan in warfare and to provide various other sorts of blessings and luck. I wanted to see it, but Dunvegan is way up at the northern edge of Skye, and we were way down at the southern edge, and we didn't have time to drive all the way up there before catching our ferry to move on. There's always next time. We did get to check out the headquarters of the MacLeods' bitter rivals, the MacDonalds.

Armadale Castle is much newer than Dunvegan, built in the 1800s (and it shows.) The interior is entirely gone, overgrown by plant life. Today, Armadale and the surrounding land serves as the Clan Donald Heritage Centre. There's a small fee to go in (6 pounds I think), which includes admission to a really well-done museum on the clan's history. The Donalds were quite the important bunch in the medieval period and their chief held the title of Lord of the Isles. They held sway over the Hebrides and parts of western Scotland, and maintained a large degree of independence of the Scottish monarchy; they were essentially the most powerful Scottish noble after the king. The title ended up being forfeit to the king of Scotland in 1493, and ever since, the eldest son of the Scottish (later British) monarch has held the title Lord of the Isles. So Prince Charles holds the title Lord of the Isles as well as Prince of Wales and all his other assorted titles. Now for some pretty pictures!

 

 

Skye still has an active fishing fleet (fishing is one of the Island's main sources of income) and there are a number of pretty harbors. Kyleakin's (above) isn't really one of them. But it's what I had a picture of. Portree, Skye's largest town, has a prettier one, and if I can make a recommendation there's a restaurant right off of the town square whose name I now forget, but they had AWESOME macaroni and cheese and great seafood. Another major industry is whisky distilling- if you are a whisky afficionado, you may be familiar with Talisker, a major Scottish distillery located on Skye. Lots of really pretty on Skye. But below is a visual explanation why Skye's name makes perfect sense.

 

It is almost hard to tell where the sea ends and the mountains begin, and where the mountains end and the sky begins. There's a lot of sky on Skye.

Isn't it pretty? It had rained earlier that day, so we had quite a few clouds still lingering around, but as dusk fell, the clouds came out to play with the mountains.

 

 

Unfortunately we had to leave the next day, but I would love love love to go back. Instead of going over the bridge though, we took a ferry back to the mainland, so I'll share some pics from the ferry next time.

Loch Ness & Urquhart Castle

Sadly, this is as close to Nessie as we were able to get. I'm also really proud of this picture because the woman who took it for us got 2 shots: one with Max blinking and the other with Ellen blinking. And you totally can't even tell that I had to edit in Ellen's eyes from the other picture so we all have smiles & open eyes. Of course, now you all know that and will scrutinize the picture, but I'm still proud of myself. So yes, moving on.

Loch Ness!

There it is. A great big lake under misty, rainy, Scottish skies. At this point we are officially near-ish the middle of the Highlands, which I'm going to maintain are absolutely the most gorgeous place on earth until proven otherwise. Just wait until we get further west- Skye and Glencoe are to die for. But then I like mountains.

Apparently the best views of Loch Ness can be seen from the tower at Urquhart Castle (below), which overlooks the loch.

I'm sure it is very nice, but they charge you something like 13 pounds to get onto the grounds (eww) and we were here during the one afternoon that it just poured down rain on us. So we skipped the castle and just snapped shots from the castle parking lot, which is actually not a bad place to see the castle from because it is on a cliff overlooking the castle and the loch. Or at least it wouldn't be if there weren't a pretty solid line of trees blocking your view. But there are breaks in the trees, you just have to find 'em.

At this point I should probably toss out there that Urquhart was once one of Scotland's largest castles, and that most Nessie sightings occur near the castle. There are also a number of boats you can ride in the area to get some great views of the loch and the castle (see? There's one right there!). But save it for a day less miserable than the one we had. Urquhart was transformed into the ruin you see today in 1692, when the Royalists destroyed the castle rather than let it fall into the hands of the Jacobites. But for that story, you'll have to wait for the next post highlighting the battle of Culloden.

Edinburgh

Behold, Edinburgh, Scotland's capital (and seat of the Scottish Parliament) and second-largest city behind Glasgow. Edinburgh lies in the southeastern part of Scotland along the Firth of Forth, which provides access to the North Sea. Our stay in Edinburgh was brief (dinner & a haunted graveyard tour and then the morning the next day), so we were limited in what we had time to do. The main districts in central Edinburgh are Old Town and New Town, both of which have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites by the way. We concentrated on Old Town, which includes Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Mile-- a high street shopping mecca for all things touristy or plaid (speaking of which, didya know using "plaid" to refer to a checked cloth is an American thing? I didn't.)-- St Giles Cathedral, and Holyrood Abbey/Holyroodhouse.

One of the first things you might notice approaching Edinburgh is Arthur's Seat pictured above. The hills here are the remnants of a long-extinct volcano, eroded by glacier activity long ago. The crag upon which Edinburgh Castle is located is another extinct volcano. There are good hiking trails if you want to climb to the peak of Arthur's Seat, or so I've heard, but alas we didn't have time to go check them out. There are a number of ancient hill forts nestled in the crags, including several thought to belong to the Votadini, who are recorded as one of the British tribes north of Hadrian's Wall during the Roman period. Add a few centuries of language change, and they were known as the Gododdin, who ultimately were defeated by the Angles as recorded in a poem from around 600 AD called Y Gododdin.

Speaking of Edinburgh Castle, ta da! Edinburgh Castle is built high on an imposing crag, dominating the city skyline. The site, chosen for obvious defensive features, has been inhabited for almost three thousand years, with the castle dating to at least the 1100s. This was the royal residence for the kings of Scotland until 1603, when the kingdoms of Scotland and England were united under one king, James VI of Scotland, who inherited the throne of England from Elizabeth I, thus becoming James I of England as well.

If you visit, be sure to be there before 1 pm to get a good spot to watch "Shannon the Cannon," a District Gunner with the 105th Regiment Royal Artillery, fire the One O'Clock Gun, a time signal originally used to notify ships in the Firth of Forth of the time. While most people crowd around the gun itself, you can get better views from the level above, outside St Margaret's Chapel. You'll want to scope out a spot about half an hour before hand, or befriend someone who did and get them to take pictures for you. I just went with awkward reaching around the heads of people in front of me.

The shopping thoroughfare leading up to the Castle is known as the Royal Mile. Here you can find all kinds of tartan, scarves, kilts, postcards, pipes, tobacco, etc etc etc. But from my not-so-extensive travels of Scotland, I'll just mention that you can find better deals on the same items outside of Edinburgh- Stirling has plenty of nice shops priced a bit cheaper, and if you're making a stop in Inverness up north, there are a few nice shops there with slightly better prices.You'll also probably find that prices are a bit better off the Royal Mile, which charges a premium as the center of tourist traffic. The one caveat to that statement, is Deacon Brodie's.

Ok, yes, this is just a pub. Not so exciting you say. Well, sure, but it is absolutely adorable from the outside and on the inside, and has really good food for reasonable prices, especially for along the Royal Mile. During the lunch rush, they can take awhile to get your food prepared, but as long as you aren't in a rush, it is a great place to grab lunch or dinner. And conveniently located across the street from St Giles' Cathedral.

St Giles' is a lovely early Gothic building, with some lovely (but relatively young) stained glass. There has been a church on the site since the early Middle Ages, but the cathedral as it stands now was originally built in 1120s; at this point, it was likely relatively small, and would have been Norman (Romanesque if you're continental) in style. At some point it was rebuilt and expanded; this larger early Gothic building suffered damage from a fire in 1385 and was repaired and expanded into the building you see today.

Now, I've bemoaned the fact that most cathedrals do not allow photography inside on several occasions now. But here, I have nothing but praise. St Giles' does not charge admission to visit, but they do ask for a 2 pound donation if you want to take pictures. Totally reasonable, right? I don't know why more churches don't adopt this idea. Fantastic.

To wrap up Edinburgh, I figured I'd finish with a cute story. Here you see Greyfriars Bobby, a little Skye Terrier devoted to his owner. Now, there's several different stories, but the general story line goes that Bobby belonged to a member of the Edinburgh City Police (in some accounts, he was a watchmen for the Greyfriar Kirk, hence Greyfriar and a "bobby" in the UK is slang for a policeman) in the 1850s. Anyway, the dog's owner passed away, and for the next 14 years, Bobby guarded his master's grave until his own death. Sweet, right? Sadly, most of the story is embellished fiction, the creation of an American author who heard the story from a friend who had traveled to Scotland and heard the story there. And like any good game of telephone, much gets lost along the way. In actuality, it is most likely that the dog, who may have even just been a stray, stayed by the grave because a restaurant just outside the graveyard used to toss scraps over the gate into the cemetery. That, coupled with a stone bench thing just next to the grave in question, meant the dog had steady access to food and shelter. Ah well.

There's more photos from Edinburgh Castle, St Giles', and from a haunted cemetery tour we went on through Greyfriar's Graveyard up on flickr if you're interested. Until next time~

Holy Island & Lindisfarne Priory

Way up off the coast of northern England just shy of the Scottish border is a special place called Holy Island. It is only accessible from the mainland during low tide, when the North Sea recedes enough to expose the Lindisfarne Causeway and allow cars and hikers to pass. The white box on stilts is actually there as a water shelter in the event that anyone gets stuck in the middle of the causeway as the tide comes in. I think this is mostly a concern for hikers in the event that they underestimate how long it will take them to cross the causeway as the tide comes in. And btw, there's no coast guard to come rescue you; you stay put until the tide goes out again.

A little over 150 people make their home on the island in one village, mostly employed in the tourist trade/hospitality. The island is known as a spiritual retreat, but its main tourist draws are Lindisfarne Priory and Lindisfarne Castle.



The castle was built in the 16th century (so quite late) and served largely as a fort in an area long held in contention between the Scots, the English and earlier, the Vikings. The modern castle was largely remodeled in the early 1900s to serve as basically a grand country manor. It is located on the highest point of the island, about a mile away from the village/priory, but a bus service runs every quarter hour between the two if you don't feel like making the hike.



But the real draw, I think, is Lindisfarne Priory. Lindisfarne is one of the oldest Christian establishments in England, founded around 635 by St Aiden, an Irish missionary monk from Iona (a monastery in Scotland also established by Irish missionaries) who established a community on the remote island, which became the center of conversion for northern England. In the 700s, Lindisfarne was a flourishing text-production centre, producing high quality manuscripts, the most famous of which is the Lindisfarne Gospels, now on display in the British Library.

St Cuthbert, perhaps the most famous of the medieval English saints, was a monk, abbot and bishop (not at the same time!) of Lindisfarne, but his relics are now resting in Durham Cathedral as a result of the community of monks fleeing the island in the wake of a Viking attack in 875. An earlier Viking attack in 793 was the first major Viking raid in England and caused quite a bit of consternation and fear among contemporaries, even on the Continent. Monasteries were an attractive target for the Vikings because the monks generally couldn't put up much of a fight, and the monasteries were rich with treasures- golden chalices, rich tapestries, various jewel-encrusted treasures, etc. And in the days before banks, wealthy lay people often entrusted their wealth to the religious houses for safekeeping.

So speaking of Vikings, after 805, the monastery was basically abandoned, since the community had fled with Cuthbert's relics and eventually settled in Durham. After the Norman Conquest, religious life was reintroduced to the island and a priory under the authority of Durham was founded. The ruins you see today date to this period of religious life. The priory also has a fantastic visitors centre display, well worth checking out before you make your way out to the priory itself. 

But I think my favorite part when I visited was St Cuthbert's Isle. Now, you have to time it right to actually be able to get to it. St Cuthbert's is located just off the shore of Holy Isle and is only reachable during the very lowest part of low tide, but we lucked out. You have to bounce from rock to rock, trying to avoid the large puddles left by the receding sea, and you'll probably end up crushing a fair few shell-dwellers clinging to the rocks in the process (oops), but so worth it. 

Cuthbert's Isle is little more than a big rocky outcrop marked with the above simple wooden cross. It is thought that this is one of the small islands near Lindisfarne that Cuthbert retreated to in order to live as a hermit before he was dragged back to become Bishop of Lindisfarne. And I can honestly say there is something incredibly powerful about the place. On a clear day like we had, there is just rocks and sea and sky blending together with the mainland far off in the distance and the wind whistling across the sea. Perfect for meditation and contemplation.

You can do the major tourist sights in a day or a very busy afternoon, but the next time I go back (and there will be a next time by golly!), I'd try to stay at least one night to really have time to enjoy the quiet and solitude and the natural beauty which drew the early Christians to Lindisfarne in the first place.

Sandal Castle

In case you haven't noticed a running theme on the blog, I like ruins. Monastic ruins are nice, but they all follow the same layout, so usually the only real difference from one abbey to another is the extent to which the buildings are still standing. Castles on the other hand, well, castles are fun precisely because they vary so widely. So here's another castle for you.

Sadly, there is very (and I do mean very) little left of Sandal Castle. Like Pontefract, it was a royalist stronghold during the English civil war, but after a few centuries in the possession of the monarchy, who basically ignored it and let it get run down, it was already in bad shape before the war, and was deliberately destroyed by the Parliamentarians after the war. Originally built in timber around 1100 by the Warrenes, the earls of Surrey, Sandal was eventually rebuilt in stone around the 1300s. Like Pontefract, it is a motte and bailey construction; this is typical especially in the North, where a lot of castles were erected very quickly following the Norman Conquest. The northerners tended to resist anyone telling them what to do, so castle building was a key Norman strategy for gaining control over the troublesome North. Making a big pile of dirt and rock and then slapping a wooden tower on it is quick and requires very little in the way of skilled labor, so motte & baileys could be built quickly and easily with minimal expense. It was when these castles proved worth keeping up for a long period of time that they tended to be rebuilt in stone like at Sandal.

Here you can see where the motte would've been on the artificial hilltop, while the smaller mound off to the left of the photo would be the bailey area.

As you can see, the Parliament did a pretty thorough job dismantling the castle, which once would have been a hugely massive and impressive structure. In the 1400s, there was no Warenne heir, so the castle passed to King Edward III and from the king, to one of his younger sons. One of the king's other sons held Pontefract, and the two of them held several castles throughout the North and the borderlands with Scotland. This son became the first Duke of York, which embroiled Sandal in the War of the Roses during the second half of the 1400s, as the Houses of Lancaster (the red rose) and York (the white rose) competed for the throne of England. The monarchy swung from house to house as various kings were defeated in battle. Both Lancaster and York were the descendents of Edward III's younger sons (as the branches from the older sons had died out). The wars finally ended with Henry Tudor (Henry VII), the Lancastrian candidate after a whole slew of closer relatives died in the wars, beating out Richard III (of York) and marrying Elizabeth of York to bring the two houses together.

Before Richard III had come to the throne, his father, also Richard, attempted to gain the throne. He led his troops from Sandal against those of Queen Margaret based out of Pontefract. They met at the Battle of Wakefield, where Margaret's troops won a crushing victory and Richard was killed. But then his son became king, so I guess it all worked out in the end. Margaret herself is an interesting lady. Her husband, Henry VI was, well, insane, so Margaret was effectively ruling England and parts of France herself. She also sort of started the Wars of the Roses by snubbing the Yorkists and then proceeded to lead the Lancastrians for many years. Anyhoo, the Battle of Wakefield is where the mnemonic British kids use to learn the colours of the rainbow comes from: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. Much more effective than Roy G. Biv, I think. Shakespeare also used Sandal as a setting in Henry VI Part 3 as it discusses Richard (the one who lost at Wakefield) learning of Margaret's approach and then his subsequent death.

Bonus for castles? They're fun to climb on :)

And being built on a hill means awesome views of the surrounding area.

Pontefract Castle

Before I dive into Pontefract Castle, I thought I'd give you a comparison to my last entry on Kirk Hammerton. Pictured above are the remains of an Anglo-Saxon church. This is pretty much all that is left of most of them, so hopefully that helps illustrate how rare a place like the church at Kirk Hammerton is. Alright, moving on.

Here's the 13th century donjon from Pontefract Castle. It is one of only a few surviving multilobed donjons, with perhaps the most famous/complete being Clifford's Tower in York. I'll get pictures up of that one of these days. Pontefract was originally built just after the Norman Conquest and was originally just a motte with a timber tower on top and a bailey. In laymen terms, this means there was a big artificial hill with a tower on top and an enclosed area below the hill with service buildings, usually built on top of another smaller hill. The stone construction you see above was built in the thirteenth century as part of a general program of bigger & better & stone at Pontefract. Pontefract is one of those castles that are hard to imagine when you visit because it has been dismantled so much. At its furthest extent in the seventeenth century, it looked something like this:

That multilobed donjon? That's the bit on the left. So you can see that much of the castle is no longer standing. And that, my friends, is a story in and of itself. But to skip ahead a bit, Pontefract was destroyed largely because it WAS so big and important. It was the stronghold of the de Lacy family, who were major players in medieval England; they held the Lordship of Bowland, were the Earls of Lincoln- one of the girls married Robert the Bruce of Scotland for crying out loud. Hugh de Lacy was among the Anglo-Normans who took over parts of Ireland, becoming the king of Meath and building a couple of big castles there. Just one of those big dynastic power families. In the 1300s, it passed into the hands of the dukes of Lancaster, and King Richard II was killed here.

Pontefract's next major use was in the 1600s, when it served as a Royalist stronghold during the English Civil Wars. It served them pretty well too, withstanding 3 sieges by the Parliamentarians. After the end of the second Civil War, it was intentionally dismantled so that it could not be used in war again, leaving us with the ruins you can see today. This is a very similar story to that of Scarborough Castle, if you remember the giant hole in the wall I showed you that was intentionally put in to decrease the castle's military value.

Still, it is a neat little place to visit. Here's the backside of the motte looking towards the donjon (a fancy word for keep) from the bailey. And it wasn't just the walls and tower that were dismantled. Even the chapel, below bit the dust.

These are the remains of the oldest Norman chapel on the site, thought to date back to the 11th century. Unusually, when the chapel expanded, they built a whole new one slightly off to the side and just let this one be covered over after snagging a lot of the stones for rebuilding.

And here's the bailey from the top of the motte. This whole area would have had the outbuildings- kitchens, crafts areas, etc. Not much is left aside from a bit of the perimeter wall. I'm amused by the industrial tower puffing away in the distance.

And we're one more entry closer to Scotland!

Durham

Ah, the city of Durham. My paleography class went to Durham on a field trip to check out Durham cathedral archives now based out of the Durham University Library, where we got to play with some fourteenth and fifteenth century documents. Above is the view walking from the train station into town. The big building is the cathedral and to its left is Durham University, housed in Durham Castle. That's right, if you go to Durham U you can have your dorm room in a castle. How cool would that be? Anyhoo, as you can tell, they are both up on a hill way above town (because in the British Isles, 75% of things worth seeing involve a hike up a hill, although Durham isn't nearly as bad as some- here's looking at you, Maeve's Cairn in Ireland)

Lalala, walking through Durham, only slightly confused by the directions my professor provided (we were meeting at the library). I took an early train so I could check out the cathedral.

And now I'm walking across the bridge admiring the castle. This was in late February, hence the snow on the ground, but it had been pretty warm recently. And silly me, the snow was mostly melted in York, so I worm my purple converses. Poor footwear decision for Durham, where it was all kinds of snowy and icey. Now, to get up to the hill where the cathedral and castle are, you have two options. 1) You can take a long and meandering route through town or 2) you can cut down a flight of steps past an Italian restaurant down to the river and then walk along a steep path up the hill. I didn't know about option #1, so up the hill I went. And nearly died.

Ok, ok, so I'm exaggerating. But not by much. If the snow and ice weren't making the path virtually a solid sheet of slipperiness and if I was wearing shoes with any kind of traction, it probably wouldn't have been as bad. But as it was, I basically slid up the hill by pulling on the railing. And while I didn't _actually_ slide backwards down the hill, it certainly felt like I could!

But once you make it up....

Ta da! Durham Cathedral: final resting place for St Cuthbert (who I became tight with over my term paper in the fall) and the Venerable Bede (who you may remember from my adventures to Bede's World). Now, the cathedral is awesome and awe-inspiring and any other adjectives you'd like to use with "awe," but I can't prove it. They don't let you take pictures inside. Jerks. So that's really all I can show you. I had lunch at the cathedral refectory on the recommendation of the professor (along with most of the class!). We were told it was inexpensive. That was a lie. It cost me over 6 pounds for a baked potato with cheese and a small hot chocolate. Even with crazy UK food prices, that shouldn't have been more than 4.50. (Blogger hates the pound sign. I'm not sure why.) Anyway, the cathedral was really cool and I recommend a visit. Architecturally and artistically, I think the York Minster is more impressive, but York doesn't have Cuthbert and Bede.

And then there's the castle:

Entrance to the castle is strictly by guided tours (which aren't exactly cheap either.) I didn't get a chance to go on one, but I hear it is pretty cool to go check out. So that was Durham. In my next post, the Vikings attack :)