Europe 2013: Oh So WetAugust 17, 2013
Today started very pleasantly, at the Lodge B&B, in a nice warm bed, sending emails. The included breakfast was ridiculously comprehensive, including yogurt, cereal, fruit, juice, tea, eggs, veggie sausage (the owners, Catherine and Robert, are vegetarian!), toast, fried tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, zucchini (courgette, I was assured it is called here), waffles, and I'm probably forgetting other stuff. I took pictures, it was so ridiculously delightful.
Unfortunately, that was the end of the delight for a while. When I looked outside, it was to the sight of small drops of rain falling in great quantity on the bike. And all indications were that it wasn't going to stop. So, I packed up my stuff and strapped it to the bike with a certain amount of regret. I convinced Catherine to pose for a picture, paid the bill, and headed out in a moment of brighter light that we'll charitably call sunshine.
I continued along the road, toward Glenuig. (A correction from yesterday's note: the "little houses" were actually called the Taighean Beaga, not Beagan.) I didn't want to stop for pictures, since there was so much water falling out of the sky. It was after only about five minutes that I felt the first trickle of rainwater running down my leg. The riding suit is ok for moderate rain, but in a real shower, it leaks quite consistently at the crotch. The rain proceeded to get harder and harder.
As I made the turn for Mallaig (the nearest big town to Glenuig), it started raining harder. 10 miles along the road to Mallaig, it was raining even harder. I was hunched over the tank bag, hoping to prevent some amount of water from running down my front and thus inside the suit. I am generally far happier to be riding a bike without a fairing, but in moments like this, the weather protection would be awfully nice. The turnoff for Glenuig finally appeared, and I headed down the road toward I knew not what. I had a very clear mental picture of what the village looked like, although it turned out to have been drifting with time, and wasn't terribly accurate. I remembered some of it, but much of it was different from what my memory describes. When I spent my year in Edinburgh, I learned Scottish Gaelic from a professor who had grown up in Glenuig, speaking Gaelic. He brought his students back once a year, for those who were interested, and I took the trip with him. I wish I could remember his name, but I haven't a clue what it was now. In any case, I visited Glenuig then, with the student group, and then Brooke and I returned at Easter to stay a night or two at the Inn. When Brooke and I were there, we were eating dinner at the Inn, and unbidden and unexpectedly, musicians started showing up, and just started playing for their own enjoyment. We got a free and authentic Celtic music concert just because of where we happened to be. It was amazing.
In any case, I found the shop (now open from 2-4 pm most days, closed Wednesdays -- I recalled it only being open on Tuesdays and Thursdays) exactly where I'd remembered it, and the road out of town was as I recalled it, but there were more houses around than I'd bothered to remember (I think they were there all along, but I was choosing to remember the place as being more isolated than it actually is). The Inn was much as I'd remembered it, although the rooms off to the left were connected, and I vaguely recalled them being a series of tiny cabins.
I didn't actually stop in to the Inn, at first. First, I wanted to go to Smirisary, which is a miniscule fishing village directly west of Glenuig. This was where I recall Brooke taking a cool picture of me in sunset light, with these amazing upthrusting stones in the background. I really wanted to find the place again. The village itself (more properly a collection of perhaps half a dozen cottages) is only accessible by a half-mile-long footpath which, when I finally traversed it, was acting the part of ersatz streambed and mud factory as well. Before I went down, I actually climbed to the top of a small hill near the parking spot I'd picked, and just kind of looked around. The rain had tapered off, and it was very nearly not raining at this point. The view was barren and beautiful and a little bit like something from a dream. I had built up Glenuig and Smirisary as this kind of highlands nirvana in my head, and seeing it again for real was like walking into a dreamscape formed into actual landscape. I debated, and actually had my helmet on, ready to ride away, before I realized I was being silly, and I hadn't come all this way to avoid the short walk to the village -- I didn't see the path, and was feeling out of sorts between the rain and the weird emotions hovering at the edge of consciousness. I had been moments away from riding away dejectedly, convinced that it was a bad idea to spend the extra five minutes finding the footpath to the village.
Fortunately, I did realize I was being silly, and grabbed the camera and tripod, and started walking. Luck was with me, and there was a gent loading his car, who directed me to the path; I started up. The path is like something out of a fairy tale, reinforced with stones to provide somewhere to step in the mud, doubtless that reinforcement put in place hundreds of years ago. It winds through a forest that I can only describe as a fairy glen (hopefully I'm caught up with pictures by the time I send this, so you can see what I'm talking about). The path opens into the field which makes up the village next to one of the cottages, a tiny stone building, maybe 200 square feet. From there, you're free to wander down through a field full of sheep and a few tents, as there are no set paths. Through a large section of tall grass, to another field, down past another cottage (this one occupied, with the residents studiously ignoring me through their glassed-in porch), to a beach made up of large stones, ranging in size from a clenched fist to a large loaf of bread.
There, beside the stone beach, were the upthrusting stones from the picture. The light was nowhere near the same, but I decided I'd take a picture of myself there in any case. To match the mood, I sat myself pensively looking out to sea. The sun threatened to come out and make with some magical lighting, and I spent a good solid ten minutes waiting for the gap in the clouds that never appeared, despite always being on the verge of blowing in. I'm sure the cottagers thought I was crazy.
I finally realized I needed to head back. The rain had almost magically stopped once I decided to walk down to Smirisary, and I didn't want to push my luck. I lumbered my riding suit back on, and started my slow way up through the fields, only slipping once on the climb, and managing to avoid completely submerging my already-soaked boots in any of the many deep-looking patches of standing water and mud from the rain. The burn coming down from the hillside was flowing madly to join the sea. The sheep ran away from me in the sort of insolent way that indicates that I wasn't a real threat, but they definitely didn't want me to get too close. Sheep droppings were scattered liberally across the fields. I climbed slowly up the hill, stopping to look back once or twice. The wind blew harder and harder as I climbed higher, much as the wind had gusted powerfully when I was standing atop the hill by my parking spot. I was in an odd, reflective mood, and it was hard not to put meaning to nature. The wind felt like a test, or affirmation. The rain stopping for me felt like encouragement. I was supposed to be there. I was doing the right thing. Despite my weirdly mixed feelings about the whole thing, this was the correct choice. If that was nature's message while I was there, its message after I left was: screw you, hippie! It rained harder than ever. There was another moment that suggested I was a hippie who should screw myself, before I get into the ride away. I'd stepped into some deepish mud (by which I mean several inches), and was trying to scrape it off my boot on the heather next to the path, on the walk back to the bike. Step, scrape, step, scrape, and suddenly, with a wet whooshing noise straight out of a B-movie special effects collection, I was up to my knee in a muddy hole in the ground. It was completely invisible. I pulled myself out, my boot and pantleg considerably more muddy than when I'd started (screw you, hippie!), and literally could not see the hole I'd fallen into. It was just another gap between two bunches of heather, indistinguishable from everywhere else. I also have to describe the Inn itself, which I stopped at on my way out. Inside was beautiful and new, and the woman behind the bar said that the whole building had been rebuilt in 2009 and 2010, and the old building (the one I remembered, however vaguely) was in pretty bad condition. She hadn't seen it (this was a woman of perhaps 19, obviously working one of the few non-agricultural jobs available to a young woman in rural Scotland), but had heard the new building is a real improvement. That at least explained why the residence building looked different, and it was a little disappointing to find that the building I'd heard that magical music in was gone (although the plan was sufficiently similar that I recognized the room we'd been sitting in). Before I left town, I realized the shop was open, so I stopped in to say hello and see if they had postcards. They did, and I picked a few up. The young woman behind the counter didn't say anything, leaving all the talking to the older woman with the English accent who seemed to be in charge. Both the young woman at the shop and the young women at the Inn (one from Arisaig, and one from Slovenia) favored me with the kind of smile I'm not used to receiving any more, which was quite pleasant.
Another biker came in with his daughter, as I was selecting cards, and after some conversation, I spotted his bike, and had to ask him what it was. It was a trike of some variety, clearly a car engine bolted up to a motorcycle front end, but instead of the VW Bug conversion I'm used to seeing, it was a front-engine system. He finally had to tell me: it was a converted Reliant Robin. For a good time, go to the Top Gear website and look up the segment on the Reliant Robin. It's hilarious. I guess, when convered to an actual trike, it would be a more useful vehicle. He grinned his wild-eyed biker grin and headed off, his daughter strapping herself into the bench seat behind the central driver's seat. I didn't get a chance to take a picture, since my camera was far away across a very rainy gravel parking lot. Finally, odd mix of emotions still going on, I headed out. I tried to find the turn off to Castle Tioram (which I had also visited in 1996), but didn't spot it, and rather than spend more time than necessary riding in the rain, turned around and headed back toward the Mallaig road. The roadway was mostly that red-stone pavement that occurs in the region, and makes for a surprisingly pretty road. All the names in that region, Mallaig and Arisaig and Moidart and Smirisary have that same dream quality to them that the village of Glenuig and environs does. I'd come across signs and recognize them on a kind of subconscious level. It was very much like coming home to a place that's never been home. However, I had set my sights on Annan by the end of the day, and the GPS claimed that I was going to arrive at 8 pm (it was 2 pm when I set out from Glenuig), so I wanted to get moving. If you'll recall from earlier, the "rained harder, then harder, then harder" routine, you may repeat it through the rest of the day. I had the impression as I was riding away that it had rained all the rain on my way in to Glenuig, paused for two hours while I did my thing, as it gathered up all that rain again, so it could rain it all down again.
Somewhere before I got back on the road from Mallaig to Fort William, my USB power device croaked, which may or may not prove to be a disaster, from a writing standpoint. Hopefully I can get it sorted out. It obviously died of Scottish rain, and I feel silly for having hooked the GPS and tablet up to it out of habit (rather than leaving the nice, waterproof cover installed and running the GPS on battery for a day), without thinking about the fact that I ran the risk of killing the pivotal item for keeping my tablet charged (and thus the writing and photos flowing) for the next five weeks. I made it as far as Glasgow (only half way to Annan) before I had to give up and look for a place to stop. My boots were utterly soaked through, my gloves soaked through early in the day (I stopped at Glencoe Mountain to put on more clothes and my winter gloves, which are at least slightly waterproof, and warm -- I was so cold I was getting stupid, between the wet and the wind), my pants were as much wet fabric as dry, and I was generally pretty miserable. This was the kind of day (riding-wise, anyway) which leaves me wondering how I could have prepared better for all this, if not quite wondering why the hell I was doing it in the first place. I really thought I was going to be dealing with overheating, not freezing and getting soaked on this trip. As the older woman at the shop said as I was departing, "How can you tell it's summer in Scotland? The rain's warmer!"
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