Scotland – William, Scotland

Scotland is one of the most scenic, wild and vast countries. The diversity between East and West, North and South makes exploring Scotland an even more wondrous experience. 

Ben Chuirn

Since Scotland is such an expansive landmass, we thought of an ideal plan to traverse Scotland without the restraint of fixed walls in a hotel room: a camper van. Although we had been using the van for around two weeks already, the true test of wild, cold Scotland was yet to come. 

After the lengthy drive from Nantwich, the bright sunny day and green lush hills seamlessly turned into a stormy gloomy barren landscape with rocky mountains and dotted plantations stretching towards the horizon. Despite the hostile atmosphere, the landscape gave me a powerful feeling of strength and energy. A few hours of speeding through the depleted stormy landscape, we plunged into a valley between towering mountains with lush trees hanging over the entrapped lochs – a huge contrast to the peaceful flat plains of England. We decided to stop at a parking lot to take our first modest climb – Ben Chuirn (which was next to a famous goldmine). Climbing the towering adjacent Ben Lui, was out of the question, due to inexperience, unsuitable gear and the lack of time. The mountain started off as a rather easy 45 degree incline of flat grass and moss, although my dad thought otherwise. While progressing, you could practically see where you started, which made me feel slightly uneasy. What I’ve experienced climbing this mountain is you feel you’ve made much more progress than you actually have. After reaching the ‘summit’, we discovered that there was another climb before getting to the true summit – this gives the mountain a rather interesting shape. The stream flowing through hand-cut peat gave the air an earthy smell. Following the path to the summit, it started to get drastically colder. Once we stopped to rest at the top, the cold wind almost blew us off the peak of the mountain; after putting on every single piece of clothing in our bags (which were meticulously planned out) we felt slightly warmer.

We decided not to linger around and immediately start to decline down the mountain. When we reached the bottom it started to rain heavily, but this did not concern us because we had a full set of waterproof clothes on, so we finally arrived back into civilisation and had great fish and chips and a Scottish delicacy – cullen skink.

Castles

After exploring different valleys and mountains on mainland Scotland, we decided to drive all the way up to Skye. On the way to Skye, we visited Eilean Donan castle, the landscape was so perfect that it seemed to have defied every natural geological process, the scene built so specifically in every detail to fit every satisfaction of what a perfect landscape would be. 

After buying tickets, we walked over towards the castle; the bridge, although in reality stable and sturdy, felt like it was swaying to and fro above a vast loch just about to snap off and plunge into the water. The castle itself, the stronghold of the Clan Mackenzie and their allies, the Clan MacRae, was filled with intricate details with intricate stone walls, little cracks and alleyways to explore – although visitors were not allowed to secretly slip into private property. There were many interesting old features of the castle, one example was the dumb waiter which used a simple dangling-rope method to transport food from the kitchen to the dining room. The rooms in the castle were, although small, had a great warmth to them – the feeling of the past people surviving through winters and thriving through summers made the place even more than the already perfect castle. Another example is of a gate which used heavy gears and levers to shut and pull up the gate which is called a portcullis. We all tried to move the gears, which if we succeeded probably would have impaled a few unsuspecting people directly under the door. 

After leaving Eilean Donan, we arrived at the bridge to Skye. Here landscape and vegetation became even more barren and wild; the dramatic and majestic rocky mountains danced on the horizon like an abstract painting. The endless ghastly piles of peat and the gravity-defying mountains in the distance induced a feeling of agoraphobia.

The harsh winds and excruciatingly misty conditions made driving much more animated. After comprehending the incomprehensible weather, we decided that we could look around more famous castles instead of going for a hike. 

We decided to push our limits and head towards Dunvegan Castle. The Castle was mainly undamaged since it was built, due to not taking sides during the jacobite uprising to preserve its peace. The castle was hanging over an edge of a small cliff just to give it an unique and aesthetic build. Once we entered the building, the portraits of the descendants of the MacLeod family glared down at us and gave the place a rather tense feeling. We explored the area and discovered an underground chamber which was out of sight from the pleasantly decorated rooms of the MacLeods – this really clearly shows the general idea of keeping the unclean things unseen to make the visitor feel like they are in paradise. After pottering around for a bit, we decided to explore the woodland of the castle. The woodland-garden was really well maintained, while still keeping the wild and adventurous atmosphere. While exploring, we discovered a small pathway enclosed on all sides by interconnected branches, we hunched our backs and walked through what we felt like untouched forest. After a bit more exploring we needed to depart due to the closing time reaching quite soon (although it wasn’t the worst place to be trapped within).

Loose Rocks

It was now time to dig deeper and get to the core of Skye – the black Cuillin. Choosing a nearby campsite to stay the night (GlenBrittle), We decided to go up Coire Lagan by the safest path, although there was really only one safe path. The first incline was relaxing and easy, although the sun in the clear sky made hiking much more hot. After a while the road started getting steeper and before long we reached a pristine loch half surrounded by a steep incline of loose rocks, and the other half facing the direction of the sea.

After refilling our waters in the nearby stream, it was now time to get to the top of the ​​Great Stone Chute of Sgurr Alasdair. The scree is so deep and loose that you can expect to start landslides of scree on ascent and descent. Ascending in my opinion wasn’t that bad, although the saying “one step forwards, three steps back” certainly did apply. The stone chute was over a thousand feet high and almost more than a 60 degree angle! I could feel the loose scree just about to be set free each step I took. Although the fright of falling was certainly there, accidentally setting a landslide onto unexpecting climbers was one of my worst nightmares – if you were to set loose tumbling rocks, you were complied by the laws of the climbers to howl: “Below!”, to warn the people underneath to take cover and dodge the rocks. It took us around an hour to complete the first part of the climb, we stuck together most of the time so as not to set loose any rocks that could fall onto each other. After resting on a few sturdy rocks we found, I had permission to go ahead and scout around and look for the safest path, and because I would consider myself a rather sensible fellow, I chose the most intimidating, scary and probably somewhat dangerous path as you will see later.

The detour I took seemed to be much easier and sturdier than the main tiring path, although this path was much easier, the rocks that could be set loose were much bigger and would be absolutely devastating if set loose. Although this doesn’t seem to have any direct threat towards me, a few other fellow hikers might trigger massive boulders skipping down the jolly mountain. After a while of tedious and intensive rock scrambling, something absolutely horrifying happened, a wave of rocks came crashing down around 50 metres in front of me, I instinctively hid behind a small little indent in the solid mountain, after a while of being completely frozen in fear, I peeked outside to see the massive hurl of rocks slowly even out onto the scree once again. “See what I mean?” My dad echoed up to where I was, he clearly could hear the loud crashing of the rocks, “Always protect your head!”. Relieved after this event, I scrambled up to a solid stone platform to wait for the others to catch up; the scenery formed by the two mountains surrounding my view with the great stone ridge shooting out onto the horizon, while dramatic scree falling all the way down to the original lake where we filled our waters; gave an unique geological history to my surroundings. “How could volcanic activity create such a diverse landscape? This is one of the questions I find asking myself all the time in Scotland. After Richard and Dad catched up, we scrambled up the final part of the mountain, at this point it started to get really misty and cold, and all of a sudden, a wild Scotsman appeared: a man covered from head to toe in tattoos, and the only clothing that he was wearing was his helmet! After getting rather intimidated by the casual norse god racing up the hill, we reached the extremely exposed ridge on top. The scenery was absolutely stunning and mind dazzling, I could not bear the jaw dropping heights of the scene.

My dad, seeing me in such a  height-nervous state, did what any other caring father would do, and was to drag me along to the absolute pinnacle of the mountain – try imagining walking up your stairs at home, but towards both sides are a few thousand feet of nothing but air, and your stairs are a slight bit more than uneven and you’ve just been fatigued by 5 hours of climbing; at this point I decided to stop halfway towards the absolute peak and wait for them to come back down (It was just a few metres higher). Richard stood completely upright with a 4000 feet drop surrounding him, and decided to play a game of chess on his phone to relax for a bit; Naked-Norse God-Scottish-Tattoo-Man (who by now was wearing a climbing harness so not entirety naked) was rather impressed by Richard, and was not surprisingly underwhelmed by the boring teenager digging his nails into the rock around him. To my relief we were finally able to descend to a more suitable place to relax and eat a few snacks to refresh ourselves. Descending was lengthy, but not such a big problem, sliding down the rocks was quite soothing and relaxing, and not before long we reached the bottom and we lay down on the sun-drenched rocks, looking out to the sparkling sea, while bird song soothed us to a relaxing nap.