Note - this goes on for a fair bit, so for a quicker telling of our holiday Up North, read the Lass's smashing post about it. Hell, read it anyway! My photos of the journey are here, the holiday itself here, and photos by the Lass here.
Some time after our relationship began (in a blaze of tripod death rays, funnily enough) the lovely Chazzer and I were emailing cheerfully using Gmail which, as you might know, automatically scans emails and pops wee Google ads theoretically relating to keywords in the email you're reading or replying to. We've been keeping an eye on these, mainly out of amusement at just how leftfield the ads can be in relation to what's been written about. One day a link pops up for The Old Post Office near Skye - intrigued, we clicky. PHWOAR. The first thing that grabbed was the webcam and the rocking view it showed; the second was the brekkie, the third was the daily rates for a double with ensuite, and the photo gallery was the marzipan on the cake - YUM. How could we refuse? How?
And so to Thursday a couple of weeks back, waking at some ungodly hour and making our way to Edinburgh Haymarket station for the train to Perth for the train to Inverness for the train to Kyle of Lochalsh. Edinburgh to Perth was relatively ho-hum, enlivened by a 7am crossing of the Forth and eavesdropping on an American couple asking the marital status of some bloke commuting into work. By the time we were Inverness bound, the sun was up and the Scottish countryside was coming into light, my camera cheerfully clicking away as the scenery became wilder, hills rolling higher, the balance of power shifting from humans to raw nature. Then onto the two-carriage train to Kyle of Lochalsh, and within minutes of leaving Inverness the countryside gets tougher and more beautiful still, so I reach for my camera - except the bugger isn't there because this daft bugger had left it on his chair when leaving the Perth-Inverness train. OH FUCKING DOH. Thankfully the Lass (being the brains of the outfit as well as the looks) was firmly in possession of her own camera, so you can see some of her spectacular pictures here. Camera-loss-notwithstanding, it was an awesome journey, crossing from east coast to west through dark forests, rolling hills speckled with sheep, small villages where a passing train is still worth waving at. Here's some pencil & graphite sketches I did on the train...
Kyle itself was initially startling - comparatively silent compared to Glasgow or Edinburgh, on the seafront with Skye across the water fading in & out depending on the weather - but quickly became ho-hum. Still, there were a couple of cracking cafes that fed us well, the Lochalsh Hotel bar made a nice location for sketching (see below) and it became the hub for our bus journeys to & from Skye itself, being just down the (long & windy) road from Balmacara itself, home of our B&B as well as the Balmacara Hotel, the local store and... er... not much else. Which is probably why I loved it to bits. Right on the shore, perfectly placed for taking in the awesome sight of Skye across the water, the clouds above changing & moving with startling speed, making for some wonderful sights and some pretty damn fine photographs between the Lass & I. The B&B was just as hoped - cosy, friendly, the brekkie living up to hopes and a daft wee dug called Dylan getting far too excited about pretty much anything - and the Velux window meant for some wonderful sunrises to wake up to.
So what did we see? Well now... there was Eilean Donan castle on the first full day, a lovely old castle blown to buggery by government warships back in 1719 and only rebuilt in the last century. My lack of camera (along with the ace window seat in the neighbouring cafe/gift shop and the wonderful patience of my Lass) encouraged me to sketch it & have at least some visual record of it - although pen might not have been the best medium to work in, it still came out okay - definitely deserves returning to in the future with some paint though. Then spending a few hours in Broadford, a lovely town on Skye, south of Portree. As well as this fabbo photography gallery, we admired the pebbles, the shops & studios (sizing up the competition), the Gallic-speaking family at the bus-stop and the big fuck-off hill/mountain that loomed benevolently over to the north. It only took a couple of hours to realise that, oh my, oh my lord, oh holy fucking shit, this would be a fucking TOP place to live in the next decade or so. Fantasies of producing watercolours and sketches for sale, sending animation down a broadband connection to the mainland, erupt in my noggin - two weeks on, they're still here. And next time we go there, I'm gagging to take the postbus. The postbus! Ah, I'm easily impressed. Getting back into Kyle that afternoon, a scamper to the train station revealed that the tickety bloke had indeed brought my camera from Inverness to Kyle for me - chap! Naturally I rattled off about 30 photos in 3 minutes, a couple of which were actually pretty fine.
Saturday, there was Portree itself, the largest town on Skye yet not up to its neck in touristiness (Aros aside). A wistfully comfortable second-hand bookshop (where I finally got The Golden Bough, as well as a free cuppa), Skye Soap overtaking Lush in my favourite soap charts (fellas, they do an excellent Seaweed & Cedarwood soap that lathers marvellously!) and a lovely cafe where, while drinking an excellent red ale, I did this pen-and-watercolour-pencil sketch of the window & the view. It's not really a style or a subject I've drawn before, but I'm dead chuffed with the result and am now kicking myself (ow!) for not doing more sketches like that while on holiday. Ah well, at least this one was done, and a copy of it now hangs very nicely in Chez Chazzer which I'm really rather flattered by. A smashing town to visit, and the bus journeys to & from the town were pure stare-out-the-window-and-gawp, even if the bus did feel a tad precarious lunging round the contours of hills. One thing about Portree - absolutely FUCK ALL mobile reception anywhere in the town, not a jot, whereas smaller Broadford showed perfect connection. Very odd. Could Portree be a haven from the handsets, the hands-free-sets, the "I'M ON THE BUS!" of modern life? On the way back from Portree, catching a drink in the Lochalsh Hotel, I did the sketch below - no colour, but still fun to do.
On the last day we got the taxi over to Plockton, held up midway by a bunch of Highland cows moseying along the road, one of the bulls getting the urge to boink one of the cows as they passed our vehicle. Ever see a bull's manhood (well, bullhood)? Very strange, moving independently of the main body like the bastard offspring of a jackhammer and a cocktail sausage. Plockton itself wasn't quite so fascinating, though walking along the beach was a soothing pleasure, with lots of wonderful textures on rocks, water, chains and lobster cages. Aside from that, there wasn't much to see apart from peering inadvertently into the windows of the houses lined along the waterfront, and as the clouds broke for the kazillionth time forcing the Lass to change into her Wee Purple Gnome costume (still, holiday rain feels better than normal rain) we made our way to Portree train station for a wee cuppa and catching the train back to blarghy old normality. Again, the scenery was divine, fields bathed in sunlight surrounded by hills in shadow, except this time I had a camera - hurrah!
Coming back wasn't fun, as the Lass and I both wrote. For one thing, the Inverness-Perth train journey was hellishness on toast, redeemed only by watching Ice Age on My Ickle iBook to drown out the chattering tosspots surrounding us. Back in the city, everyone seemed loud, offensive, in the way; the streets filthy, the air thick with fumes and noise, our minds in shock until safe within the walls of Chez Chazzer. Why so tough? I wouldn't wish to talk for the Lass on this, but for myself being in Skye wasn't just a typical holiday but instead something else, a glimpse into a better way to live a life, to appreciate the things that matter, one that's realistic and genuinely possible. It has echoes of when I visited the MGM/Disney theme park in Orlando back in 1993 and, peering into the animation studio, decided I wanted to become a classical animator (not the most successful of career paths I could have chosen, to put it mildly, but you can't fake that feeling, or ignore it, unless you want a life shadowed by the words 'what if'). This time round I've not been inspired towards a new career or calling - I've still got love for the animation street, 12 years on - but a new location, a new way of living, one that I couldn't realistically have (or want) for years yet, but can see off in the distance. Will it happen? Tune in to Falling Sky around 2015 to find out!
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