A Walker in the Suburbs

So often on this trip I’ve wished I could drink up the scenery. It’s that scrumptious. Taking a photograph doesn’t seem enough. I want to inhale it, to soak it up through my pores. 

And then there are places I want to photograph because they’re iconic. Eilean Donan Castle falls into this category. You see pictures of the place in guidebooks and on calendars. So today we drove there, not a short distance I might add. It was lovely, of course — it’s a castle in Scotland. 

But then we walked around to the nearby village of Dornie, and I saw the most enchanting garden, and well, that’s the place I wanted to inhale today. 

It’s hard to know where to start. Should I write about the heather on the hill? It’s in season here in Skye.

Or  the views views off Lealt Gorge with the Inner Hebrides in the distance?

Truth is, I’m seeing far too much during these long luscious days (it’s light till almost 10) to encapsulate it in a single post.  So I’ll end with what you see up top — the lighthouse at the end of the world. 

We’ve only been on this island a few hours but I can already appreciate the aptness of the appellation. A beautiful name for a beautiful place: Skye. 

Mountains rise from the mist. Heather decks the hills. A harbor curves gracefully outside our window. There’s an old-fashioned square-rigged schooner parked in the bay. Not sure why, but it seems to fit.

On the way over, dolphins swam by our ferry, leaping and diving, as if to welcome us. Three jumped from the water at once in perfect synchrony.

As the day winds down, a cloud moves over the hill that juts into the loch, creating a perfect replica of itself in shade on the mountainside. 

 

Glasgow has a modern vibe but an ancient core. It was the core that impressed me most during our wanderings yesterday, especially the cathedral, which dates back to the 13th century. It was the only great Scottish church to survive the Reformation, the guidebook told us.

To see it, even just from the outside (we arrived after it closed for the day), was to be reminded of the stark cold stones of the past, a time when life was more likely to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” in the words of Thomas Hobbes, who I thought for a moment might have been Scottish but was actually British.

Behind the cathedral is the Glasgow necropolis, a romantic burial ground in the Victorian style, with paths meandering among the monuments and a”bridge of sighs” that carries the living to the dead. 

Like the cathedral, the necropolis has a whiff of the eternal about it.

We’ve been here only a few hours but the soft accents, warm welcomes, and (what else?!) bagpipes have made us feel right at home. 

Our first two days are in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland, and we’re venturing out to explore it soon. This errand has two purposes: to see the sights and to stay awake until we’re a wee bit (warning: I plan to use the word “wee” often while here) adjusted to the five-hour time difference. 

We’re bunking at the National Piping Center, with its museum dedicated to all things bagpipe — plus a few rooms and a cafe that serves whiskey, tea and a killer tomato-red pepper soup. 

I noticed this sign as we checked in. I like its order of things. At least for today, we’re putting sleep last too.