Scotland

The Old Man of Storr, the Quiraing, Neist Point. We set our hearts on the Isle of Skye, and the programme wrote itself, the one followed by the discovery of the Scottish Highlands. The Old Man of Storr is a rock some fifty metres high. The Quiraing, a massif covered with peat bogs and meadows, is best walked in dry weather. The Kilt Rock Falls have the rare feature of a waterfall dropping straight into the sea. The Neist Point lighthouse was built in 1907 by Charles and David Stevenson. Talisker Bay takes its name from Thalas gair, the steep rock in the Viking tongue, and gave its own name to the whisky. Another Atlantic island waits in my Madeira notebooks.

The word says nothing about geology: Loch Carron is a fjord. It separates neither the size nor the origin of the water, and that is exactly what misleads the visitor. Loch Carron proves the point most sharply: it runs more than 100 metres deep at its centre, while the channel letting the sea water in is less than 20 metres deep. We made a short stop at the viewpoint laid out near the village of Strome Ferry to take it in whole, a halt told in my search for Nessie in Scotland. The same word therefore covers landforms with nothing in common. The northern fjords carry on in my Iceland travel stories.

It goes back to the 6th century. We could not leave without trying our luck on the shores of the mysterious Loch Ness, so we followed its banks watching the water more than the scenery, a hunt told in my shores of Loch Ness. The ruins of Urquhart castle stand at the edge of the loch and serve as a landmark for every watcher. Further on, Inverness castle is nothing like a stage set: it is an administrative building, the seat of the sheriff. We saw nothing at all. Other castles can be visited in my France travel stories.

Fringed cattle, sheep and countless fallow deer. The Highlands hold fewer than ten inhabitants per square kilometre, and the region carries the highest density of sheep, something noted stage after stage along the road across the Scottish Highlands. Countless fallow deer live in these valleys as well. Highland cows are known by their long hair and their unruly fringe, that pretty lock falling over their eyes. One last resident is far less pleasant: the midges, voracious gnats that plague the whole region. Then it is time to taste the famous Haggis, the stuffed sheep’s paunch. The wide northern spaces carry on in my winters in Lapland.

993 metres at Sgurr Alasdair, the highest point. The Black Cuillins form a horseshoe of mountains around Loch Coruisk, and count more than twenty peaks above 900 metres. Sgurr Alasdair tops them all. On the mainland, in Glen Torridon, the summits of Beinn Eighe pass the 1000 metre mark, and the emotion rises with Loch Torridon opening just below them. The rest of the continent starts from my European destinations. The road to the Applecross peninsula, one of the most vertiginous we have driven, serves a village of 238 inhabitants. The volcanic relief, for its part, shows in my Icelandic landscapes.

Edinburgh old town, capital since the 15th century. We walked its tight maze of buildings, full of passages, steps and vaults, looking for the settings of a series we liked; our searches came to nothing, and we left Edinburgh with a slightly heavy heart. At Stirling castle they practised the Flyting, those lyrical jousts between Scottish poets held in public arenas between the 15th and the 17th century. The whole of Europe starts from my map of European countries. Eileann Donan Castle, for its part, can be looked at as a castle peopled with invisible guests. The south, for its part, is told in my escapes to Italy.