Tuesday
the 25th of June, 2013
featuring
A recipe for cycling serenity – the Edderton Cross-Slab –
Castle Spite – up the Shin to Lairg – the salmon of the Shin
A
recipe for cycling serenity
You'd have loved this day
on the road from Tain to Lairg, especially if you:
- relish the cycling life
- take pleasure in delving into stories of past lives in the places you travel through
- enjoy variation in your terrain, particularly if it includes forest, rivers, sea and high surrounding hills
- prefer clear, warm, conditions with little wind
- want a journey of around 40 kms
- are keen to meet people who are go out of their way to engage with you
From Inverness, bottom right, to Lairg, top centre, alongside the Moray Firth, the Beauly Firth, Cromarty Fitth and Dornoch Firth. Our route in pink. Only one thing jarred today. I had been riding for an hour through tranquil, leafy glades when I heard a screech like two metal plates in violent collision, louder, louder, then an explosion of thunder. An Air Force jet, at ridge height, flickering through branches. Intimidating, brutal. I could just begin to imagine what it might feel like to be attacked by these screaming bullies intent on causing you serious mayhem.
The
Edderton Cross-Slab
I left Tain on the A 9, the early morning quiet and tame. Three kilometres on a generous
verge, then I turned left alongside the Dornoch Firth, leaving the A9 to
cross the Firth on its way north to Thurso. Pretty well good
riddance, actually. There were certainly no tears.
My journey today was brief
so I took time to linger.
In the Edderton
Churchyard, I found the Cross-Slab,: a reddish 2 metre-tall stone,
carved with the outline of three horsemen, probably Pict heroes who
had fought in a 9th century battle against the Danes.
Three riders who did brave things 1200 years ago and are remembered
today because someone bothered to chisel their profile in stone.
Thanks!
The Edderton Cross-Slab, chiselled 1200 years ago to honour the exploits of three horsemen. |
Up
the Shin to Lairg
Looking north up the Dornoch Firth towards Bonar Bridge. |
Along the Firth, its mud
mirror-shiny on my right, over the Bonar Bridge, and through the
village of the same name, a dour pedestrian scowling and muttering in
Gaelic (?) at me for riding on his footpath, along the
Kyle of Sutherland to Invershin, where I stopped beside the road
under a rail bridge supported by squatting stone buttresses.
A sign told a little of
the story of a stone chateau across the river. Except it wasn't a
chateau, it was a castle. Carbisdale Castle, the last one built in
Scotland. I decided to bring David back to have a closer look.
Now only a few miles to
Lairg, up a winding bushy one-lane road beside the Shin River.
One bizarre encounter: I
stopped for an apple/chocolate/water break in a passing bay; a car
pulled in to let traffic pass; I was a foot away from the passenger;
she fixedly stared straight ahead; I waved, a little facetiously,
perhaps; no response even after a couple of minutes. I remember this
as her response was so different from the usual reaction of the
lovely Scots.
Lairg at one. I nearly
missed it. The main road by-passes the town centre, so, unless you
stop and explore, you might think Lairg is a town of one cafe and four houses. I
met David in the Pier Cafe and asked him if he would like to revisit
Carbisdale. We checked in to Carnbren B and B, met Chris, the
charming owner, then drove back south.
Castle
Spite
We stopped again under the
rail bridge, met a Scotswoman and her German husband, he wielding a
camera with a telescopic lens the size of a small cannon. She,
enthusiastic, warm-hearted and funny, told us a little of the
castle and of the castle's builder, the Duchess of Sutherland who,
some suspected, caused the premature deaths of her first husband and
of the first wife of the Duke. We crossed the river on the walkway
and trekked the two kms to Carbisdale, now a Youth Hostel but today,
closed for repairs. In fact, it may never re-open as a YH, the cost
of repairs probably beyond the bank account of the association.
Its future is uncertain.
Its past is captivating.
In the early 1880s, Mary
Blair and her husband worked for the Duke of Sutherland in northern
Scotland.
Mary Caroline, Duchess of Sutherland: voluptuous, imperious, strongly determined, vengeful. |
Mary was a resolute and comely woman who fell in love with the Duke and he with her. Captain Blair was devastated by the relationship and died in a hunting accident in 1883. Some swear it was suicide, the result of his despair at his wife's cooling ardour for him. |
The affair continued,
scandalously, as the Duchess of Sutherland was alive and daily
witness to her husband's blatant unfaithfulness.
Within 4 months of the
Duke's wife's death in 1889, Mary became the Duchess of Sutherland.
In 1892, her husband, 20
years her senior, died, leaving her in total control of the estate.
His will was contested by his son. The judiciary intervened and found
that Mary had destroyed documents relating to the estate. She was
imprisoned for 6 weeks.
The bitterness continued
for years until a degree of agreement was arrived at. The Duchess,
Mary Caroline, was given money, an annual settlement and permission
to build a house as long as it was outside the boundaries of Sutherland territory.
So in 1906 she began to
build Carbisdale Castle though she didn't live to see its completion
in 1917.
It soon became famous as
Castle Spite. Here's why:
- she made sure that the castle was built in full view of the main road and railway line from the Sutherland estate south so that they couldn't miss it every time they travelled past.
- the castle was carefully designed with one room more than the Sutherland family castle
- She had built a clock tower, clocks on three sides, none on the side that faced the road and rail line as she didn't want to give the Sutherlands the time of day.
The Sutherland clan could
do little else but grind their teeth and make sure that the blinds on the
carriages of their private train were pulled down when it passed
Castle Spite.
Moral? Never mess with
feisty women, especially in Scotland.
The
salmon of the Shin
On the way back up the
valley to Lairg, we stopped to watch salmon try, time and again, to
leap up thunderous water-falls below shallows where they could lay
their eggs. A group of Australian riders on their way to JOG shouted
'YES' when a salmon leapt to the first pool, then groaned when it was
swatted back. In half an hour we saw not one fish make the shallows
above the falls.
The falls on the River Shin which provide such an obstacle to salmon trying to swim upriver to spawn. The lookout can just be seen to the left of the falls. |
Distance Today | Average Speed | Max Speed | Riding Time | Trip Odometer |
42.14 | 17.3 | 35.5 | 2h 25m | 1506.6 |
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