Walking from Glasgow to Inverness

Fort William to Inverness: The Great Glen: 7-13 Sep 2014

Any map of Scotland, that part of the UK north of Hadrian’s wall, shows a southern undulating part up to a line joining Glasgow on the Clyde and Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth. The Forth River rises not too far from Loch Lomond and the combination marks the Highland line, beyond which the clan chiefs ruled their tribes until the nineteenth century, when the clearances began and southerners bought up huge tracts (50%+) as private estates. The highlands are cleft by a deep glaciated valley running northwest from Fort William, facing the Atlantic, in a straight line to Inverness on the North Sea. The Great Glen has been a communication channel for centuries, and is the line of Caledonian Canal that can take trawlers between the two seas safely and avoid the hazards of the long way round the north of Scotland.

The walk is classed as ’moderate’, which seemed to mean walking along the canal side on a hard road bed for miles or along forestry roads for the remainder. Boring! Things looked up on the third day, however, with a pleasant stroll along a disused railway embankment and a few side bits along the canal. But the fourth day, from Fort Augustus to Invermoriston gave us a choice of the high route, which climbs up above the tree line to moors

and mountains at about 1500 ft. This new track was exhilarating to walk and our newly acquired fitness meant we could walk up to the tops without stopping. We felt we could walk forever. The track wasn’t quite finished, but a long day was wonderful and we felt good when we reached Invermoriston. . The next day to Drumnadrochit also offered a high road – not quite as exhilerating, but a vast improvement on forest roads. The next two days split a long section and have also been enjoyable along the tops, though the land drops steadily from above Drum. The last section, into the suburbs of Inverness was along a forest path into the city centre, past the International Highland Games.

We learned that Scottish history has been fairly continuous strife since the Romans decided to build a wall to keep the out the Picts rather than try and conquer them. The Romans withdrew from Britain in the 5^th century, about the time the Scots, an Irish tribe, invaded Scotland accompanied by their missionary, Columba. Nevertheless, the 7^th century saw the golden age of Pictish culture, until the Norse came chasing land and resources in the 8^th century, forcing the unification of the Picts and the Scots under Kenneth McAlpine. Then, depending on the source, Scottish history became the Campbells against everyone else or the Macdonalds under the Lord of the Isles, against everyone else. While the Highlands became a single kingdom, it took another 500 years to break the power of the Norsemen, just in time for the Scots to defeat the English at Bannockburn in 1314. That led to an English recognition of an independent Scotland, until James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603. The Jacobite rebellions against the English in 1689, 1715 and 1745 led to brutal repression and forcible destruction of the clan structures. As described earlier, the final blow was the Clearances. The industrial revolutin was kind to lowland Scotland, but the depression hit Glasgow hard and 400,000 Scots emigrated between the wars.

We were sorry to finish our travels into wonderful country and a ferocious (and personal) history, meeting many wonderful people. We’ll be back!!

Walking from Glasgow to Inverness

Inveroran to Fort William and Millaig: 2-6 Sep 2014

From Inveroran, we climbed up to Rannoch Moor on a Buachaille Etive Mor (The Great Shepherd of Etive). One of my ancestors was postmaster at Bonawe on Loch Etive. The town was created to smelt iron with charcoal from the birch forests now gone and on eof its projects was to cast cannon balls for the Napoleonic wars. My ancestor had to run across the hills to Oban twice a week for the mail but gave it up when the penny post was introduced. He said it was too complicated for him. We have a painting on our wall at home of Loch Etive and Buachaille Etive Mor. It is by my great uncle, Duncan McGregor Whyte, who travelled to Canada and Australia to paint before returning to live at Oban. His work is in collections in Edinburgh University, Oban and in Western Australia.

drover’s road and then across it to Glencoe and the Kingshouse Inn. Loch Rannoch and Loch Tummel lie further to the east. Rannoch Moor, they were pleased to tell us, is so large that it could hold the whole of the Lake District. The Moor is a flattish amphitheatre sloping gently to the east, that used to underlie an ice cap 12,000 years ago, feeding glaciers down the valleys to the sea. Opposite Kingshouse is

From Kingshouse, one of those inns larger on the inside than out, walkers head off down the glen before climbing the Devil’s Staircase, a military road over the passes to Loch Leven. A long time after General Wade, in 1906, the British government decided they could create an artificial lake and channel the water down penstocks and header pipes to a power plant on Loch Leven to make aluminium, the new wonder metal – of which Eros in Piccadilly Circus is made. The new model town to house the workers was going to be called Aluminiumville before everyone came to their senses and called it Kinlochleven. Aluminium is now made much more cheaply elsewhere although the water still powers the generators. The main road now bypasses the town which is looking very sad. A very helpful B&B owner helped scan some documents we needed to sell a rental flat in New Zealand. We still had to find a solicitor willing to guarantee we were who we said we were.

From Kinlochleven, the track climbs up and over a pass where the victorious MacDonalds harried the Mcintoshes in the 14^th century. Once over the pass, a very rough drover’s road that was hard on ankles, wound down the high valley to an abandoned farm. And then to a surprising stop for tea provided by the volunteers who maintain the track. We were passed by a group of 13 Germans and another group of 18 Invernessians and numerous others as we approached Ben Nevis and the final descent into Fort William. Fort William was established by General Monck on Cromwell’s orders to be one of a chain of forts in the highlands, this one on the western sea. It was rebuilt and strengthened under King William and then again after the Jacobite rebellions. A nice town with a High Street suffering from a large supermarket nearby.

We had a day off to find some new boots. Both our pairs were leaking and therefore liable to produce blisters. Gordon was successful but Kerry failed to find her brand. And we also found a helpful solicitor to vouch for us. He was off to a shinty match – gaelic hockey with bent wood clubs instead of hockey sticks and very few rules. Fort William was also experiencing a convergence of healthy-looking people who wanted to run up Ben Nevis. About 1344m up with the record being about 90 minutes up and back. Daft idea, if you ask me. We, on the other hand, took a train to Mallaig passing Sheil water, Lochailort and Morar to the sea.
In the process going over the long, long Glenfinian viaduct made famous by Harry Potter. If we’d taken the steam train, we could have travelled in the same compartments with sliding doors as our heroes from Hogwarts. When we got to Mallaig, we had an ice cream and came back again past Brigadoon dreamscapes in slanting afternoon sunlight to a wonderful fish restaurant on a pier. Our ankles were very grateful for their day off.

Walking from Glasgow to Inverness

Glasgow to Inveroran: 28 Aug – 1 Sep 2014

We are half way through our walk and well into the glaciated valleys of the West Highlands of Scotland. From our lovely B&B at Glengarry, we walked a km into Tyndrum and a shop designed to separate any tourist from his money. I needed some new shoelaces. The expired laces had carried me over the Routeburn in NZ and along several short walks around Woodend and now into the Scottish Highlands.

The first day was through a a long park up out of Millingavie on the fringes of Glasgow, pronounced Mu(l)’ngai, and over a low pass into Rob Roy country. The Whytes are a sept of the McGregors, proscribed in 1603 for being a nuisance after their lands were gifted to the Campbells – Rob the Red had a Ned Kelly folkhero status in the early 18th century, supporting the poor and blackmailing the rich. My mother’s side are Macdonalds from Mull – another part of the clan that the Crown wished to exterminate in the 1692 massacre at Glencoe. The road we walked today was the military road constructed by General Wade after 1725 to tame the wild highland tribes and the Jacobite rebellions. In the early 19th century, sheep were more effective, and thousands of highlanders came to Australia and the other colonies or joined the highland regiments.  The last third of the trail from Millingavie into Drymen was along a disused railway embankment, hard under foot, but the B&B was opposite the oldest licensed pub in Scotland and was run by the retiring Chaplain to the British fleet. We had tired legs and sore feet.

The next day led up through a wind-felled forest to some conical hills, possible ancient volcanic plugs, and then down past day-trippers to the beginnings of the

Scottish theme park of Loch Lomond. Hard walking along the lake edge over the next two days brought us to the Drovers inn at Inverarnan. Loch Lomond was over-run by jet-skis and water skiers, power boats and day trippers on a glorious sunny day. Inversnaid Hotel along the way was Scottish baronial interpreted as a kitch destination for coach tours. Tartan carpet, average customer age 80+ and Polish waiters. Bizarre! The Drovers Inn was weird with the staff, local and imported, all in a mixture of off-the-shelf synthetic kilts in an ancient panelled bar lined with a job lot of stuffed animals and birds. Lots of Germans walking the trail, interspersed with an occasional American and a couple of Kiwis. Scots were using it as their backyard to train for cross-country marathons or just to enjoy walking – and they love their countryside. We were instantly identified as Kiwis or Oz by the crew of a naval helicopter that dropped in for lunch with us at the Bridge of Orchy.

By the next day, our legs and feet had developed some fitness so the walks to Tyndrum and to Inveroran were straightforward as we entered the steep glaciated glens and the inevitable bogs. The Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th & early 19th centuries was based on teaching all children to read. Many of them went on to the universities in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, St Andrews and Glasgow and thence to populate the managerial levels of the professions and the army throughout the British Empire and its colonies with diligence and canniness. Those who didn’t get the education often toiled in the shipyards of the Clyde or went into the infantry regiments that controlled the empire. With the referendum on Scottish independence looming in a fortnight, the divide between the educated and the uneducated classes, and between the highlands and the lowlands seems pretty strong. There seems to be a general disillusionment with professional politicians and a genuine concern for a fair sharing of resources with those who are badly off. But those with knowledge and access to opportunity think the whole independence idea is daft. On the other hand the highlanders, the poor and deprived seem to have such a large chip about the English that they want to fight Bannockburn all over again. Blame Mel Gibson and Braveheart!!

Overall impressions and summary

Twins and grandmother

We encountered a happy, informed and polite people who welcomed us with a smile or a slight bow, recognising and acknowledging our presence as guests. They are incredibly proud of being Persian and an ancient civilisation that has contributed much to Islam and to the West and retained their own distinct identity. Young families with sleepy toddlers draped over one or other parent, young children wanting to go their own way with parents patiently guiding them – I never heard a raised voice to children, or anyone else for that matter, nor any physical punishment to children. The traffic is chaotic, with motorbikes ridden on pavements or going the wrong way up streets, so crossing a busy road requires confidence and a healthy belief that there will be a future. But only rare horns and never any road rage that we saw.  Very few beggars but quite high levels of youth unemployment. People would guide us, as foreigners, across a street and go back to what they were doing. Young men and women were happy to be photographed and to photograph us and to engage in conversation.

While older women in chadors were sometimes more reserved, old men positively preened for the camera. But all had a quiet dignity and mutual respect. It has been a delight to be a guest in their country.

Mullah

The government is rapidly improving infrastructure with major road, rail and water systems, often under project labour contracts with Chinese or Korean companies under the direction of what are, on evidence, excellent Irani engineers. The big cities, Tehran in particular, are suffering from population pressure from urbanisation and a rapidly increasing disposable income. Cars, buses and motorcycles of many familiar brands cough out pollution that clouds a hot sunny sky with little breeze to shift it. The metros are holes in the ground with no great urgency apparent.

Nomad camp near Yasuj. Enlarge to find the camp!

And as described in Esfahan, the cities are vulnerable to climate change because of their dependence on snow-melt for water, but the tradition is to squander water as an affordable luxury. While the cities and towns are remarkably clean, plastic detritus is a blight on rural roads and vacant blocks of land.

The issues for travelers are the same as any developing country. Toilets are provided in public parks and encourage families to use the grassy areas for picnics. But the flushing systems don’t often work although there is almost always soap and water to wash ones hands. The locals on journey often seem to spurn hotels and camp in collapsible pup tents on sidewalks near a park and toilets. Three or four members of a family will emerge from their portable bedroom and stretch before heading off for a face wash. Presumably there is a thin mattress and blanket on the floor and that’s all that is needed at this time of year. Many of the travellers seemed to be internal tourists reveling in their history or looking for a break on the Caspian like the Shah in his day. Limited and sometimes excellent English is not uncommon, particularly in tourist areas. We were fortunate that there were very few other tour groups around, although we bumped into Australians, Germans, French and Dutch as well as a few from the Balkans. Everyone is very hopeful that the new Prime Minister, Rouhani, can broker a deal with the US over nuclear power and lift sanctions so they can welcome more visitors to their country.

Many apologise for the aggressive rhetoric of Ahmedinijad; however, our sample was limited to those who wanted to engage with us. On the other hand there was very very little evidence of hostility to Americans and much more a wish to be understood.

Go to Iran, particularly before it becomes the next big tourist destination for a jaded West denied access to Iraq, Egypt and Syria by continuing violence. In the hotels we stayed, food was predictable, good and, like all restaurant food, heavy on meat (usually kebabs) and light on fibre and vegetables. Salads at every meal must have been well washed in clean water because tummy troubles were uncommon. The major issue for us was the very dry air and the air-conditioning drying out noses.

Esfahan the glorious

Competing with Istanbul for elegance and beauty, Esfahan in the 16^th C was the jewel of the Savafids in their Golden Age under Shah Abbas I. Abbas forcibly translocated Armenian Christain merchants and their extensive trading networks to run the state silk monoply. Jews were already running the banking system and he developed a reliable tax system that gave him the resources to create a standing army to suppress tribal squabbles and push back Ottoman and Turkic incursions. He imported craftsmen to build some wonderful monuments in Esfahan, his new capital.

Internal dome of new Friday Mosque

The New Friday Mosque used the same dome over a cube as Shapur and Adashir in their Sassanian palaces and as the Zoroastrians before that. For the Zoroastrians, the cube represented the earth, the dome represented the sky and there was always a pool of water before the entrance. Persia thus modified the plain Arabic mosque and gave it architectural grandeur, incorporating minarets to balance the mass of the high outer dome. The New Mosque has an inner dome 30M across and the outer dome rises 57M covered in the trademark turquoise tiles. The inside dome has a marvelous decoration of tiles and acts as a reverberation membrane for a mullah who stands under its apex to project his voice to the furtherest corners of the open mosque square beyond the cube. When we visited, the outdoor part of the mosque was being covered with shade-cloth to protect the congregation. A young mullah took us aside and answered questions about himself and his religion.

Ladies Mosque with the peacock's tail of light

The Ladies Mosque, built for the women of his court and not open to the public of the time, is even more jaw-droppingly exquisite. It was given to the Shah’s respected father-in-law, who developed a theological school there.

Opposite the enormous Imam Square, from which the mosques are entered, is a gorgeous formal reception pavillion and gardens, called the many-pillared. A wide reflecting pool, perhaps 100M long, leads up through a shady and extensive garden of trees of various textures to a pavillion where the Shah sat to receive his guests. As we have seen the fashion, 20 dressed tree trunks became pillars, perhaps 20M high, to support a wide and deep flat roof – an impressive verandah. The royal area had been extensively decorated with mirror-work, now destroyed. Behind the façade is a large reception room, painted with 17^th C frescoes in brilliant colours. These had been covered over with plaster later in the same century to protect them f

Shah Abbass reception hall

rom marauding and iconoclastic Afghans, and were only rediscovered by accident 50 years ago. The frescoes are a cross between Italian renaissance and Persian minaturist styles, where Italian idioms of individual personalities and perspective are married with exquisite detail of costume and colour. The Persians developed a new way of painting that gave them several days to work on a section of damp plaster compared to the Italians who had to work very quickly and therefore more impressionistically. Blue, black, white, grey, red & white and orange horses gallop across a field with the Shah leading the charge in a famous battle.

The Shah's renaissance battle

On the other wall, the court of Shah Abbas I is shown in its power and decadence, whereas his son’s court, receiving a supplication from Humayun (a Mughal Emperor on the run), is shown as formal and correct. The son commissioned all the paintings, of course. Below these grand frescoes are small wall paintings of familiar romances and stories in minaturist style.

The Armenian church of Joseph of Arimathea is unprepossessing on the outside but is covered with brightly coloured murals of gospel stories on the inside. The small museum offers gruesome documentation on the genocide of Turkish Armenians and some wonderful illuminated bibles in Armenian script. On the other side of the river the 2000 or so remaining Jews use a private house as their synagoue although one old synagogue we visited still had services every morning followed by breakfast. The rabbi and the Armenian priest divide their time with Tehran where they represent their minority in parliament. Underneath the arches of Shah Abbas’s bridge is cool and has good acoustics. They are a gathering place for reading or contemplation, family picnics and for singers, such as the several men, young and old, who sang for their and our pleasure this morning. A lovely city, but dependent on snow-melt and good water management and therefore fragile in the face of climate change. The Esfahanis are without any water in their river this summer for the first time ever because it has been siphoned off upstream to send to Yazd and to service two large steel mills. Without water, this city of gardens and fountains will die.

Shiraz and Persepolis

Tomb of Hafez

Shiraz, city of roses and poets, was reached after a long drive across salt lakes and over moderate mountains, all semi-desert peopled by nomads and occasional oases. The average temperature was 5 deg cooler 2500 years ago and Alexander’s troops had to find their way through forest in this area. So a Sassanian prince’s hunting lodge in the middle of a bare plain at Sarvestan on the way would have made more sense then. Shiraz had few roses in bloom but truly loves its poets. A garden and pavilion dedicated to a lyrical mystic poet, Hafez, in Shiraz was crowded by people of all ages coming to pay their respects and touch his tomb.
A middle-aged lady was propped up against a pillar reading a volume of his works, totally oblivious to the normal mayhem going on around her. As always, lots of kids of various ages doing their thing, mums and dads looking after them and all the latest fashions on display.

Photo shoot

Later we visited an orangerie with a mirrored pavilion with two young women in startling red or blue tribal gear having a photo-shoot

Persepolis, near Shiraz, is a knock out. Darius set out to shock and awe the tributary kingdoms by the grand, enormously high entrance gateway on a huge terrace accessed up symmetrical flights of shallow stairs. The flat ceiling of the entrance hall was held up by carved bulls on top of 20M pillars, the whole (originally) painted in brilliant colours. One Stanley of the New York Herald left his name there in 1870. Round to the hall of 100 pillars, where skeletal stone windows and doors are set in long-vanished mud walls, originally also about 20M. Then to an antechamber in front of where the great King of Kings, Darius, Xerxes or Ataxerxes sat on the next level approached up further symmetrical shallow flights of stairs.

Persepolis gate

The walls of the stairs carry bas-reliefs of the 28 subject nations, each in distinctive caps and clothing and bearing gifts of their local specialty: metal, cloth, food or animals. The king sits enthroned in another hall of enormous height, this time with fluted columns. the rock tombs of three Kings are a short distance away, the facades in the overall shape of a cross. The cave entrance of each is carved to represent the palace; above that level, the 28 nations support the king (and kingdom) under the symbol of Ahura Mazda. Below the palace, the arm of the cross is blank – the nothingness of the pit. Cyrus is buried elsewhere. The whole impression is of the recruitment and organisation of massive resources to emphasise imperial grandeur.

Darius receiving his tributed

Persepolis was connected by fast pony express to all parts of the empire. Darius used the site for ceremonial gatherings, dividing his time with Susa, near Ctesiphon and Basra in Mesopotamia, and with Ecbatana, modern Hamdan. Each transfer is about 500km. In 330 BC, Alexander and his hoplites with their superior spears and shields had sliced through the 10,000 Immortals (bodyguard) and the many other troops to defeat the Sassanian Empire. In a drunken orgy, the treasury was looted and the palace burnt down. The ceiling fell in and the site became covered with earth, protecting the artifacts until they were excavated in the 1939’s.

The Sassanians had their origin with Ardashir in the third century AD. He defeated the Parthians after declaring an independent state based on a well defended hilltop palace & fort. Once he felt safe, he built a palace on the plain near permanent water near what is now Ferozeabad. There, the builders constructed the first dome – double skinned at that - on a square building for the very first time, using kiln dried bricks. The inside parabolic dome had a diameter of 20M and the outer dome started further out and rose at a shallower angle to join the inner dome towards a center aperture. Two of the three domes still stand. His son, Shapur the Great defeated the Roman Governor of Syria, Philip the Arab and defeated and captured the Roman Emperor Valerian as celebrated on rock carvings at Bishapur.

Shapur's Roman built city

Shapur and the Roman emperors

There Shapur built his own palace and city with an enormous dome of about 28M diameter, supported on a Greek Cross. The city was built by captured Roman soldiers, now slaves and included the only mosaics in the Sassanian tradition, now carted off to the Louvre. When the Arabs arrived in the 7^th C, they adapted signal high towers, such as Ardashir’s 35M example, as minarets for the muezzin to call for prayers.

Potted Persian History

We are only just getting to grips with the wealth of history in this crossroads of civilization. As much for our own use as to clarify some dynastic terms, the following is a primer in the stuff we are looking at.

Much of Persia is a highish plateau, separated to the southwest from the low lands of Mesopotamia (now Iraq) by the high Zagros Mountains. To the north the Alborz range guards the approaches to the Caspian. The ancient trading routes from central Asia and China enter Persia in the far northeast and travel along the northern edge of a great desert to what is now Tehran (previously Ra’ay). The merchandise then traveled down to Mesopotamia to markets at Baghdad or Damascus and Aleppo in what is now Syria. Afghanistan’s mountains separate the great desert in the east of Persia from the Indus valley except in the southeast where semi desert gives access to Pakistan. Historically, these routes were also the routes of invasion by the Mongols or Turks from central Asia or the Arabs from the south. Afghanistan and the Indus valley have, at various times been the route of invasion for Persians into India, of Indians into Persia and of Afghani kingdoms to dominate both sides.

Copy of Archaemenid carpet

The Achaemenian Dynasty (7thC – 330’sBC) really got going with Cyrus II who united the tribal leaders on the Persian plateau and invented the idea of empire with diverse cultures all paying tribute to a central authority.

An immortal guard

Capital from Persepolis

He was followed by Darius who installed many qanats and built a regional bureaucracy but lost a battle at Marathon in Greece in 490BC. Ten years later, his son, Xerxes, built a bridge of boats across the Hellespont to subdue recalcitrant Athens and Sparta with a massive army. He retreated with a bloody nose from Thermopylae, Salamis and Platea and set up the successful challenge from Alexander in 333BC. More when we get to Persepolis.

After Alexander died, Persia came under his general Selucius, whose dynasty was followed after some time by the Parthians. Both built in mud brick and there is little left to see, although the Parthians blocked Roman expansion to the East.

Sassanian brickwork & squinches

Sassaian Dome

The next great dynasty was the Sassanians, beginning with Ardashir (224 AD). Their great Kings expanded their own Empire to include the Eastern Mediterranean from Egypt to Turkey by 628 AD. The Sassanian and Roman Empires fought each other to an exhausted standstill after each overreached in other directions. The repeated arrival of the plague after 541 decimated urban and rural environments, destroying agriculture, the tax base and military recruitment. Nomadic groups were not as susceptible, so when the Arabs organised under the banner of Islam in the 7^th C, they overran the settlements of Mesopotamia, Syria, Turkey and Persia under the early Umayyad Caliphs of Damascus. The Persian capital of Ctesiphon near Basra was captured in 637, initiating the capture and Islamicisation of Persia.

The Sunni Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad had a strong power base in eastern Persia, from whom they learned the arts of governing a diverse empire that stretched from Tashkent to Cordoba. By the tenth century, three separate Caliphates had developed in Andalucía, Egypt and Bukhara, where the Saminid dynasty of Khorasan and the subsequent Ghaznavid and Seljuc dynasties built a wonderful education system. Sufism was often the preferred version of Islam in Eastern Persia. They produced many of the intellectual giants of the Islamic period. However, the Mongol invasion in the 13^th C destroyed many of the great cities and their intellectual treasures.

Prince's pleasure garden

New Friday Mosque Esfahan

The Safavid Empire, officially Shia, began the 16^th C. Their greatest ruler, Shah Abbas, created a wonderful capital at Isfahan, competing with the contemporary Mughal and Ottoman Dynasties at Delhi and Istanbul respectively. Driven onto the back foot by Afghan invaders, Nader Shah defended and then replaced the Safavids in 18^th C. He sought the recovery of the Peacock throne and the two largest diamonds in the world from Delhi and promptly sacked the city when there was a show of reluctance. The Koh-I-nur is now set in the crown of England, the Darya-i-nur is on display in Tehran but the Peacock throne was broken up by soldiers for booty.

The last Shah's feet

More recently, the Qajars weakened Persia over the 19^th C and were replaced in a coup. Reza Khan crowned himself Shah in 1921 but his son, Mohammed Reza Shah, was driven into exile in 1979. Since then Iran has been an Islamic Republic.