The Van Lieres in York

Here is Kate’s first (and possibly last?) appearance on this blog, which Frans has been keeping up virtually solo since January because somehow I never managed to find time during the semester to hold up my end of it. Well, better late than never. We spent the first ten days of July exploring Scotland, which proved to be a glorious coda to a great semester in Yorkshire. Being compelled to leave the Calvin house in York by July 1(when the summer tenants moved in) turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Kees and Thomas were happy, of course, to be "forced" to miss the last two weeks of school (which does not end in York until 16 July), and Frans and I, though frustrated at first that we had to cut short our planned research time, are now grateful that we had this excuse to make a trip that we would probably never have made otherwise. We were even spared the worst of the two demons that our York friends kept warning us about in Scotland: endless rain and midges (mosquitoes). We did see some rain every day, but mostly it was short-lived, and we had far more sun than cloud. As for the midges, they hit us briefly a few times (clustering by the tent door especially on wet mornings), but our two bottles of "jungle formula" repellent kept most of them away. We started calling poor Thomas our "midge magnet" because took the brunt of them, largely sparing those of us with less tender skin. His back looked like a chicken-pox case at one point, but we gladly gave him all the back-scratches he requested because we felt so guilty about his (unintended) self-sacrifice, and he did not suffer for too long.

We began our 9-night camping trip in Malham in the Yorkshire Dales, where we had gone walking one day in April and stumbled on a tentsite that was so beautiful that we decided we must return with a tent. This spot, in a lush green river valley at the base of a gorgeous rock face (Gordale Scar), was even more beautiful than most of the campsites we found in Scotland. The walking was beautiful too; in a mere one-hour walk after dinner we climbed through a waterfall, walked along high a green ridge with gorgeous limestone rock formations and great views of the Dales, and came back down to our tent through fields dotted with sheep, rabbits and stone walls. One of the things I will most miss back in America is this seamless blending of wild and domestic scenery: the stone walls and sheep mesh so naturally with the rocks and waterfalls that you can easily forget how much of the scenery is man-made. Scotland, of course, was more rugged, but even there when we climbed steep highland peaks we would often be surprised to turn a corner and find sheep or highland cattle looking quizzically at us.

One of the great things about camping in Scotland is that they have much freer laws of public access, allowing you to camp virtually anywhere that is not explicitly posted "no camping." It took us two days to figure this out, so we wasted some money on our first two nights camping amidst caravans in rather boring commercial campgrounds, but then we abandoned this model for the much more enticing one of "wild camping," simply pitching the tent in the grass either on public parkland or, in one case, on a huge farm property that we presumed (from all the abandoned sheds) was a former pig farm.

Our northernmost destination was the Isle of Skye, off Scotland’s west coast. On the way there we passed through Glencoe (where the beautiful highland scenery began, and where we did our first mountain hike), Fort William, and Loch Ness (deemed a must-see by Kees and Thomas, and certainly scenic but somewhat overrun with tour buses and gift shops).

Much wilder and more alluring than Loch Ness was nearby Glen Affric, just off the main tourist track, where an eight-mile dead-end road leaves you in a gorgeous glen (Loch Affric and the surrounding valley, full of ferns, birches, heather, and other low vegetation) where we hiked, swam, watched birds, set up our tent in virtual solitude, and had our first campfire to celebrate the Fourth of July. From there we drove to Skye, which proved the highlight of the whole trip. We had reserved two nights in a hostel (the Skyewalker Hostel in Portnalong) in case we needed to dry out, bathe, and do laundry. As it turned out the weather was warm and dry, so we did not really need the indoor respite all that badly, and the hostel had no laundry facilities, but it was still an excellent to stay, shower, recharge batteries, and meet interesting people, so we did not regret it. Although Skye, once accessible only by ferries, has had a bridge to the mainland since 1994, it is still surprisingly unspoiled. From the natives’ point of view, we learned, it is overrun by foreigners (a category which includes the English and even our Glaswegian hostel owners), but virtually all of these foreigners are hikers and nature-lovers, so the landscape has not been spoiled at all, and while it may be hard to find authentic Gaelic culture on Skye, it is still a rural, friendly, and incomparable beatiful place.(It is also the most enjoyable place I haver ever driven a car, despite the narrow, winding roads that require you to pull over frequently for incoming cars.) The first night we were almost the only hostel guests and had the large lounge, kitchen, spacious backyard and resident cat almost to ourselves. On the second night it filled up, and we met fellow hikers from Scotland, England France, Korea, Sweden, and even Chester County, Pennsylvania (my birthplace). Some of them knew Skye quite well and gave us good advise on where to hike, which together with the Ordinance Survey maps that Frans had bought in York helped us to choose two beautiful mountain hikes.

Both hikes were reasonably arduous for the boys, and in the process we learned some valuable lessons about how to motivate unwilling hikers. Frans had planned one climb of about 5 km that would take us halfway up some of the steepest and most beautiful peaks in the Cuillin Hills. Less than 1/3 of the way up Kees and especially Thomas got disheartened and protested that the climb was impossible. I really did not think we could persuade them otherwise, and since we had neither the will nor the right equipment to force them up and gunpoint, I volunteered to wait with them on the hillside for two hours (or so) while Frans finished the climb alone. I meant this as a serious proposal, but it turned out to be an unintentionally brilliant feat of psychological manipulation, because the boys decided they did not want to be left out and determined that they would finish the climb after all. From that point the tables were turned, and once they had taken ownership of the hike for themselves they actually led the way with surprising energy. (Lunch and many granola bars also helped a great deal.) By the time we descended I was the one lagging behind with sore calf muscles, while Kees and Thomas pretended they had never been tired.

Two days later we had a very similar experience on a second climb, exacerbated by rainstorms, wind and cold. By the time we finished, Kees and Thomas were wearing our fleece jackets over their own, as well as the winter hats and gloves that I had packed "just in case." The lowest moments of that hike were not pleasant, but by the time we finished both boys were impressed with themselves for having overcome their initial pessimism and turned what had seemed like a bad day into a good one. (Again, material factors helped here, too; if the sun had not come out and dried us all up, I’m sure no amount of positive thinking would have saved this day.)

After this surprisingly happy outcome we decided to reward the boys for their persistence by driving down the coast to Elgol, a fishing village where they operate wildlife-watching boat trips into one of the wildest lochs on Skye. We were hoping to see seals, dolphins, and perhaps even puffins. But we got there to find that the last sail of the day had been called off due to rough weather. Thomas by that point had become so eager to see seals that we could not bear to disappoint him, so on the advice of the friendly woman in Elgol we drove back to the mainland (a day earlier than intended) to take a 6:30 p.m. harbor cruise from the port of Plockton, making a rushed grocery stop on the way so that we could eat sandwiches on board as dinner. This whole adventure proved really serendipitious, but not only did we enjoy the cruise in Loch Carron (as much for the friendliness of the captain and crew as for the few seals that we saw), but Plockton, which we had not planned to visit, was a surprisingly unspoiled 18th-century fishing village that was well worth seeing with or without seals and dolphins. Sadly there isn’t much commercial fishing left (Colin the captain told us wistfully how in the 1990s the British government had paid fishermen to destroy their beautiful wooden fishing boats to ensure that they would not continue clandestine fishing), but Plockton still felt more like an old-time fishing village than a tourist trap. That part of the coast also seems to have a good number of rich English summer residents who have bought cottages as vacation homes.

We were lucky enough to meet one of these on the boat, who kindly offered to show us a good place to camp that night. We followed her car over cattle grates and down dirt roads to the most beautiful and secluded spot we have ever camped on in any country: a grassy spot on the shore of a quiet loch (actually a sea arm) where birch trees hid us from the nearest dirt road on one side and steep rocks led down to the water on another. There was even a small fire pit with live embers left by some recent picnickers that we were able to revive into another respectable campfire.

It was hard to leave that place the next morning, but by then we had just two days left, so we drove down to the Scottish border region (south of Edinburgh) for our last night, as we wanted to explore the ancestral home of the Elliots (my father’s family). This country is much gentler than the highlands; from the landscape it could even be western Pennsylvania or Ohio. The most striking thing about it is its emptiness. The land is dotted with abandoned houses, the crumbling bridges and enormous viaducts of a railway line that was abandoned in the 1960s, and farms that seem either under-inhabited or altogether abandoned. This was where we camped on the vast empty tract that we think was a former pig farm, in amongst empty animal sheds, emtpy houses, and other ruined buildings or foundations of buildings that we had trouble identifying. From there we traipsed through the woods looking for Stobs Castle, where some very distantly related Elliots lived long ago, to find that it has been replaced by a pretentious 19th-century country house, and then drove south to Hermitage Castle,

a starkly impressive border fortress that was inhabited by Elliots and other border clans long ago and is now a Scottish Heritage site. That was the last stop on our Scottish tour, as a few hours later we crossed the border and returned to York to pick up the rest of our luggage and leave Yorkshire for the last time. Since then we have been visiting friends and relatives in the south, and this Thursday we will fly to the Netherlands for ten days for a Van Liere family reunion, before returning to England for just three days and then flying home at the end of July. That may all sound exhausting, but we have been blessed with wonderful hospitality from old friends at every step of the way, which has more than compensated for the inevitable frustration of living out of duffel bags. We feel incredibly grateful to all of them for helping us make the most of this rare opportunity to travel and explore so much of the British Isles.