[by Chris Haldane in Sydney]
A recent trip to ‘the land of my fathers’ with two great sketching friends delivered one delightful experience after another! We began our circuit of Scotland in Edinburgh, a sketcher’s delight with all its history and distinctive architecture, especially Edinburgh Castle. Whoever looked at that huge volcanic rock that it sits on, and thought what a great place it would be to build a fortress, was obviously not one of the poor labourers! Standing high above the city, it demands attention from every direction. I was sketching under my umbrella that day, with the rain reflected in the dribbles and runs!
Heading north from Edinburgh on a rainy morning (surprise, surprise!) we crossed the Firth of Forth Bridge …
to nearby coastal villages like Dysart, beautiful even in the pouring rain with its walled harbour and fishing boats trapped on the mud at low tide.
Skye has a magic of its own. All around is evidence of the disruption of the landscape by major geological events like glaciation and landslides. I’ll just mention one favourite spot: Fairy Glen, an other-worldly landscape of grass-covered conical hills, that looks like it’s come right out of The Lord of the Rings. We climbed up to the highest point, a giant rock called Castle Ewen, no doubt because it looks like a ruin. At its base, despite a sign by the locals asking tourists not to stack stones (“the fairies don’t like it”), tourists (or Faeries, if you prefer to believe that!) have created stone rings, which certainly add to the magical atmosphere of the glen. The only thing that spoils it is the horde of tourists and minibuses creating parking problems!
Looking back now, it was the colours of Scotland that touched me so, especially the heather-covered hillsides, and the autumn palette. As one of their songs says, “The colours of Skye leave you young inside”!