May 12 - At Sea somewhere north of Cape Wrath, Scotland

I’ve been AWOL for the last few days so I’ll try to catch up this afternoon.  Sometime after we left the Isle of Bute on May 8 my lower back issues got much, much worse.  On the 9th we stopped in Greenock, the port for Glasgow, and I took the tour I’d booked which sounded like it was mostly driving and riding.  We stopped for a look at Loch Lomond (maybe you know the song “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road” in which the singer will never meet his true love again on the “bonny, bonny shores of Loch Lomond”).  Anyway, it was a Saturday and there were lots of people on the shores enjoying a food market with vendors selling such traditional Scottish dishes like nachos, gyros, burgers, and satays.  I didn’t see a single one selling anything I thought sounded Scottish.  I got a little glimpse of one end of Loch Lomond.  There was a path to a promontory overlook, but no way was my back going to let me do that. I’ve taken one from online that is much better than my little glimpse.

The good photo of Loch Lomond

This is what I saw of the Loch

We moved onward to a scotch distillery for a tasting (I don’t even like scotch, but the tour sounded easy).  Just as we arrived at the distillery, which by the way is owned by Suntory, a Japanese company, the skies opened for a good old-fashioned downpour.  The bus couldn’t park near the entrance which was down a steep slope, so I stayed on the bus.  As it turns out I had a lovely time talking with, and learning a lot, about Scottish politics and the relationships among the countries which form the United Kingdom from Jamie and Jerry the tour guide and bus driver.  Let me tell you, it may be called a “United Kingdom” but there are apparently lots of undercurrents and fractures beneath the surface.  Reminds me of another country I know whose initials start with U and end with A.

When we returned to the ship I was really feeling very sore.  I had dinner with some friends and then skipped the show and turned in early for me. Sunday we arrived in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I’ve been there before and so I had booked what I thought would be another easy tour without a lot of walking.  I was supposed to visit Hillsborough Castle outside of the city.  It’s the royal residence when the monarch visits Belfast. When I woke up, I felt as though someone had cut off three or four inches from my hamstring in the back of my thigh and I just couldn’t face a tour.  I called the spa and managed to get an appointment for a hot stone massage; several friends had said that might help.

I hadn’t had a massage in many years because they’re just not my thing.  Well, the massage felt pretty good, but it did absolutely nothing to improve my back and leg pain.  It did cost me nearly $350, and the masseuse tried to sell me juniper cream, a gait analysis, acupuncture and advised me to come back in two days for another $350 massage.  I told her I’d think about it.  (I’ve thought about it and I won’t be going back.) I did go to play trivia and one of my teammates who used to be in a ski patrol gave me some Advil (I only had Tylenol which isn’t an anti-inflammatory).  By the end of trivia, the Advil had kicked in and I was feeling so much better.  I still had some twinges, but nowhere near as bad.

That brings me to yesterday the 11th.  We anchored in Oban, Scotland.  I had a tour booked called “Scottish Highlands and Glencoe.”  I decided to try it, but first I went ashore early to find some Advil of my own which I did in a local chemist shop (that’s a pharmacy here in the UK).  I had extra time so I wandered into a seafood restaurant for a Scottish lunch.  I chose wisely because it felt like I’d died and gone to food heaven!  They had local oysters on the half-shell and I ordered them followed by some traditional fish and chips.  If I’d known how big the oysters were I would have skipped the fish and chips.  These were mega-oysters and they were so good!.  The fish and chips were great too, but I couldn’t do them justice.

The waterfront in Oban

The Ee-Usk Restaurant in Oban

Look at these oysters!

and how about these fish and chips?

Oban, Scotland is a fishing and vacation town on the Firth of Lorn in the Argyll council area of Scotland.  Perched atop the hill above the town is one of the more interesting sights, McCaig’s Tower (AKA McCaig’s Folly).  John Stuart McCaig was a wealthy banker in the 19th century. He wanted to build a lasting memorial to his family while at the same time providing work for the stonemasons in the area in the winter months.  He also was in love with Roman architecture.  So he commissioned what was to be a large tower which would incorporate a museum and gallery inside.  He was his own architect and he spent the equivalent of about $1 million on it before his untimely death of a heart attack.  The only part completed is the outer shell of the tower which bears an uncanny resemblance to the walls of a Roman colosseum perched on the hill above a Scottish fishing village. It definitely is a lasting memorial to him, but not for the reasons he wanted it to be.

McCaig's Folly

After lunch I boarded my tour bus for the trip to the Highlands. Our drive took us inland to the western Scottish highlands.  The area is one with very dramatic mountains and lochs (lakes) which are very sparsely populated.  There are forested areas, but those are primarily planted for the timber industry.  For the most part the mountains are covered with sparse grass, not at all lush and green as in Ireland, lots of yellow gorse shrubs and many stones in the landscape.  Much of the terrain is actually peat bogs and not suitable for farming or even for grazing.  Therefore, while we saw some sheep, there really weren’t that many along the way.  What we did see were quite a few people walking along a highland trail.  The area is evidently a favorite place for people to go on hiking and walking trips.  In the distance we could see the last bit of snow on the northern slopes of the mountains.

A pretty church along a loch

These are a couple of the desolate highlands

That's mainly peat bog out there and not much will grow.

Glen Coe (Glen is a valley) is a valley carved by glaciers and the area is part of the Scottish National Heritage Trust.  It’s the home of Scottish mountaineering.  It’s also an area rich in Scottish history, famous for a massacre in 1692.  In the 17th century after the creation of the United Kingdom after Queen Elizabeth I’s death and the ascension to the throne of King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) and following James I’s death, the country went through a complicated series of revolutions and rebellions which our guide explained to us but I’m not going to recount here.  I’ll just say that for a while there wasn’t a monarch; instead Oliver Cromwell ruled.  Then a monarchy was restored but one king left the country and the upshot was that two people wound up on the throne with names familiar to my part of the world, William and Mary.  Anyway, when that pair wound up on the throne everyone was required to swear an oath of allegiance to them.  Up here in the western highlands the MacDonald clan supposedly didn’t take the oath on a timely basis.  As the story goes, orders came from on high that every MacDonald was to be exterminated for that offense. Members of the Campbell clan were charged with that duty.  In the highlands when a stranger or traveler came through the custom was to offer them hospitality – lodging and food – and no harm was to be done to them. The story goes that the Campbells arrived and after a few days of the MacDonalds feeding and housing them, in the early morning of February 13, 1692 the evil Campbells massacred 38 men from the clan MacDonald and raped and murdered some of the women.  A few managed to escape across a mountain pass where they were then trapped for the rest of the winter by snows and avalanches.  The upshot is that in this part of Scotland there are still some places where signs are posted saying no Campbells will be welcome or served.

We stopped briefly at the Glen Coe visitor center where there are three films shown about the place.  Unfortunately we didn’t have time to see them.  (I should take this opportunity to say that the Seabourn Shore Excursion  department did a pretty poor job of planning and timing this particular excursion. Not enough time was allocated for what we were supposed to see and do.)  The visitor center had a nice viewing place of the mountains around the glen and the area around the building itself was covered with beautiful bluebell flowers.

I'm sorry I didn't get a better picture of the bluebells. Take my word for it they were lovely.

Our ride back to Oban took us past another ruined castle with a story stemming from a little later.  Charles Stuart (Bonny Prince Charlie) had a claim to the throne and lost his bid at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 which ended any claims to the throne of the Scottish House of Stuart.  After the defeat a woman named Flora MacDonald helped to disguise the Prince as a maid and helped him to flee the country.  Flora was caught and arrested and imprisoned for a while in the ruined castle we passed. She was supposedly so charming that she was taken to London and freed. Eventually she married and emigrated to North Carolina. My tour got back very late and we were on the last tender back to the ship.

This isn't a ruined castle; it's actually one that has been bought, renovated and is lived in.  It's called the"Stalker Tower."

That brings me to today.  We were supposed to be in Ullapool, Scotland.  Unfortunately it is a tender port again and the seas and wind were going to prevent us from doing that so we’re having a sea day. Mind you that’s fine with me, but I think some of my shipmates weren’t happy.  The Cruise Director had to quickly come up with things to entertain us so there were lots of games.  My trivia team won (we’ve won three sets of cumulative games now and are getting dirty looks from other teams).  I played Name that Tune with the same people and we won again.  Out of 17 songs I only knew one so I’m really guilty of stolen glory.  As we were playing the Captain came on the PA to tell us we were sailing past the northernmost point of the British Island, a place called John O’Groats.  My English teammate Mark went out and took a photo which he sent me.  Evidently a popular fund-raising thing in the UK is to walk from John O’Groats at the tippy top in the northeast to Lands’ End down at the very furthest southwestern point in Cornwall.  He told me people can take 9 weeks to do it.

That's John O'Groats. If you zoom you can see the furthest north lighthouse.

So now I’m caught up.  If you’ve read all this you know more about Scottish history than you probably want or need to know. I write this stuff down because it helps me to think about what I’ve seen and done.  And who knows, one day a trivia question might be what is the northernmost point of Britain and maybe I’ll remember it, or maybe not.

May 8 - Rothesay, Isle of Bute, Scotland

On a beautiful but chilly day we anchored off the town of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute.  This place is in the Firth of Clyde with “firth” being akin to a fjord. Hence all around us I could see other land, some of it other small islands and some parts of the Scottish mainland.  No one knows for certain what the origin of the name “Bute” is, but some linguists think that perhaps it originated with an old Irish word for fire and referred to signal or beacon fires that would be lit when raiders were approaching to warn the surrounding lands.

I was originally supposed to take a tour to a house and its gardens but I changed my mind.  I’m not sure what’s causing it, but I’ve been having quite a bit of trouble with my back and I’m starting to think it has something to do with the bed I’m sleeping on.  If it continues I’ll have to get it checked out when I get home. Anyway, I decided instead to take the tender ashore and have a little walkabout in the town of Rothesay and see if I could find a bookstore.

After a lunch of a salad and a slice of pizza (I’m trying to be very good) I tendered in and walked around the few streets of this little town.  Along the waterfront there were some cute looking Victorian style houses but the more commercial area looked a little rundown.  Along the waterfront I passed “Wee Zoe’s Ice Cream Shop.”  I didn’t stop for any ice cream because it was honestly pretty chilly.  I had on my down jacket and was comfortable.

I asked a local if there was a bookshop anywhere nearby and she gave me directions which I thought I understood.  The Scottish accent is very hard to understand sometimes.  I walked a few blocks and there it was - Print Point, an Independent Bookshop.  Katie, you would have loved this place.  It had lots of books and smelled of print and paper, a true old-fashioned bookshop not a Barnes and Noble.  I was on a mission to find a copy of an Anne Cleeves book.  I mentioned at the beginning of this trip that she’s coming on as a guest speaker and I want to have a book of hers to get her to sign it.   I’m in love with her characters.  I found one, actually her latest, so I was a happy camper. I looked around a little more and then headed back to the tender dock.

I was in line waiting for the tender with people who had been on the tour I was supposed to take.  As always seems to be the case I heard that it was the best tour ever with the most beautiful gardens ever.  Oh well, I missed it, but I accomplished my mission, gave my aching back a little break, and I can after all, come back again sometime.  As Scarlet said,  "Tomorrow is another day.”

I had dinner with a new friend from Vancouver and went to the excellent magician’s show.  His name is Kristian Grey and I don’t know how he does what he does.  Maybe it really is magic.  It was a lovely day.

May 7 - Isle of Man

Today we anchored off the town of Douglas on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.  I was here three years ago and I remembered a lovely island with very friendly people.  The place hasn’t changed.

I’m going to repeat some of the history and facts about this place because I find it very interesting.  Man has been inhabited for more than 8500 years.  At various times in its long history the island has been under Gaelic, Norse and Scots rule.  At present it has a unique status in its relationship with Great Britain.  It is a Crown Dependency with King Charles III being the titular head of the island, but Man has an independent parliament, the Tynwald.  The island has no capital gains, wealth, inheritance or stamp taxes and a highest income tax rate of 20% so it is a tax haven.  Its parliament the Tynwald is considered to be the second oldest legislature in the world after the Icelandic Althing and it is actually the oldest continuous parliament because the Althing was disbanded for a period of time. It also happens to be the first national legislature in the world to give women the vote in 1881 although it excluded married women from that right. (How weird is that?)

Anyway, they speak a variety of Gaelic language here in addition to English of course. The Manx language was nearly lost but several years ago it became compulsory to teach it in primary school and now all signs on the roads are in both Manx and English.  The island was created after the last Ice Age and as it sits in the midst of the sea it has no snakes (hooray), no foxes, wolves or deer. It has a breed of sheep found no where else called Loaghtan sheep which have brown coats and four horns (they may have as many as six) and are good for both their wool and their meat, unlike other sheep which are generally bred for one or the other. It does have one very strange animal though.  There are wallabies (relatives of kangaroos) on the island! There is a nature reserve on the northern end of Man and a couple of wallabies escaped and they have been busy procreating.  Who knows, this may become the Kangaroo Island of the northern hemisphere.

The Isle of Man is approximately 222 square miles in area with a population of about 85,000 and a per capita income of more than $89,000.  That’s because so many shell companies and wealthy people have declared residency there because of its tax advantages. Near the end of May Man has a very big and famous motorcycle race which brings in thousands of biking enthusiasts and which has been operating for nearly 120 years.

Enough about the history of the place.  I took a tour today which brought me to the southwestern corner of the island to the village of Cregneash, a living history museum run by the Manx National Heritage Society.  This is a sort of Manxian Colonial Williamsburg.  There are reenactors in the houses costumed as they would have been hundreds of years ago, loaghtan sheep are raised there and the farms around are operated as they would have been.  Some of the cottages are privately owned but the residents are required to maintain the same outward standards as those of the National Heritage buildings.

These are some scenes along the road to Cregneash

The buildings are made of stone with fences that are also stone, much of which looked like flint to me.  The roofs are mainly thatched.  In one building I met the village blacksmith who was busy creating some farm implements for his neighbors.  He was a man from Colorado!   I know blacksmiths are in great demand because that’s a dying craft and this man had an opportunity to come to Man and took it.  At another cottage I met a fiddler who played me some tunes on his fiddle.  Sitting by the window in his cottage was an old Singer sewing machine and I asked him if he was also a tailor.  He said he wasn’t but he told me about the machine.  Evidently more than 100 years ago a ship carrying among other things a load of singer sewing machines ran aground off the tip of the island.  The machine he had sitting there had been salvaged.  It was one that didn’t even have pedals. To operate it there is a hand crank on one side.  

The village of Cregneash

The little church

My excellent walking companion Alan

Sorry it's blurry, but this is the village blacksmith

Some loagthan sheep and lambs

The village fiddler

That's the salvaged sewing machine by the window.  I kept thinking of the Fiddler on the Roof in that cottage.

After we took a leisurely stroll through the village we headed to the most southwestern tip of the island where we could see a small island called Calf Island divided from Man by a very rough area of seas.  The terrain around us reminded me a lot of some of the northern Scottish hills which are essentially treeless except these hills seemed a little greener.  I’ll see if I’m right in a few days when we get to Scotland.  Which reminds me, I should mention that the weather in Man is actually pretty temperate because it is impacted by the Gulf Stream.  While it gets cold, they don’t get a great deal of snow except in the highest elevations.

The end of the Isle of Man

It looks pretty wild down there

After our stop at the end we headed back across the island to Douglas through little villages.  We passed the ruins of a monastery which was dissolved by Henry VIII after his break with the Catholic Church.  The town of Douglas has a lot of hotels and vacation apartments along the waterfront promenade to accommodate vacation travelers and the many visitors who come for the motorcycle race.

It was pretty late when we got back to the tender dock so I didn’t walk around.  I must say something about the lovely people who were my guide and driver though.  Tove was our guide and she was an absolutely delightful person. She answered the many questions we had (I’m almost embarrassed to say most were from me because I want to know everything about everything – she probably was thinking “not another one” but she didn’t seem annoyed).  Alan was our bus driver and when we stopped at Cregneash, the walk to the village was along a fairly steep and uneven path with some rabbit holes along the way.  Because of my almost irrational fear of falling and breaking something and because I don’t want to hold other people up, I was going to stay in the bus. Alan the driver insisted that I go and he gave me his arm and we walked along a slightly different path.  He is a native of the island and was a delightful ambassador for his home.  I remember that the people I met during my last visit were just as nice and friendly.  It was an all together lovely day. I wouldn't hesitate to come back here again if my travels bring me this way.

In the evening I dined with Lisa and Charles, a very nice Australian couple with whom I've sailed several times.  Lisa is one of my dancing partners and a trivia teammate.  We have a lot of fun together.  Her husband Charles is quieter but has a wicked sense of humor. We were joined by Caroline, the Entertainment Manager.  It was a nice evening and all in all a great day.  So Nite-nite for now.

Today we're anchored off Fishguard, Wales, a place I visited about three years ago.  It's pretty chilly and kind of gray out so I decided it was a good day to have a sea day.  I had catching up to do on e-mails and some business things so this worked out well.  I did write about the nice history of events in Fishguard when I last visited and to remind myself and anyone else reading this, I've copied some of what I wrote then.  This is the story of the "Last Invasion of Britain." 

In 1797 the French and British were fighting and Napoleon dispatched warships carrying about 1400 troops to land and capture Bristol. The wind didn’t cooperate with the French fleet and they wound up sailing into Fishguard Bay, our port today. The local fort fired its one and only cannon and cannonball as an alarm to the local townsfolk.  The French thought they were meeting stiff resistance so they withdrew and instead landed at a nearby beach in the village  of LLanwnda (good Welsh name).  The French soldiers were a ragtag bunch of mainly recently released jailbirds (Napoleon had his best troops fighting on the continent).  So, when the French came ashore and began plundering the surrounding town and houses they found lots of food and wine and proceeded to get very drunk. A local woman named Jemima Nicholas, who was a cobbler, came down to see what the furor was about dressed in a red cape and a black top hat carrying a pitchfork. She looked so fearsome to some of the drunken French soldiers that she managed to round up 12 of them and march them off to be locked up in the church in Fishguard.  Then she sent word out to the surrounding farms that the women should dress in their red cloaks and black hats, which happened to be everybody’s Sunday best clothing, and stand on the hills above the beaches.  From the French ships the women looked like British soldiers, or at least their drunken state led them to believe that, so after two days the French surrendered.  In the surrender agreement signed in the Royal Oak Pub in Fishguard, the French commander referred to the "several thousand British troops of the line" coming to meet them in battle.  And so ended the last invasion of Britain in February, 1797.

About 15 years before the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Fishguard the townspeople decided to do something to commemorate the event.  They decided to make a tapestry like the Bayeux Tapestry recounting William the Conqueror’s invasion.  Over the next 13 years with the help of an artist who was from the area originally they designed and then stitched a 100-foot tapestry telling the story.  Seventy-three women stitched 41 panels using 154 different colors of threads depicting the events of the invasion.  The pieces were carefully assembled and are on display in the town hall in Fishguard.

Sorry there's nothing new, but I'm taking the lazy road tonight.  Dinner with the captain again tonight.

May 5 - Waterford, Ireland

We  docked in Cobh, Ireland this morning and since I’d booked a tour I had to get up very early.  Seabourn offered a tour to visit the Waterford crystal factory and since I love their crystal I thought I should go and see the Mother Ship. No surprises here – Waterford is located in the town of Waterford in the county of Waterford, about an hour and a half bus ride away.

The Irish countryside is quite pretty, lush and green.  It is, after all, called the Emerald Isle. We passed through lots of meadows with very happy-looking cows, a few sheep and lots of barley fields.  Barley is used for all kinds of things the Irish are pretty famous for – feed for their cows to make great Irish butter and grain to brew Irish whiskey and beer.

We arrived in the town of Waterford which lies along the Suir River. The Suir eventually flows into the Irish Sea and sometime early in this century the remains of a large Viking settlement were found just upriver from Waterford so a replica longboat has been placed near the riverfront.

The Viking longboat replica

The tour of the Waterford factory was interesting but also a little disappointing.  I can’t recall all of the history of the company except for a couple of basics.  It was founded in 1783 by somebody named George Penrose.  In the mid-19th century it closed.  Since then there have been various attempts to reopen the business.  After going through a series of private equity companies, in May 2015 Waterford, which by then had merged with Wedgewood, Royal Doulton and some other brands, was acquired by Fiskars Corporation, a Finnish home products corporation.  The only thing I’ve ever heard of Fiskars making are cutting shears for sewing.  

Over the course of all the reorganizations and refinancing, most of the crystal production, including all the stemware, is made in places like Slovenia, Poland and Hungary.  The factory we went to makes things like big presentation pieces such as trophies for sporting tournaments and, most famously, the ball that drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

It was interesting to see the artisans at work blowing the glass, marking it with markers to indicate where the patterns should be carved and etched. I learned from the guide I spoke with that the stemware pattern I have has been retired and is considered a heritage pattern which can bring pretty big prices if sold (Bear that in mind Katie, if the time ever comes!).  Naturally at the conclusion of the tour we ended in a showroom with some beautiful things.  I’m not in the market for anything so I didn’t have to worry about temptation.  It was very interesting seeing some of the exquisite one-of-a-kind things like a grandfather clock or cinderella’s coach or musical instruments.  I have a greater appreciation for the level of detail and care that goes into making things like those.

This and the next are wooden molds made first so when the molten glass is made it can be shaped in them

This man is making a wooden mold for some piece

The glass blower blows his piece and then the molten glass will be placed into a mold.  While still very hot the end will be snipped off.

This man marks the pattern

A carver at work

I just have to include some of these photos of the finished works of art. They are so beautiful and took so much work.

This EDvard Much's "The Scream" in crystal

This Van Gogh's "Starry Nights"

Finally, a nativity scene infront of a representation of the Twin Towers on 9/11

After our visit we had lunch in a hotel in Waterford.  It was tasty but way too much food.  I even tried a local beer (I never drink beer but it seemed like the thing to do). We drove back to Cobh via a different route and passed a pretty famous castle, Lismore, which in fact was the name of the first Waterford pattern and is still produced today.  The castle is not open to the public and it was while she was telling us about Lismore that I learned what I thought was some interesting stuff about Irish history, both old and contemporary.

While I didn’t learn a great deal about it when I was in school, I knew like most of us that Ireland belonged to England for centuries and was not treated well by the latter. Especially in the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries there was lots of fighting and upheaval for Irish independence in part because much of the land was owned by absentee English landlords (mainly from the British aristocracy). In 1921 a delegation of Irish Republicans negotiated in England with the British and in December, 1921 an Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed.  One of the Irish delegates was Michael Collins, a former member of various Irish revolutionary groups.  The treaty gave Ireland its independence but required the Irish to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown.  It also allowed English landowners to retain their holdings in Ireland.  So for example, the Duke of Devonshire, an English peer, owns Lismore Castle and several thousand acres of land around it.  Upon the signing of the treaty he ceded a thousand acres to Ireland, but it turned out to be land that wasn’t suitable for farming or much of anything else.  Michael Collins, about whom there was an academy award film made, was subsequently killed by some of his anti-treaty Irish brethren who weren’t happy with the deal.

To put it simply, think of what it would have been like if after our American Revolution we would have had to swear allegiance to King George III and if some of his court favorites to whom he’d given large tracts of land in the colonies had been allowed to keep those holdings.  Would the Revolutionaries have stood for that?  I think our boys Ben Franklin, John Adams and John Jay did a much better job looking out for us.  What the guide told me may have been an oversimplification, but it does sound like the Irish got worked over.

It was an interesting day from lots of perspectives and I was glad I took the tour despite the early morning departure.  Any time I can learn more history I’m happy.

And by the way, we ended our cumulative trivia in the late afternoon and we blew everyone away!  I got another Seabourn ball cap to give away!