The first thing we went to see this morning was Urquahart
Castle. We arrived shortly after they
opened at around 9:40am but so did at least 2 maybe 3 coach parties...!! The process of getting out to see the Castle
itself was a little disjointed, as we had to walk through the sizeable gift
shop to get there... (!) We explored the
Castle ruins along with the coach parties, who seemed to be a mixture of
Japanese and American. It's not a
particularly exciting Castle, but I think it attracts lots of visitors because
its THE Castle on THE Loch Ness and everyone knows about the Loch Ness and the
stories about the monster living there....!
After leaving the chaos of Urquahart Castle, we left in the
direction of John O'Groats. We took the
scenic route and visited Corrimony Cairn which was build about a thousand years
ago. It is a chambered Cairn known as a
'passage tomb' which consisted of a high central chamber which was completely
roofed over, and a low passage communicating with the outside World. Originally, this Cairn would have been
surrounded by a ring of keystones, but these ones have since been buried as the
structure collapsed over time. By the
time we arrived here, it was raining so I was wearing ALL my waterproofs when
we walked over.
When we saw the
entrance, we both wanted to go inside, but we weren't sure if the passageway
would be too narrow. I tried first, and
although it was narrow in a couple of places, it was actually just fine to get
through and we could stand up in the middle.
This one had no roof, but that also meant that it was quite bright! I had not realised how crawling on the ground
would effect my hands – I know it seems obvious, but it's not what I was
thinking about when we decided to go to Orkney...and we would probably be doing
more of this crawling about over there!
I decided to look for some suitable gloves when we got to John O Groats,
possibly have a look for some tomorrow morning before we get the ferry.
Further north, we stopped off at Cairn Liath which was
really a Broch, one of Scotland's most impressive types of prehistoric
buildings. They were originally tall
stone round houses dating from around 2,300 to 1,900 years ago, found mainly in
north and west Scotland. Cairn Liath has
double-skinned dry stone walls which support each other. Mousa in Shetland is currently the tallest
surviving Broch, standing at over 13 metres in height, although it's probable
that not all Brochs were originally this high.
Cairn Liath here also has remains of some out buildings which aren’t commonly
seen at other sites in Scotland today. I
thought this one reminded me very much of Skara Brae, which we will visit in
the Orkneys.
Travelling even further north, we visited the Grey Cairns of
Camster, which were built more than 5,000 years ago when the land wasn't as
boggy as it is now, but it was covered in scrub. Now you can access then on nice wooden
walkways. The first one we went into was
“The Round Cairn”, which has a black metal gate across the entrance, “locked”
with a simple bolt, so it;s very easy to open and close. Burnt hyuman bones were found inside, while
parts of two skeletons sat in the passage, and in 1865 a Victorian
archaeologist recovered them. In the
centre of the Cairn were also found pottery, flint tools, animal bones and
evidence of burning. I went in, and the
passageway was a little larger than the one at Corrimony, and certainly easier
to get through with my rucksack on! It had
a ceiling of overlapping dry stones which was pretty impressive!
The second one we investigated was the “Long Cairn”,
consisting of two unconnected inner chambers in which human and animal bones
were found. The gates were apparently
temporary ones because the originals had been stolen (!) but they were very
easy to open and close as a stone was just being used to keep them shut. We presumed that this was best practice here,
especially as there were plenty of sheep around and I don't think anyone would
like to crawl into one of these things and end up in sheep poop....! The first chamber's passageway was fairly
short and the second chamber's passageway was much longer passageway, and again
we thought it a little narrow but it was fine once we got in there. The domes on these were obvious
reconstructions with modern material seen only from the inside, as it was all
stone work on the outside. The Round
Cairn was completely made with stone and looked very authentic indeed.
Both the Round and Long Cairns were reconstructed to give
visitors an idea of the original appearance as an example to what many other
unaltered Cairns would have looked like.
There is a debate as to what these structures really looked like as I
guess nobody can every really know, what with them dating to a period in which
writing and records were never created or collected. This is what gives prehistoric archaeology
the mystery – nobody knows and there is usually more than one interpretation.
Back in the car, we continued across this moor-like
landscape covered in peat-bog, and we decided that, as it was getting close to
5pm, we would ditch the cross country route and head for the scenic coastal
drive on the main roads as this would probably get us to our next B+B
sooner. We arrived at around 5:30pm and
it turned out that we were to spend the night in a separate building which I
think was sort of made into two rooms with en suites. I think they were in the process of doing it
up perhaps, but it was clean and warm and very comfortable. So we sorted out our bags and decided what to
do in the morning before we headed out for some food, and returned back to our
B+B for a well deserved rest. We
must have travelled around 200 miles today or thereabouts! We went to the “Seaview Hotel” which we think
was the only place in John O'Groats which did food – it was really nice simple
food to fill our bellies with before our journey tomorrow.
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