The Highlands and Inverness
As we left Loch Tay we traveled north and we really started to understand why they call this area the “Highlands”. It is much more mountainous and you can start to see the tree line identifying the upper limit where trees will grow. Due to a variety of factors this line is at a much lower elevation than we see in Canada.
As we passed through a very wide valley Roy pointed out the Ruthven Barracks, located near Kingussie. These infantry barracks were erected in 1719 after the Jacobite uprising of 1715. Prince Charles Edward Stuart's (Bonnie Prince Charles) army burnt them in 1746.
One of the dogs is blind so he works the sheep by their smell and listening to his master’s commands.
As about a dozen boarder collies ran around 12-15 sheep, Neil gave commands to get most of the dogs to lie down and do nothing while one or two dogs worked the sheep, moving left then right then left again, based on their master’s command.
At the annual Calgary Stampede one of our kids favourite exhibits was the Sheep Penning competition. There the shepherd is working against a stopwatch to manipulate 3-4 sheep through a defined course and then finally coax them into a 10 ft square pen. Although this was not a timed exhibition, Neil and his dogs were working with a lot more sheep, in an open field.
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Shortly after the Ruthven Barracks we turned off the main road for a visit to the Leault Family farm.
http://www.leaultworkingsheepdogs.co.uk Here we got a live demonstration of sheep dogs at work. The shephard, Neil (seen in the far left of the photo) directed his dogs with several different whistles and only a few commands. One of the most impressive displays was when he sent several dogs out into the field and had each one lay down as a pylons with about 15m. between each. He then had another dog weave the sheep through the dogs like a slalom course.
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Neil then invited people to come up as he sheared one of the sheep that was looking particularly woolly. Jeff took the opportunity to help shear his first sheep. Once the shearing for that sheep was finished he took the "fleece" and rolled it up like a bedroll and put a loose tie on it to keep it from unravelling.
After this Neil took the opportunity to enlighten us on the plight of the sheep farmer in Scotland and how the National Trust for Scotland is trying to save the heritage and look of Scotland (in his case the Highlands) by paying the sheep farmers like himself not to farm. One example was that there used to be 60,000 sheep in the Highlands and today there are only 5,000. He and one other fellow are the only ones left. He also noted that the price for a fleece used to be 5 pound when his Dad was doing it but a few years ago it got as low as 20 pence. It has since risen to as high as 3 pound and now he’s getting just over 2 pounds per fleece. He didn’t however draw a correlation between the drop in the price for a fleece, the reduction in the number of sheep farms and the reduction in demand for wool as more synthetic alternatives become more popular.
After this Neil took the opportunity to enlighten us on the plight of the sheep farmer in Scotland and how the National Trust for Scotland is trying to save the heritage and look of Scotland (in his case the Highlands) by paying the sheep farmers like himself not to farm. One example was that there used to be 60,000 sheep in the Highlands and today there are only 5,000. He and one other fellow are the only ones left. He also noted that the price for a fleece used to be 5 pound when his Dad was doing it but a few years ago it got as low as 20 pence. It has since risen to as high as 3 pound and now he’s getting just over 2 pounds per fleece. He didn’t however draw a correlation between the drop in the price for a fleece, the reduction in the number of sheep farms and the reduction in demand for wool as more synthetic alternatives become more popular.
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Inverness really is a lovely city with the Ness River flowing through it. The older buildings blended in well with plenty of young people enjoying a vibrant nightlife.
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The Battle of Culloden
We started our day with a vist to the site of a historic battle in the evolution of Scotland. On the upland plain of Drummossie Moor, just 5 files to the east of Inverness the Battle of Culloden was fought on April 16, 1746 and lasted less than an hour.
To appreciate the significance of this battle you have to understand some of the history that preceded it, but rather than bore you with a bunch of text on this page, I'll let you select the button below if you're interested. After the Jacobites came within 125 miles of London in 1745, they returned to Scotland to wait out the winter. By that time England had called troops home from abroad and came to Scotland to settle the issue once and for all. As I've noted in the "Putting Culloden in Perspective" the 5,500 Jacobites were tired and possibly ill-prepared and disorganized (despite being on their 'home turf') as they marched out in the rain onto a battlefield against 7,500 well rested Government soldiers. A number of factors, including the soggy wet conditions of the Moor, the terrain and the constant bombardment from the Government cannons and riflemen, led to the battle lasting less than an hour. With 1,250 Jacobites being killed, the same number injured and nearly 400 being taken prisoner, the rest, including Prince Charles fled. In contrast, the Government troops lost 50 men with another 300 injured.
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There are no individual graves but a farmer in the 1800’s built a memorial in memory of the men who had fallen on that day. (Click on the picture to zoom in and read the plaque)
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As you approach the Jacobite line you encounter burial mounds with tombstones inscribed with the names of the clans who’s men died that day.
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A number of factors, including the soggy wet conditions of the Moor, the terrain and the constant bombardment from the Government cannons and riflemen, led to the battle lasting less than an hour. With 1,250 Jacobites being killed, the same number injured and nearly 400 being taken prisoner, the rest, including Prince Charles fled. In contrast, the Government troops lost 50 men with another 300 injured.
To make an example of this resistance to the Government, the following weeks and months were spent rounding up Jacobites and 'administering justice'. In many cases it was not easy to tell a Jacobite from a Scot wearing a kilt, so the Government forces treated them equally harshly. So it became dangerous to wear a kilt for fear of being labelled as a Jacobite. Eventually the Government forbid the wearing of kilts and the speaking of the Gaelic language.
With the information Roy provided us before we got to Culloden and the wonderful interpretive center and GPS triggered audio guides this was indeed one of the highlights of the tour.
To make an example of this resistance to the Government, the following weeks and months were spent rounding up Jacobites and 'administering justice'. In many cases it was not easy to tell a Jacobite from a Scot wearing a kilt, so the Government forces treated them equally harshly. So it became dangerous to wear a kilt for fear of being labelled as a Jacobite. Eventually the Government forbid the wearing of kilts and the speaking of the Gaelic language.
With the information Roy provided us before we got to Culloden and the wonderful interpretive center and GPS triggered audio guides this was indeed one of the highlights of the tour.
Cawdor Castle
On a lighter note, we left Culloden and visited Cawdor Castle. This castle is reputed to have been built in the late 1300’s with just the center block at first. It’s difficult to see in the picture, but if you look at the left window just above the wall on the center tower you can see a larger arched opening that has been bricked in to leave just the space for the window.
In that era you put the front entrance on the second level with some sort of removable steps so that you could more easily defend yourself. Over the years more buildings were built and a draw-bridge installed. |
Clava Cairns - a prehistoric cemetery
On our way back into Inverness we stopped at Clava Cairns, which date back 3-4,000 years ago. Roy has spent a good part of his education in this field of study and is currently working on his PhD, and it shows. He did an excellent job of getting us to look at and understand these features from a perspective of 2,000 BC rather than our current 21st century AD. I’ve used the term “prehistoric” many times but I’m not sure I ever really understood what it meant. To better understand “prehistoric” Roy took us through the periods where people are simply nomadic as they move from place to place in search of food. Then they evolve to the point were they can settle down in one place and start to develop permanent structures. However, if they have not gotten to the point of creating a record of their activities, practices and heritage then they are not establishing a “history” of their existence. Thus they are pre-history or prehistoric. As a result, we look at these burial mounds and without any form of written or pictorial record we can only surmise why the people did certain things. However, the presence of only bones within these mounds leads us to the concept of a worship or belief of some type with the assumption that there is a difference between life and the “after-life”.
The mounds were created with the entrance way aligned to be illuminated with the setting sun on the winter solstice in December. This level of accuracy suggests that these people were intelligent to the point of recognizing the repeating pattern of the sun and ingenious enough to construct a chamber within the mound from just stone, to hold the remains. After Roy’s introduction, the mounds took on far more significance than if we had just come and looked at these piles of rocks on our own. Although, even Roy can only provide possible theories to explain what happened here as we don’t have any record of what actually took place. In front of some of the vertical stones (similar to Stonehenge) there were people sitting quietly in some form of meditation, or possibly they believe these to be, as some people do, the result of alien contact and they are waiting for the aliens to return. We didn’t stay around long enough to find out.
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