Vienna, Austria

Think Wien (Vienna) – think Grand.  The home of Mozart, and of the biggest and best wiener schnitzels you’re likely to see anywhere.  For a city of its relatively small size it certainly packs a cultural punch, with many world-class art museums, music concert halls, and stately buildings dating from the centuries-long Habsburg reign when Austria was a major European power.

We began our time in Vienna by looking through imposing Stephansdom, the huge 13th century Gothic masterpiece St Stephen’s Cathedral, returning later for the sell-out evening performance by a visiting Swedish choir.  A little further on is sprawling Hofburg, the Habsburgs’ former city centre base.  There’s a lot to see here but in the time available we contented ourselves with a look through Schatzkammer (the Treasury), containing many wonders including the 10th century Imperial Crown and a 3,000 or so carat Columbian emerald.

On Sunday at the Belvedere Museum a few kilometres out of the city centre we admired the collection of paintings by Gustav Klimt including his masterpiece The Kiss, before heading across the road for what turned out to be a large, long and enjoyable banquet lunch at a Greek Cafe, presided over by a master of upselling.  We later saw other Klimt paintings at the Albertina and the Leopold – Klimt was obviously a popular artist and understandably so.

No first visit to Vienna would be complete without some attention to Mozart, possibly Vienna’s favourite son.  We had our own Mozart in Vienna experience on Monday night at the opulent Musikverein concert hall (the unofficial home of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra where the city’s New Year’s Concert is performed and recorded each year), after enjoying our last dinner in Vienna at the Hotel Imperial just around the corner.

And then our time in this great city was over, almost as soon as it had begun, or so it seemed.  We boarded our boat and sailed away down the Danube, bound for Bratislava.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Laidback Amsterdam seems to have something for everyone, in what surely must be one of the most physically attractive, pedestrian-friendly environments anywhere.  We’ve never seen so many bicyclists outside China, here whizzing along the tree-lined canal streets and across the city squares.

Our home for four days was an apartment above a shop in Rembrandt Square, a great vantage point for watching people coming and going and whiling away the time in the cafes lining the perimeter.  Of course we took a boat trip through the city canals that give Amsterdam its unique character, and visited Van Gogh Museum to see some of the output of one of the Netherland’s most famous sons.  Its collection is impressive, including the well-known Starry Night, Sunflowers and Almond Blossoms.

At the other end of the cultural spectrum we took a stroll through Amsterdam’s small red light district where prostitution is not hidden behind a veil as it is elsewhere.  The women pouting (or looking a little bored) in the windows were mainly from Eastern Europe we were told.  Business seemed quiet in the late afternoon but no doubt things pick up after the sun sets.

Pot smoking is legal too in Amsterdam, and there was plenty of it going on judging by the smell in the air at various places.  It may have got up our noses but like Clinton, we never inhaled.  Seeds for home propagating are freely and openly available, and for those who can’t wait that long there are plenty of cafes around town where one can light up immediately after selecting one’s joint of choice from a printed menu. Not that we did – smoking grass holds no interest for us, and in any case, Amsterdam must be one of the last places on Earth where one would feel any need to be transported to a different state of consciousness. But each to his/her own – that’s the nice thing about Amsterdam.

To Edinburgh, Scotland

From Dunnet Head we drove south, stopping for two nights in the Cairngorm mountains.  The weather was cold, wet and misty, not encouraging for walking, but we put on all the winter clothes we could muster and walked to the top of Mount Cairngorm near the village of Aviemore where we were staying.  There was a crowd at the top, nearly all of whom had ascended in the funicular, which we used to go back down to the base station where our car was parked.  The Cairngorms are a colourful mountain range, very popular with serious long distance walkers (not us) who undertake hikes of several days duration through these parts.  And in winter it’s the UK’s premier skiing destination.

We left the Cairngorms on Sunday morning, travelling to Stonehaven on the east coast where we spent an hour inspecting the atmospheric ruins of the near-impregnable 16th century Dunnottar Castle almost entirely surrounded by plunging cliffs.  It was here in 1651 where a small garrison of Scots famously held out for eight months against the might of Cromwell’s army and saved the Scottish crown jewels, now displayed in Edinburgh castle.  Human residents have long since gone from Dunnottar but it continues to be home to thousands of seabirds that nest in the cliff faces and look out to sea from the tops of the ruin walls - a birdwatcher’s paradise.

From Dunnottar it was a short two and a half hour drive south to Edinburgh where we dropped the Vauxhall off at the airport and caught a bus into the city centre.  Edinburgh Castle was glowing in the last of the day’s sunlight when we walked past it and on up the road to the Black Rose Tavern for our last meal in Scotland – an Angas beef burger with chips.

Scotland was everything we hoped for, and more.  It’s scenic, very clean, and easy to get around.  The food’s excellent and the people are friendly and helpful.  And double all that for the Hebrides.

To Dunnet Head & John o’Groats, Scotland

We rose early on Wednesday to join the long queue of vehicles waiting at the Stornoway dock to board the 7am ferry back to the Scottish mainland.  We docked in Ullapool shortly before 10 and headed north along the coast, turning in now and again to check out some of the seaside villages along the way. We also stopped briefly to inspect the roadside ruin of the 15th century Ardvreck Castle, the scene of much violence throughout its life with murders, executions and sieges by both traditional enemies and quarrelsome branches of the MacLeod clan.  Not surprisingly the place is now comprehensively haunted, most notably by the weeping daughter of a MacLeod chief who drowned in Loch Assynt after marrying the Devil in a pact to save her father’s castle.  Or so the story goes.  

Eventually we came to the north-west tip of the mainland and turned right to traverse the width of Scotland, reaching the east coast at around 6 pm after a long day in the car.  The distances weren’t so large but the road was often single-lane and winding, and in a couple of places we had to cut back on ourselves for many miles to get past some long and skinny lochs.

Our destination for the day was Dunnet Head, the most northerly point on the UK mainland, and only a few miles from John o’Groats on the east coast.  Looking out to sea, all that was between us and Iceland now was Scotland’s Orkney Islands, clearly visible just a few miles offshore.  We checked into Windhaven Cottage on the Head, glad to be off the roads now awash with water from the bucketing rain of the last hour, and made dinner of the oak-smoked Scottish salmon we’d bought at a roadside stall earlier.

Thursday was for walking and we began with a four hour hike along the beach from John o’Groats to the Duncansby Head lighthouse, then along the cliff tops past the impressive Duncansby sea stacks, home to hundreds of nesting sea birds.  It was an atmospheric walk, what with the wind, the strong smell of the seaweed, the soaring squawking birds and the menacing-looking waters of Pentland Firth that rush around the coast at this corner of the UK mainland.  We crossed some heather-covered countryside and ambled past a sheep farm, home to some very friendly lambs that insisted on trotting with us along the fence line, bleating endearingly as we went.  They seemed to be having great fun.

We took a second cliff top walk later, this time shortly before sunset at Dunnet Head.  We hoped to see Atlantic Puffins, comical looking birds with brightly coloured orange legs and bill, but proficient flyers and operators on the plunging cliffs along the coast here.  Our patience was rewarded just as we were about to give up when we finally spotted a small group of them fly in from the sea and land on a grassy knoll hugging a cliff face.  It was a pity they weren’t closer but even at that distance they were unmistakably puffins.

Isles of Harris & Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland

The wind was howling and the sea rolling after we boarded Monday morning’s ocean ferry from Berneray, bound for the next most northerly island in the Hebridean chain, the Isle of Harris (of Harris Tweed fame).  We docked an hour and a half later at Leverburgh on Harris’ south coast and first motored to nearby Rodel to see the 16th century Church of St Clement, built by Alexander “Hunchback” MacLeod of Harris and Dunvegan (the nickname the result of a heinous sword wound that would have completely immobilized a lesser man than Alex).

It would be hard to imagine a greater contrast of landscape than that existing between the east and west coasts of South Harris, so we did a circuit to see the difference.  The east coast is all rock and lunar-like while the west coast is fertile, grassy and with iridescent beaches that might make the Thais envious (Lonely Planet calls this coast “paradise refrigerated” – not a bad description).  Of course we stopped in at a few of the small-scale establishments that still make the famous Harris Tweed, lightly dyed fabric of hand-woven Scottish sheep’s wool, and tried on an assortment of beautiful creations.

After an overnight stop at the beachside village of Drinishader, we headed north to the Isle of Lewis (Harris and Lewis are not really separate islands, but are connected by a narrow neck of land between two lochs, so it’s possible to drive a car from one to the other).  Lewis has several nationally significant pre-historic sights; for example, the Standing Stones of Calanais (Callanish), an alignment in the form of a Celtic cross with an inner circle of 13 stones enclosing a central monolith over 12 feet tall.  The amazing thing is that this structure was built around 5,000 years ago (older than Stonehenge) by Neolithic farmers and survives today.  Being buried for a few centuries by peat that enveloped the area no doubt helped its survival.  Nobody really knows what was the significance of the structure to the people who built it, though current-day theories abound.

We later stopped by Dun Charlabhaigh (Carloway) Broch, the ruins of a 2,000 year old roundhouse with great views across Loch Carloway to the sea beyond.  Ancient houses like these were built by the wealthy and important during the Iron Age to impress and defend; obviously surviving ruins of such houses are extremely rare today.

And finally we came to Stornoway, Lewis’ main town where our Outer Hebridean adventure would end.  But not before a fascinating hour in the Museum nan Eilean in Stornoway to see the fabulous Lewis Chessmen.  Almost two hundred years ago, several incomplete sets of chessmen were unearthed on a Lewis beach.  They were soon identified as Scandinavian in origin, dating from the 12th century when the Vikings ruled the region.  The pieces were elaborately carved from walrus tusk ivory and whales’ teeth from Iceland.  Most of the pieces found their way into the British Museum in London where to the chagrin of many Scots, they still “live” today.  But in a fortunate coincidence for us, the British Museum has loaned several of the pieces for a temporary exhibition on Lewis in 2011, resulting in both the chessmen and us being in Stornoway on Tuesday.               

Isle of Berneray (Bearnaraigh), Outer Hebrides, Scotland

From Uig on the north coast of the Isle of Skye it’s about a two hour sailing west into the Atlantic Ocean on a Caledonian MacBrayne ship to reach the Outer Hebrides. This 130 mile long island chain consists of about 200 islands, only 10 of them inhabited.  We docked in Lochmaddy on North Uist, one of the larger islands but semi-submerged in a landscape of peat bogs and fresh water lochs. We headed north immediately and across the short causeway connecting the tiny, atmospheric island of Berneray (Bearnaraigh), population 130, just 3 miles long and a mile and a half wide.

Berneray had its heyday in the early 1800s when the island was intensively cultivated for potatoes and grain, and the processing of kelp to make potash for the soap and glass industries provided a lot of employment. But ruinous economic times arrived in the mid 1800s when potato blight came to the island, coinciding with the decline of the kelp industry.  At the same time, the Island’s land owner saw the opportunity to make better profits from sheep farming than from the unreliable rents collected from poor, struggling tenant farmers.  The outcome was the clearance of many residents from the island, similar to what was happening across the Scottish Highlands generally.  Through a combination of intimidation and inducement, 22 families were cleared from the Borve crofts on Berneray in mid 1855 and their passage paid to Australia on the sailing ship Royal Albert that docked on 1 December 1855 in Port Adelaide, South Australia, after a four month voyage half way round the world.  One of those families was Donald and Effie McCuspie and their four daughters; Flora, Catherine, Marion and Mary.  It was obviously a huge, emotionally wrenching time in their lives – they knew when they set out that they would never see Berneray or Scotland again, and their welfare in the New World was far from assured.  But it was certainly good for me that they did make the voyage, for had they not, I would never have been born.  Donald and Effie were my great-great grandparents and Flora my great-grandmother.

We spent a couple of hours in the Berneray Historical Society rooms housed in the old Nurse’s Cottage.  Berneray residents speak Gaelic as well as English and have a strong interest in genealogy.  With a few clicks of the keyboard of the Society’s computer, Mrs Wilson (who came to Berneray from England on holiday many years ago, fell in love with the place, and returned to live here) was able to locate information on the McCuspie family, back to the 1600s!

We spent a couple of days walking and driving around Berneray to absorb the remote but friendly atmosphere of this charming isle, and to see a few interesting historical sights.  Like the standing stone Clach Mhor at the top of Beinn a’Chlaidh, and nearby traces of a temple dating from 1,800 BC, believed to have been used by Sun worshippers.  We also located the ruins of Donald and Effie’s house, now just a pile of stones.  If only those stones could talk!  And on Saturday we drove south to see three other islands connected by causeways; North Uist, Benbecula and South Uist.  That’s as far as we could go in the Vauxhall – the next most southerly isle is Barra and an ocean ferry is needed to go there.