UNKNOWN SCOTLAND
By GEORGE SCOTT-MONCRIEFF
pENERALI-Vspeaking the big roads cast a network la over Scotland and each county is caught up in the string bag. The tourist in his car can traverse them all with-little difficulty or enterprise ; only, -to- some degree, the far North is ignored in its remoteness. Less known Scotland lies not so much in remote tracts as down small roads, over the next hill, or along some promontory leading nowhere save into the Atlantic. A simple diver- gence from a main road that links a beauty-spot to a historic-site will take the traveller to fresh precincts of a seclusion remarkable to those who come from a flatter land of a coastline less indented. I am reminded of how I made what has been to me my fairest discovery in Scot- land. Having a week to spare and being then in the North I pored over a map seeking some spot beyond the railway termini, away from the main roads. With the additional lure of its name I decided upon Applecross, an aloof peninsula sheltering the shrine of a forgotten Celtic saint and possessing a finer view of Skye than may ever be had from the island itself. The approach by land would have been difficult even if I had possessed a car, but the Stornoway boat pauses off Applecross on its out- going voyage, and from it a ferry bore me to the slip that gleamed in the sunlight in front of a row of little houses. Climbing over the uneasy cobbles on to the roadway I asked the postman if I could get lodgings. He recom- mended me to his own home. . His wife was a grand cook and I lived off food of a quality too rare in a countryside where the creed of the denial of the flesh has received such a balefully literal interpretation. For a week, in varying sun and mist, I explored the exquisite strip of land lying between the sea and the great hills, until at three o'clock one morning I was rowed out in the ferry by the light of a hurricane lamp hung in the prow to the returning Storno- way boat.
I lived in Galloway in years when it was indeed to the foreigner an unknown land. But the questing motorist has put a close to that and cars come down through Dumfries and drive along that magnificent coastline, running North again by Girvan to Ayr. Still, the hilly heart of Galloway that sheltered the Bruce at a critical pericid- in Scottish historY enfolds much that is little known. The lower-Galloway countryside is quite distinct in nature from any other in Scotland. The hills are knobbly and streaked with trees : the fields oddly broken with outcrops -of rock and knolls untouchable to the plough. I have heard it compared to the landscape behind the Mona Lisa. '
East from Galloway, the Borders have come to have many widely-known associations. When I first came to them, quite recently, I feared to fi d a country burdened with recognized beauty-spots : a country sophisticated and, tamed by usage. I was wrong,. and I have since dis- covered much unsuspected seclusion ; including long- green drove roads seldom trodden save- by the " bestial and hythe .few remaining pack:men of the old tradition ; a: glen, its entrance within two miles of one of the Border townships, penetrating three' miles into hills so remote that few local shepherds have seen it—a glen extraordin- arily lush, its banks deep in scented boseage, its enfolding hills steep and fine.
Recognized sights are largely responsible for the overlooking of places and their potentialities. The southerner is too often deterred by the unwonted cold from bathing in Scotland, and hence such fantastic and varied bathing as that offered by the coasts and the lochans of Skye and the Outer Isles are ignored by the visitor to Flora MacDonald's tomb. Those sombre cave-mouths, coloured rock floors, sounding pot-holes, at cliff bases, where the sunlight is brilliantly refracted from blue sea and bright rock, afford bathing that generously repays him who inures himself to the coolness of the water. In the lochans the red peat-flavoured water is quite warm during June and Jtdy.
I remarked above that the far North alone was a territory little visited. Depopulated Sutherland is not only distant but a bare country, its spirit depressed with the crime and tragedy associated with its name : but it does not merit the neglect that it receives. The strange shapes of its hills render it distinct from the rest of Scotland. The formidable sea-crossing that has isolated Orkney for so long is now replaced for those with queasy stomachs by an air-service which this year is to be extended over the further hundred miles to Shetland. Orkney is entirely individual : a tattered green land everywhere bitten by a sea that in summer is intensely blue, with good roads and good fishing, populated by the most vigorous community in the British Isles today. I still must look forward to visiting Shetland. Here the Viking festival of Up-holly-a is reputed the only ancient festival in Britain that is still observed • with intensity and abandon, that has not fallen into parochialism but that gars the whole population around Lerwick dance, drink and perform through one terrific night. Since, however, it takes place in the inclement month of January, it is rarely experienced by other than the native Shetlander.
The traveller, to a marked degree, gets his deserts which is really to say that in travelling personality finds scope. To him who seeks the 'unusual, the entertaining, and that which may be called adventure, Scotland'S potentialities are only bounded by his own enterprise. It is not a fool-proof country for the wanderer ; there is too much climatic uncertainty, too much decay, and too much bad cooking for that. He who is urir lucky, and tends to find uncongenial lodgings, to fail to make friends, and generally to discover things of which to complain, had better go to a land of more organized tourism. He whose " luck " holds good and who may with some safety court the uncertain, does well to come to Scotland. In the end, it is a matter of temperament.
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