Inverness, Scotland: Refighting Culloden

July 19, 2015

Well, I expect his mother thinks he's beautiful...

IT'S A CURIOUS thing about history that what's important on one side of a war often counts for little on the other. So Americans not improbably think their war of independence was enormously important and that they gave the British a poke in the eye. Whereas the British couldn't tell you when it happened because the whole thing gets only a passing mention in school books.

And so it is, on more local scale, between Scotland and England. Culloden was one of those (to the English) incomprehensible battles involving people with difficult names. To the Scots it was of great importance. And for both, it was the last battle fought on British soil.

So we decided to see what was there, just outside Inverness. If there were coffee and buns, that would be good, but folk said there was also an excellent visitor centre with films and noise and people in kilts. That would be doubly good.

Tomatin: the unsmiling Church of Scotland put up these village churches everywhere. Only a few survive, referred to by the unfaithful as Tin Tabernacles

Well, I don't know how much they suffered at Culloden but we suffered even more. The wind blew, the rain fell like a pissing cow (the French expression), and not only had the place shut up shop by the time we got there, we didn't care. We just wanted to be warm and dry.

Trestle rail bridges are rare in Britain and this is the last on a Scottish main line

It had started so well. We set off this morning along an old military road, rolling, lined by waist-high stone walls. There were tall conifers, growing naturally and not in the artificial rows of plantations. There were thick clumps of biscuit-tin heather. And fast streams had the colour of dark coffee from the peat in the soil.

Ruthven barracks: paradise for lovers of damp underwear

It was never warm. We wore gloves and hats as we explored Ruthven barracks, a gaunt and cold place lacking its roof, from where soldiers were sent to quell the locals. It was old - 1724 - but not so enormously old by Scottish or wider British standards. Its signifance was in calming the Highlands, often against the Highlands' will. I don't suppose many wept when the soldiers went home. Including the soldiers, who must have found this a place of mist, wind and permanently damp underwear.

Not so high, but we must take our glory where we can

The rolling road rolled on, more open now and colder still. We passed through the ski resort of Aviemore without, happily, seeing the landscape scarred by ski lifts. We waited in vain for steam trains at the preserved railway. We rode the length of the main street, which is held together by shops selling boots, climbing ropes and trendy sunglasses to the ambitious. And a couple of cafés for the less ambitious, the plumper sort who wear shorts in cold weather to show their hardiness and go back to their cars and drive rather than walk up the hills.

No visit to ancient stones is complete without an American woman shouting "Oh gee! You just *gaadda* look at this!"

And then it rained. And rained.

Carr bridge was built for funeral processions - but you wonder how secure they felt with a coffin on their shoulders

We saw the old bridge at Carrbridge, or Carr Bridge (the signs don't agree), and took photos of the way that funeral processions took to avoid wading in the water. We endured an American woman with a bellowing voice at a collection of ancient stones, rode past Culloden Field long after everyone had gone home, and rode dripping and wounded into Inverness.

For a hotel.

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