A journey through the Scottish Highlands
3 days, 3 people, 300 kilometers
By Basil Fisher
We drove from Edinburgh, where we picked up Andy’s Land Rover. The destination was Ellon. It was a journey that converted conversation to eruptions of erudite discussion. It is only such a car that allows the looming grey sky to appear as a majestic fog overlooking the green ocean of field surrounding us, word cannot wield the matter of sensation, only experience could satisfy the true identity of the beauty that encapsulated our route. An adventure began, terrain changed, yet once more this did not denigrate nor confront the excursion on which we had embarked. High expectations ran through the ride, we had a view of seeing everything that the mystique of the almost eerie, foggy eastern stretch of Scotland had to present. The journey began to come alive.
Heading north, we drove through relentless areas of interspersed valleys. With the immediate destination of the Spittal of Glenmuick in mind, we drove through a different breed of terrain, one that jolted sensation and left our vision perpetually gazing at the dramatic surface elevation around us. It was remarkable to see such an enclosing rise, one that was almost reminiscent of the tall city we had left behind. Nonetheless we seemed to be ushered by the surrounding valleys to quietly remain on one of the few paths that led us towards said destination.
Anton captured the Range Rover seeming meagre, watching the various quarters of the heavens ahead with curiosity and delight as it made such light effort of hiding the already partially hidden highlands of Clova. It was a view that could exclusively be placed, to my understanding, alongside the description of Sublime. Anton also captured the Scottish — Tropical LochMuick, in the stream of the Spittal of Glenmuick, and I captured the juxtaposition of a city trainer to the foreign terrain to which we were slowly customising.
Whilst returning from Dunnottar Castle, which existed now as something of a dilapidating skeleton of its former clifftop fortress origin, we tried to capture the previously mentioned ocean of green that encircled our journey. It occurred to me here that it is easy to speak of emptiness and hollowness until silence is all that you can hear. Here, it seemed civilisation had been exhausted and it was only nature and the wind, with its certain violence, which accompanied us. The road that lay behind us, seen all but out of place behind the car, was the only route. It is in such a vacuum that silence within the car seemed apt. We continued to gaze at the glory of the evergreens and the highlands that seemed to lack both a beginning and an end.
Beholding the dark ocean, the fore-mentioned castle rose in awful majesty. We arrived here between the ungodly hours between 5:30 and 6:00 in the morning and I could not deny that this view, accompanied by the atmospheric abandonment that usually follows such a time, led me to feel a strong attachment to this castle. There was something about its lifetime, that of nearly 600 years, which spoke to both me and Anton. The history, the events, the cultural change that this ruin had been privy to, struck me. This castle seemed now not to be a production of man, subservient to nature, it seemed to look upon nature, as its very equal.
Now returning through Clova, we pulled over to show the might of the Range Rover, squashed by the enormity of the rocks enclosing us. We had to do our best to grasp the sheer slope, rugged as it was, juxtaposing the sleek line of the car’s stern.
We came across this bridge in Balmoral. It offered a passing over the quiet River Dee, having seen the beauties I’d seen throughout the journey, my senses had come alive to every new scene. This particular scene, too, overwhelmed us. A suspension bridge seemed to go against the agreed notion we were in an oasis of tranquillity and a vacuum of civilisation, such a feat of human engineering appeared majestically in front of us.
Next we went to Balmoral, where I felt, amongst the range of arching green trees that swayed with an appropriately subtle nod, to cite Milton’s great quotation, ‘Solitude sometimes is best society’. Although I was not alone, we seemed to be the only additional energy in the surroundings. It was tranquillity that avoided any clichés, one that made my heart swell with joy. ‘Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n’.
Here, in a small misty town, where civilisation made a scant return, we met a man named Stanley and his friend. He had an air of rugged wisdom to him, much like the nature we had encountered throughout this voyage. He spoke of Brexit and how he thought it was good for the youth and what advantages it brought to the fishermen. Matt turned to Anton and jokingly said that Anton as a photographer had never done a day’s work in his life. He had a poetic way of articulating how work came in different forms to different people. He said how there was a man who paints for a living and he moves in next door to a man gardens for a living. The gardener works in the day and he loves to paint at night. The painter works in the day and he loves nothing more to garden at night. Work is what you make it.
Here, again in Balmoral, we have an example of the mystique that was forever an undercurrent to the peace and to the beauty we drove through. The bending river fizzled at its own gentle pace.
Basil works for FEIN, a London-based agency that has spearheaded Turo’s professional photography program in the UK.
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