Loch Shiel

There really is no country like Scotland.

Where the falling hillside creates a chalice for the sky. Some countries have that romance about them, almost as if their poets were not inspired by the land, but that they inspired the land itself.

If the pandemic hadn’t have happened, this time last week I would have been on a motorcycle burning the A830, riding past the loch that bears my family’s name - Shiel.

These days are testing whether we are glass half full or half empty people. I prefer to see it as filling up. Which means now is not the time to mourn, but the time to dream ... of all the places we will go.

* * *

Loch Shiel / Glenfinnan, Scotland

Loch Shiel is Scotland's 4th longest loch. At its north-east end, an imposing monument commemorates where Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard and sparked the 1745 Jacobite Rising. These events have been popularised by Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series and its television adaption. This turbulent chapter of Scottish history was closed at the devastating battle at Culloden.

Scottish historian John Macleod said of Glen Shiel:

The descent of Glen Shiel, on the road to Skye, takes you through one of Scotland's most spectacular mountain passes: it is almost a cliché of Highland scenery – foaming river, burns streaming white, crags frowning from on high, often mist, generally rain. The road winds, turns and falls. Here and there the eye catches a tumbled ruin.