Tags
Bonnie Prince Charlie, Glenfinnan, Harry Potter, Highlander, Local Hero, Loch Ailort, Loch Eilt, Loch Morar, Richard Briers, Ring of Bright Water, The Hobbit
A Journey into Scotland … Part 31
There is something familiar about the next twenty miles though I don’t make the connection until it is pointed out to me. This is prime Local Hero country. The film rates as my joint favourite (along with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) just to sit back and watch. There are films that I think are better but none that are more enjoyable. The advent of DVDs hasn’t increased the number of films I have watched; I already go to the cinema an awful lot; it’s one of our great pleasures in life. But, it has led to me re-watching no end of films. Local Hero is one I will pop into the player in order to re-live a favourite scene. I invariably find myself watching the entire film. When you can watch a film five times or more with no diminution of pleasure then it’s either a good film or you need to broaden your horizons.
Glenfinnan can claim the interest of the movie tourist. (I can think of worse things to be; those location finders are experienced and skilful). As well as three Harry Potter films, the loch, the memorial and the viaduct have appeared in Charlotte Gray, Highlander, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Ring of Bright Water and Monarch of the Glen. (OK so that’s just a Sunday night tv programme but it did get sold all over the world – partly because of the location shooting. It also features the peerless Richard Briers and Susan Hampshire).
The road and the railway line keep each other company, parting briefly to take alternative views of the valley; either one side or the other. When they get to Loch Eilt one takes the high road and the other takes the low road. Nothing changes its bag of connotations quite like a railway line in moving from urban to rural. Some of the most desolate parts of our towns are ruled by rail and sleepers. In the wide open spaces those same lines add poignancy to the remote and the de-populated. Railways do desolation very well. Which is perhaps why they feature in so many films.
The first five miles going west from Glenfinnan are amongst the finest I’ve ever cycled. A road that has taken all the surveyors skills and all the muscle and dynamite at the road builders’ disposal. It is a thing of beauty which blends, with bends and boulders, into the highland hillside. But it is merely the gold chain between the real jewels, and as I reach the rise of yet another mossy hill, I catch a glimpse of speckled sunshine on the surface of what might be the loveliest loch yet. For fellow fans of Local Hero, this is the loch where they shot the scenes of the helicopter taking Mac back to Houston. It’s an emotionally important moment in the film and the location’s beauty is an equal match to the needs of the drama.
There is absolutely nothing to beat the pleasure of pedalling along a near empty road along the side of a glassy loch with a Grampian hillside rising above you. The trees just beginning to turn their autumn shades and a sun trying to break through. It is simply idyllic. I fear I may have dipped too greedily into the superlatives box in describing this whole area, but it is of almost indescribable beauty. My real problem lies in hindsight. I’m writing this nearly thirty years after the event. I haven’t changed my mind one jot about the beauty. It is just that I now know what lies ahead. The west coast has this repeated trick. Just when you think it cannot improve, it does just that. This simple road is more than a memory. The experience is so ingrained that it lives as a part of who I am. I only rode it once and I have been a better man since because I did. I would love to ride it again.
There is a fine looking inn at Loch Ailort but I don’t want to stop until I find somewhere to put up a tent. Pushing up past the village, I see what looks remarkably like the little church that the locals crowd into in the film. It can’t be. This is on an inland rise, and the one in the film is on a beach. The film makers are clever. The camera does play tricks. It would be discordant to say the camera lies but it isn’t being altogether truthful. It is indeed the church of Our Lady of the Braes. In reality it hasn’t been prayed in since 1964; not by a congregation anyway: but many people were seen going in and coming out after discussing oil and money and the threat to a traditional way of life during the filming.

photo credit http://www.wiltonphotography.net
We’ve moved from freshwater lochs to sea lochs now. They are quite unlike anything else. England doesn’t have them and neither does Ireland. Norway has its fjords and though I’ve only seen them in film and photograph, they don’t seem quite the same to me. These huge fingers of sheltered ocean with hills rising on the opposite shore, yet still as mighty and powerful as the sea always is. And as inviting! Little boats bob at anchor. I’m sure if I were to stop and rest and wait I’d have an even money chance of seeing a seal or a sea otter or a dolphin or even a whale.
After Loch Ailort there are more houses. It’s still sparsely populated but there is a tiny community here, a scattered hamlet there. Between Glenfinnan and here there had been hardly a house. Looking north over the moors and fells there is a huge wilderness of magnificence. Occasionally telegraph poles stand sentinel and cross the heather and the bracken and the ling. It must be some job to maintain them. It must have been quite some enterprise to have put them there in the first place.
If you head over the hills, you cross some of the most remote land in the country, and eventually come to a loch that inspired Tolkien among others. Loch Morar is the fifth largest in Scotland and the deepest fresh water lake in Great Britain at over 1000 feet. (If you placed the Eiffel Tower in the loch then only the top of the pinnacle would peep out of the water). The deep, dark waters hide another mystery. It too has a monster. It isn’t just Loch Ness. This one, predictably is called Morag and has been seen over thirty times. It is supposed to be between twenty and thirty feet long and like its Caledonian cousin has humps. Tolkien was a regular walker around Loch Morar and is thought, by some, to have based the Desolation of Smaug from the Hobbit on the area and the dragon itself upon the monster of the deep. The monster was not only spotted in 1969 but bumped into by Duncan McDonnel and William Simpson in their speed boat. It lashed out and hasn’t been seen very often since which may not be too surprising. As well as the great unlikelihood of an unidentified creature dating back to Jurassic times surviving in a modern country without being recorded; Simpson also shot it with a rifle. Conservation meant conserve yourself in 1969.
I arrive in Arisaig with light fading from the sky. I don’t fancy beer even though the pub is fine and friendly. They are happy to make me a pot of tea. A young fellow is the only other customer. He is English and has being staying at a nearby campsite for nearly a week. He is keen to play the local expert. When he answers a call of nature I ask the landlord where the campsite is. He has a better idea. Recognising someone who has come to find peace and quiet and the real west coast, he tells me I don’t want to be kept awake with a field full of campers and would do better following a track down towards the sea. I find the “piece of green” he’d described and happily put up my tent. I warm a tin of beans and make tea to the friendly roar of the primus stove. Once I extinguish it I am left with the lapping of soft waves on sand and the calls of the wading birds. The sky clears and I’m contented, beyond dreams, to see the milky way more clearly than I have ever seen it. In the film, Mac is sent to Scotland with the brief to buy a beach but with the secondary task of looking at the skies and reporting if he sees anything. Eventually he is rewarded with a display of the aurora borealis. I am not so lucky but with a place to camp like this and a river of stars above me, I feel lucky enough.
I’m with you on ‘Local Hero’ – and I watch it at least every year ! One of the things I remember with most pleasure is that truly wonderful céilidh, and the music that made me cry. I cried again when Mac came back to the real world …
I wrote the piece with the soundtrack playing. When the main theme reprised I found my eyes watering.
That’s a really good movie for you. Not nearly enough of them. (I do love ‘BC and the SK’ – and I have it – but my favourite of all times is Galaxy Quest !)
Lovely journey, with even the possibility of a monster! Simon, I eventually put an Award Free Blog message (I do have a Mac and it might be different), but I went to Appearance, (left hand list), then a list comes up, go to Widget. Then another list Tag Cloud, Title: after Tag, I just added Award Free Blog and then to Save.
Hope you can follow that, I know how confusing computer language is! M-R helped me but I couldn’t get it to SAVE, but this time it has. Good luck! 🙂
Thank you Barbara. I’ll give it another go. I’ve tried following instructions but it doesn’t seem to want to turn out. It might turn out quicker to write polite thank you but no thank you notes to those who wish to reward me in this manner.
Yes, that would be simpler! Sometimes these things aren’t worth worrying about!
Cheers, Barbara
I actually seem to have succeeded in using your instructions to place the most discreet of tags. I thank you most kindly.
Tolkien would have also been interested in Morag’s loch because of Beowulf entering it to fight Grendel’s mother.
Love your ability to evoke a sense of place and journey — as always I feel as I’ve been there without the effort of pedalling…
I’ve read Beowulf but not recently enough. I’m glad you enjoyed this and I’m boosted by your kind words. Thank you.
I never heard of the movie you mentioned – but then I slept through “Gone with the Wind”. The last movie I survived was “Savage Messiah” in 1973, and I watched it twice on the same day, just for the one speech. Movies don’t seem to be my thing. But your cycle ride certainly is, and upon winning the lottery, I shall certainly not only be living in the places you describe, but I shall be donating a sizable sum towards your publication!
I wish I’d slept through Gone with the Wind. That’s three and a half hours I’m not going to see again. I am a huge movie fan. It’s a simple pleasure to sit quietly and be somewhere else for a couple of hours. I’ll add your lottery numbers onto the list of things I pray for. So, that’s Lady Trolley bus drivers, a thought about the acidity of rhubarb and a hope that Rochdale Hornets can get a new second row forward in the close season…and six Kiwi numbers.
I’d forgotten about Local Hero. Must dust it down and put it in the player :-). By the looks of that last photo you certainly found a beautiful resting place. Fabulous of the landlord to suggest it 🙂
I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. It was most definitely one of the best places I’ve ever put a tent up.
“I fear I may have dipped too greedily into the superlatives box in describing this whole area…”
I’m not sure that’s possible, Simon, if I am to judge from my experience of the place through that most enchanting movie. Local Hero holds first place of first places in my favourites list. I don’t know if it was the music or the scenery or the acting or what… but the combination is beyond superlative.
I think it’s the combination. The film works superbly and is one of the real treats of British cinema. The location would be wondrous without any film connections but for me it made it all the more special.
Another admission of guilt – never seen the film nor indeed most others. I have never seen a Star Wars film. I have read the Hobbit though 😊. I vaguely remember seeing Jaws and the original Dr. Who film. I have seen a few movies whilst flying long haul and I may just see if I can find Local Hero for the scenery.
I wouldn’t add guilt to not seeing the film; that’s punishment enough. I only hope I haven’t over-hyped it. No I’m OK. If you’re just watching it for the scenery you are in for a minor treat.
Good to find another Local Hero fan, Simon. I can watch this movie over and over, and it never fails to instil a deep longing for the romance of the Western Highlands and Islands. This road has to be one of the finest drives I can ever remember. My hat is off to you doing this by bike. What an experience.
As the Scots approach an historic referendum on independence, I understand and respect the arguments for breaking the union, but I remember my journeys along these roads and a feeling of tremendous pride that as a British guy this too was home. The lochs and the hills will still be there, I suppose, but I’ll feel it as a loss if it were to suddenly become a foreign country.