FOOTLOOSE 1

BY CHITRA PHADNIS, From "The Hindu"

Castles, bloody battles, intrigue, monsters: Scotland has just the right ingredients for an enchanting trip.

---

Monster or no, Loch Ness itself is an amazing bit of nature.

Scotland is a marketing person’s dream come true. It has all the right ingredients — an abundance of untouched nature, romance, imposing castles with stories of the intrigues, clan wars, bloody battles and betrayals.

The Scots make full use of each story, and play up their “quaintness” quotient — their Celtic origins, the Gaelic language that is still in use in places, the pageantry of the bagpipers playing soft traditional tunes, and their striking costumes, the colourful kilts and headgear.

And if none of these can pull you to Scotland, there is always whisky and golf. And, to top it all is the legend of the Loch Ness Monster.

No wonder then that despite the cold weather, Scotland still manages to draw tourists from around the world. The magic starts even before we board the Flying Scotsman at London’s King’s Cross Station, as we stop to take a hurried picture of half a luggage trolley sticking out of a wall. That is Platform 9 and three fourths — from where Harry Potter boards the Hogwarts Express — a tribute to J.K. Rowling.

Rowling lives in Edinburgh and famously wrote the Harry Potter books in Edinburgh’s cafes. The Old Town is full of Medieval architecture and one of the buildings is pointed out as the inspiration for Hogwart’s School of Magic.

Legendary traits

In the Medieval times, all of Edinburgh’s population lived on the Royal Mile, packed closely together in multi-storeyed houses, in far from hygienic conditions. A lot of the old houses have permanently boarded up windows, a throwback to the time when the king decided to tax house owners based on the number of windows they had.

The legendary parsimony extends to Edinburgh buses too, where the ticket vending machine does not return any extra change. But we are prepared for this. A helpful old lady at the bus stop had already warned us to have our exact change ready.

The Scots don’t like wasting money — either their own or others’. The bus driver tells us that a day ticket will save us some money, but we have the wrong change and end up saving all of one pound for three people.

They are worried about what you may think of their restrooms, and they tell you frankly that the entrance fees to the Edinburgh Castle is just too much.

In Edinburgh, Sir Walter Scott has a monument all to himself — not only for his literary genius, but because he led a team to unearth Scotland’s honours — the crown, the sceptre and the sword — which were thought to be lost for over a century. The honours are on display at the Edinburgh Castle.

For a population of only five million, the region seems to have produced a large number of geniuses — from Walter Scott, R.L. Stevenson, Adam Smith, Robert Burns, Alexander Graham Bell to J.K. Rowling and Sean Connery. Tony Blair studied in Edinburgh, says our guide, and Gordon Brown is Scottish too.

On the way to the Highlands towards Inverness, we pass through places of more history and drama. Scotland’s royalty was equally colourful, from Mary Queen of Scots to King Robert the Bruce. Macbeth and Duncan were real kings too, and their paintings hang in the Edinburgh Castle, though Shakespeare took liberties with their stories.

Interestingly, all regents were leaders of Scots, the people, and not kings and queens of Scotland, the land. Even today, the Scottish law — which is different from U.K. law — has a different view on private property. While you can buy land, you cannot put up a fence to prevent people from wandering in because the land belongs to everyone.

Black faced sheep dot the countryside — there are more sheep in Scotland than people, according to the locals. The story goes that while the rest of the world wondered at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, the first ever to clone a mammal, the Scots only wondered why they chose to clone a sheep of all animals. The large number of sheep and deer are probably a consequence of the fact that wolves have been hunted out of existence.

We also see the highland cow, a fierce animal that resembles our Himalayan yak, with long reddish hair all over its body. The hair falls all over the beast’s eyes, giving it a cute naughty boy look.

Flourishing myth

The best tale is that of the Loch Ness Monster, of course, kept alive by everyone — the bus driver, the captain of the boat cruising the lake, people at the gift shop. No one has any definite evidence, but they all know of strange happenings and are personally convinced that the monster exists.

Monster or no, Loch Ness itself is an amazing bit of nature. It is so huge that it is difficult to think of it as a lake, and extremely deep, even near the shore. There are no islands on the lake, except for one manmade one. The water is almost opaque in its blackness, because of the peat deposits underneath.

Local lore says that the lake doesn’t give up its dead. All the animals that die simply sink to the bottom. On the banks are rock caves, where people could easily get lost. Looking at it, you get the feeling that not just one, but a family of monsters could comfortably hide in the lake and never be discovered.

Researchers have studied the lake for evidence of Nessie but have yet to come up with anything substantial. Meanwhile, hopes of glimpsing the beast always run high. Tourists need never go back home disappointed. There are always Nessie T-shirts, key chains, fridge magnets, as also edible Nessie “poo” (yuk!) to take back. But how each visitor to the lake manages to get a “genuine” Nessie picture and video is a secret that is best kept a secret.