Highlands

This past week, two other exchange students, Mike and Kati, and I traveled up into the Scottish Highlands. Mike is another american product design student from Pratt Institute, and Kati is a product design student from Hungary.

We took the train out of glasgow at 8:20 am. It was still quite dark outside, but as the train started heading up north, I got to watch the scenery of the city gradually turn into wide open fields and rivers, and then to wide expanses of snow-capped hills and mountains. It was beautiful. It is as if you are looking into a great painting. Many of the rolling slopes beckoned me to run out and climb them. Alas, I could not.

The train crisscrossed through the highlands for five hours, stopping at twenty-five stops, each one harder then the last to pronounce. Around one in the afternoon we finally arrived at our destination, a coastal fishing village named Mallaig.

Mallaig was closed. I say that humorously, but in reality, it is not that far off. As we stepped off the train, we were somewhat shocked to find that there were no people on the streets. We walked around for awhile, trying to find a place to have lunch, but every store and restaurant was closed. We eventually stumbled upon what we would later find out was the only pub open in town, and sat down for a beer.

The pub was also a guest house, but did not have any rooms open, so we began searching to try and find a place to stay for the night. Eventually, we found the only bed and breakfast in town ang got rooms. We then hiked in the hillsides, and up to a point where you could see the Isle of Eigg, where we were going the next day.

(Eigg is in the top left)

Soon the sun came down, and we went to the pub to have drinks and play pool. We talked to several of the townsfolk and had a few laughs. Then we went back to the b&b and slept.

The next day, we got up and had breakfast, and then caught the ferry over to Eigg. It's an hour ride, and we got a good view of a lot of the other islands in the area, including skye, the biggest. I met a man who lives on Eigg, who was the head of the recent change on the island to change to all renewable energy. That fact was half of the reason we wanted to go to Eigg. They have adopted an integrated electrical grid, which uses wind, solar, and hydro-power to electrify the whole 12 square mile island. He told us some good places to see on the island, and then was on his way.

We arrived on Eigg, and had only two hours before the ferry would be back (adn if we missed it we would be stranded on the island for two days). We took the man's advice and went to the caves on the south side of the island. I spotted the islands windfarm, and quite a few sheep (surprise). We hiked along the coast until we found the caves. The coast was beautiful, and in the background, the Sgurr, the peak of the island was snow and cloud capped in the distance.

(sheeeeeep)

After seeing a good part of the island, we headed back to the ferry. Then it was back to Mallaig, back on the train, past the twenty-five stops, and on back to glasgow. It had snowed a few inches while we were up north, so on the way back we were treated to a snow covered landscape. Then the sun went down, and it was the end of another day in Scotland.