History of Scotland Part V - Geography

Before we proceed to the next chapter, I think it's important to get some Scottish geography basics straight. My Scottish readers (both of them) will already know this but my Portuguese, Finnish and Argentinian readers (yes!) may appreciate this primer.

Scotland's geography is dominated by six important firths (river estuaries), these being the Firths of Forth and Tay and the Moray Firth on the east coast and the Firths of Lorne and Clyde and the Solway Firth on the west coast. We've already met two of these firths - the Forth and Clyde - which cut deep inland so that Scotland's east and west coasts come to within about 30 miles (50km) of each other at this "waist" of the country: you'll recall that, north of the Forth-Clyde was where the P-Celtic Picts lived and that the Romans (yawn) built the Antonine Wall from Forth to Clyde (roughly from modern day Glasgow to a bit west of modern day Edinburgh).

The line from the head of the Firth of Lorne (which in its innermost reaches is called Loch Linnhe - pronounced "Linnie") on the west coast to the head of the Moray (pron. "Murray" as in Andy) Firth on the east coast is called the Great Glen. Loch Ness (of monster fame) occupies about a quarter of the Great Glen which is a geological fault.

Note also the islands - Orkney and Shetland to the north-east (they are collectively known as the Northern Isles) and the Hebrides (pron. "HEB-rid-eez") to the west, also known as the Western Isles.

All of the above is well known to all Scotsmen (and even the odd Scotswoman when she's holding the map the right way up) but what is less well known are the features I've marked in green - Drum Alban (Gaelic for "ridge of Scotland") and The Mounth. These are the watersheds in the mountains marking the dividing line between where the rivers flow north and west to the Moray Firth, Great Glen and Firth of Lorne and south and east to the Firths of Clyde, Forth & Tay. Drum Alban and The Mounth are not names known to the average Scot nowadays but they were very significant in the formation of the medieval Kingdom of Scotland.

OK, that's enough to take in for now. I'm going to finish with an old photo of a village called Tyndrum which sits on Drum Alban. In the foreground and to the left, the river flows east to the Firth of Tay while the river in the glen in the right background flows west to the Firth of Lorne.

When the boat comes in - Part III

I have a cup of instant coffee every morning but coffee doesn't grow on this island so it has to be imported. Depressingly few daily staples are produced on Flores except for bread (although the flour is imported), cheese, yoghurt and a tiny percentage of the vegetables you can buy (in season of course).

The same is true of most places: coffee doesn't grow in Scotland either but I can buy Nescafé in Tesco in Edinburgh because it's imported there too. How does it get to Edinburgh? In trucks which thunder up and down motorways 24 hours a day. We all slag truck drivers off for their driving and - ahem - supposed other habits, but we'd be lost without them: no truck drivers, no Nescafé.

Incidentally, why don't train drivers and airline pilots get the same stick as truckers? Airline pilots deserve a lot of stick in my book for being crashingly boring conversationalists: have you ever heard one talk about anything other than the weather? Can you imagine the chat at a British Airways staff party: "It was 21 degrees with a brisk easterly wind in Paris yesterday." "Funny you should mention that because there were spots of rain at Bucharest ..." But I digress.

No motorways to Flores so the Nescafé - and everything else not on the short list mentioned above - has to come on a container ship. This one:-

It arrives every second Thursday. Towards the end of each two week cycle, the fresh veg on offer in the shops is looking "tired" at best and non-existent at worst. We go shopping in Santa Cruz every second Friday for obvious reasons. But it's not to be taken for granted that the ship will have arrived on the Thursday - quite often it's delayed by weather. In winter sometimes it has to stand offshore to await suitable conditions to berth as Lajes das Flores (above) is not the most sheltered of harbours. Occasionally, it turns around without making the call at all: in March 2006, supplies of some commodities were running very low with the threat of bottled gas having to be rationed due to the ship not being able to berth for about 4 weeks due to a run of bad weather. Although if you think that's bad, it was only in 1993 that Flores got a pier the ship could berth at. Before then, it waited offshore and small open boats went out to collect the supplies, an operation infinitely more at risk of weather interruption so there was often the risk of key supplies getting critically short in winter. So much so that a successful call by the ship was known as Dia de São Vapor - literally "Saint Steamer's Day"

So, every other Thursday, Carol asks "Is the boat in?" I can tell the answer to this in one of two ways: if it's early doors, I can tell by the boxes of fresh fruit and veg (etc.) in the village shop when I've been down to get the bread. Otherwise, you can look at the webcam over the harbour at Lajes (library picture below).

The ship is only in for a few hours while the containers full of goodies are off-loaded. The next part of the process is opening the containers after the ship has gone and delivering the contents round the island. This goes in the order (a) perishable (e.g. fruit and veg) distributed on the Thursday the ship arrives; (b) not perishable but essential (e.g. bottled gas) distributed within a day or so of the ship; (c) not perishable and non-essential (e.g. that strimmer i ordered off eBay) - can wait for quite a long time for class (a) and (b) items to be cleared before it gets delivered.

So I hope that explains why, when you ask for something in a shop here, you often get the answer pode ser no proximo barco - maybe on the next ship. But even if it is on the next ship, you never quite know when it will be available: that's living on an island for you!

The weather, incidentally, is 21 degrees with a light north westerly wind.

When the boat comes in - Part II

First of all, let me reassure you that Part II is the last part of "When the boat comes in".

Just before we leave the car ferry, though, the good ship Express Santorini (that's the one on charter from the Aegean - the clue's in the name) paid its first visit to Flores this summer on Monday night. I know that from having looked at the Lajes webcam.

In that screengrab from the webcam, you're going to have to take my word that the very bright lights is the ferry at the pier.

The ferry came on Monday to bring revellers to the São João festival and came back again yesterday (Thursday) to take them away again. São João is one of the two major festivals on this island (indeed it's big throughout Portugal). The whole island closes down (including schools shut) for three days. I don't know what happens during the day to justify this but, at night, there are what the Portuguese call "raves" - I think that means what we would call a disco but they're in a tent.

However I believe there are also live bands. Or perhaps I mean "a live band" singular but, whichever, our friend Harald - who saw the Rolling Stones in Nuremberg in 1979 in the same arena as where Hitler did Ein Volk! Ein Reich! in 1936 and has a ZZ-Top beard and is quite particular where rock music is concerned - was impressed. Which was nice.

São João only takes place in Santa Cruz which is a 25 minute drive from us. As I couldn't possibly imagine going to such a do without having a drink, and as taxis are as scarce as hen's teeth on this island, that means in practice we don't go: we're much too old now to spend nights on park benches or strangers' floors.

I seem to have digressed a long way from coastal shipping. So there will, after all, be a third episode of "When the boat comes in". (So I lied - dry your eyes, as we say in Scotland.) I leave you with a picture of Mick Jagger warming the audience up for "Brown Sugar":-

When the boat comes in

Last time I explained (in unecessary detail) about getting to this island on aeroplanes. This time, I'm going to tell you about the ships that come to Flores. If you're not getting a Windows "Your computer may be at risk" warning by now, then you should review your firewall settings - make sure you've checked "parental guidance advised" and "coastal shipping anorak".

OK. Three of the Grupo Central islands of the Azores (Faial, Pico & São Jorge) are linked by passenger ferries year round. In summer, the frequency increases to include Terceira and fast catamarans are also employed. Below is on the ferry from Faial (Horta) to Pico:

As for the ferries between the rest of the islands, these are in summer only when ships link all the islands in a leisurely cruise. Atlanticoline is wholly owned by the Azorean Regional Government (ARG) and their services have been a bit of a farce recently because they were supposed to be getting two brand new ships this year but the ARG refused to take delivery of them as they were not up to contract specification. Net upshot is Atlanticoline are continuing to operate with a chartered grotty ex-Channel car ferry long since pensioned off to the Aegean.

If I were an Azorean tax-payer I would say - hang on, I am an Azorean tax-payer, so I do say - I don't know why they bother with the inter-island car ferry services. People go on the plane. We went on the ferry from Flores to Faial (nearest island) for my birthday jolly in 2007 and there were about a dozen cars (max) and about 20 pax.

However I was speaking to a taxi driver recently and he said (in the way that taxi drivers do) that he stores all the problems with his car up until the summer and the car ferry when he can take it to São Miguel to get fixed.

And when we went on the ferry, there was a couple flitting to Terceira - it was Carol's hairdresser as it goes, whom she was very sorry to see leaving. There was discussion as to whether it would be OK to get Fatima to do a final cut on the ocean wave. Note to self to do blog entry about how all hairdressers on this island are called Fatima. Apart from the one called Dora. I digress. This sort of trade is not enough to sustain a car ferry service out here to Flores.

Oh dear, this is getting too long and boring. In another post I will tell you about the important ships that come to Flores - the fortnightly container ship that brings the stuff we take for granted on the shelves of the shops.

Riddle

The first riddle I was ever taught - in 1968, when I was 5 - was in a Dr Seuss book borrowed from Morningside library in Edinburgh. It remains from that day to this the best riddle I've ever heard and goes like this:-

Q. - What's big and red and eats rocks?

A. - A big red rock eater.

Well there's a big red rock eater living on Flores because I drove past its lunch today:-

FAQ 1

When we told people back in Edinburgh that we were moving to the Azores, the almost universal reaction was "the whats?". Once we'd explained that the Azores were nowhere near the Falkland Islands or Brazil and were much further north and west than Madeira or the Canaries, the most frequently asked question was "How do you get there?"

I think they imagined us hanging around the docks of Lisbon looking for the captain of a rusty tramp steamer down on his luck who could be bribed with strong liquor into dropping us in an open boat a few miles off the coast of the Azores at dead of night while his craft went about its nefarious ways.

Well I'm afraid the answer to how you get to the Azores is a bit more prosaic: you go on an Airbus - just the same as Majorca, Tenerife, Madeira et al.

In fairness, if you ask most Brits about getting to an island, they will think about going to the Isle of Wight or the Isle of Man or the Hebrides etc. and will think of going on a car ferry. But there is no car ferry from mainland Portugal to the Azores - at around 48+ hours sail, it's too long for a ferry.

So you come on an aeroplane. There are two airlines - the Portuguese national airline, TAP Portugal and the Azorean airline, SATA.


Between them, they maintain several flights a day from Lisbon to the three biggest islands in the Azores - Sao Miguel, Terceira and Faial (2 hour flight). In summer, SATA fly once a week from Sao Miguel to major European capitals such as London (Gatwick), Paris and Amsterdam (3.5-4 hours). Importantly, in view of the emigre connection, SATA also flies from Sao Miguel directly to North America - Boston, Toronto, Montreal and Oakland (California). Only a few flights a week and I can't remember now if these are summer only.

So, if you're coming to Flores, what do you do once you've disembarked from your Airbus at one of the bigger islands? You get on a smaller aeroplane operated by SATA Air Açores. In winter, there is one flight a day except Sunday. These are mostly to Sao Miguel via Faial (50 mins each leg) but there are also some flights to Terceira (1 hour). In summer, the frequency increases to include Sundays and, on some days, there are as many as three flights a day. Below is a picture of the aeroplane that comes out to Flores:-


And as I can already hear the yawns of boredom, I'll tell you about the ships that come out to Flores in another posting.

History of Scotland Part IV - the Romans

I've been putting this next chapter off because it involves a topic that bores me rigid: the Romans. Can't be doing with them. I wish this were the history of Ireland because I'd be able to say "the Romans never came here" but that's not quite true for Scotland. So, dirty job, has to be done, let's just get on with it.

To remind you where we'd got to last time, the Romans landed in Britain in 55BC (might have been AD) to find it peopled by a race of Celts called P-Celts by linguists. They are also known as Britons (except those living in Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde line who are always known as Picts). Perhaps the most famous P-Celtic Briton was Queen Boadicea (or Bouddicca if you prefer the more authentic spelling. I don't.) The Britons spoke a language which is the ancestor of modern Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Across the water in Ireland (and the Isle of Man) lived the Q-Celts who are also known as Gaels. They spoke a language which is the ancestor of modern Gaelic (Irish & Scottish) and Manx.

Let me get this quickly off my chest: Gael rhymes with "gale" but the language Gaelic rhymes with "Gallic". It is not - repeat NOT - pronounced "gay-lick".

You can tell I'm putting off getting round to the Romans, can't you? Now that I think about it, I think it was 55BC that they landed in Britain first. As I recall, this was an army led by Julius Caesar which landed and fought the odd battle against the Britons but was not followed up by any attempt at conquest. I think this was when JC memorably said Veni, Vidi, Vici - We came, we saw, we conquered - although I could be totally wrong about that because, as I've said, no attempt at full blown conquest was made in 55BC and I think the whole thing had a lot to do with JC proving a point to someone back in Rome (Brutus? Mark Antony?) that he could have conquered Britain if he'd wanted to.

In 43AD (I think it was), the Emperor ...


... Claudius (Derek Jacobi) needed to prove a point to someone (I forget who, Nero or Caligula or someone like that) and decided to go one better and launch the actual conquest of Britain. Being the neat, symmetrical sort of people that they were (just look at how straight their roads were), the Romans would have loved the neat symmetry of being able to conquer the whole of Great Britain. And having conquered Asia Minor and seen off Hannibal and Carthage and so forth, you'd have thought GB would have been a dawdle but not so. Net upshot was the Romans whacked up villas, forums, temples, baths, hypocausts and all the other paraphernalia of Pax Romana in the south and east of GB but the veneer of Roman civilisation thinned the further and north and west you went until you get to Scotland where there is not a villa, bath or hypocaust to be found - only Roman forts. Which shows that all they ever did here was fight rather indecisive campaigns. In the 1st century AD, Scotland was to Rome what Afghanistan is in the 21st to the USA - i.e. a God awful place nobody would voluntarily want to have anything to do with but to which a certain amount of time and effort has to be paid because the natives can be tiresome if left to their own devices.


That's a picture of the remains of a Roman fort at Newstead near Melrose - not exactly Petra, is it?

The Romans did, however, provide Scotland with its first recorded battle and, indeed, its first recorded Scotsman: he was called Calgacus and was the chief of a tribe called Caledonians - as I understand it, the Caledonians were not so much a tribe as perhaps a confederation of Pictish tribes got together for the purpose of opposing a particular Roman campaign. The battle was at a place called Mons Graupius and was in 84AD I think (could be wrong about that exact date - as I've said before this is history without looking it up). Nobody's exactly sure where Mons Graupius was but mons being Latin for hill, and noting the similarity between Graupius and Grampians (a mountain range in north east Scotland), somewhere in the NE Highlands of Scotland is suspected (western Aberdeenshire, perhaps).

Calgacus/the Caledonians lost the Battle of Mons Graupius but not entirely in vain because Calgacus also left behind Scotland's first memorable quotation: "They make a desert and call it peace." Referring to the Romans, he's supposed to have said this in a speech to his troops before the battle (a la Mel Gibson in Braveheart except in a more authentically Caledonian accent one would hope). He almost certainly said no such thing but a Roman writer - Tacitus, I think, but might be Pliny the Elder or someone else - claimed that he did.

Quick word about Hadrian's Wall. It's commonly assumed this was the Romans shutting the door on Caledonia. Not quite true because, if that were so, it would have all its defences pointing north. But archaeologists will tell you it is equally defended on both sides so its function was rather to monitor the movement of people north and south. An example of history never being quite as simple as it appears at first sight. There was also a less well known Roman wall further north between the Forth-Clyde line called Antonine's Wall - I can't remember the chronology of that: I think Hadrian's Wall was built in the 3rd cent. AD.

That's a picture of a bit of the Antonine Wall. It's a bit of a broken pot as Roman remains go: it's not exactly the Colosseum. So in general terms, as a Scotsman, you can safely answer the question "What have the Romans ever done for us?" as "Nothing".

Apart from the first Scotsman ...

OK apart from the first Scotsman, what have the Romans ever done for us?

The first battle ...?

OK apart from the first Scotsman and the first battle, what have the Romans ever done for us?

The first memorable quote ...?

OK apart from the first Scotsman, the first battle and the first memorable quote, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Hadrian's Wall ...?