Dunkeld and the Loch Tay

I doubt very much when we signed up for the trip that anyone knew where we were going. Chaplain Avril said something about crannogs… which were… these things. Built… underwater or something. People used to live in them… And that was enough to get us on the bus.

If you are ever new to a country, the best way to get a feel for some of its edges is to go on a tour. Now, we are not tour people – preferring to travel on our own (and get lost on our own, apparently), but the University has kindly encouraged its international students to tour in a group, with a bus they charter, in order to reveal to us the country outside of the city. Most of us are without cars, so it’s a treat to climb aboard and just sit, taking in the heather and gorse-covered hills, the curly horned sheep, the castles in the distance. Lest we forget from being in Glasgow where there are check-by-jowl people, blocks of sandstone tenements and concrete, Scotland itself is largely agrarian and beautiful.

Our first stop was Dunkeld, which is above Edinburgh and to the East. Dunkeld is a small village whose name comes from ‘the fort in the wood,’ in Gaelic, and indeed, it had been a fort in the woods when it was settled in 730 A.D. by monks. In the mid 800’s, it was the spiritual center for Scotland, and had its most beautiful cathedral. All of the religious relics in the country were moved there to protect them from Viking raids.

It is an ancient, lonely church situated next to the gorgeous River Tay, surrounded by the sheep-dotted Perthshire hills. Though it is still in use, the greater weight of the ages seems to lie in the graves that are all around, and the crumbling ruins of the nave. The rector, resplendent in his white shirt, plaid vest and slacks, insisted that the cathedral was still very much alive, as it scheduled something like fifty weddings a year from non-local visitors. Evensongs and village services round out the rest of its year, and we were glad to know that even among so many graves, life goes on.

As we were leaving, we stumbled into the beginning of a wedding — and watched (with some minor horror) for a chance to escape — everyone was in their finery, the piper was wearing a full kilt and helmet, even, and we very obviously didn’t fit in… but the bridal party seemed to ignore us completely; when you marry in a National Trust cathedral, you expect the odd tourist, I suppose. (And we were VERY odd, knowing that it might rain, we were in coats — and because it was chilly, gloves. The people in this country don’t seem to feel the chill, and were in sleeveless dresses festooned with filmy shawls. Except for the men, who were in worsted wool. Eventually we’ll figure out the dress code here!!!!) We did take a few quick pictures of the wedding party… because there is nothing like seeing a man resplendent in his kilt and sporran, pushing a stroller with a shrieking baby on board… sort of cuts down on all of the pageantry!

With barely a moment to spare, we got back on the bus for the next leg of our journey. The reconstructed crannog on Loch Tay, with the Ben Lawers (mountain – one of the highest in the southern Highlands) behind was really neat. Crannogs were used as defensive dwellings from as early as the Neolithic Age (almost five thousand years ago) to as late as the 17th Century. They were built by driving timber piles into shallow parts of the ‘lochbed,’ which then became the supporting frame for the round house itself.

We had a chance to live the Iron Age life at the Crannog Center. Touring through an interactive display and doing the ‘daily Iron Age activities’ activity (trying to make fire — far harder than it looks, especially when attempting to make a spark with a bow-spinner) took up a pleasant — and suddenly sunny — afternoon. We walked the scary few yards over the River Tay into the crannog… and it WAS scary, as we were walking on nothing but alder boughs. Trees are strong, but there were quite a few of us! Our guide was a collegiate archaeologist from Edinburgh University. He was one of a team whose sub-aqua research on the Oakbank Crannog (about 5 miles further along Loch Tay) was the model they used to create the Perthshire Crannog. It took the archaeologists three years to construct the crannog (when it appears that the people in 600 A.D. did them in a season), but it’s quite cool inside, once you get over the scary alder sidewalk bit.

The woven hazel walls are stuffed with wool, goat hair, and bracken (ferns, which grow all over everything) to help keep out the draft. A range of dried herbs and plants hang from the rafters and are sometimes strewn across the bracken-covered floor, to keep down the smell, which is a bit… animal-ish, as the ancient people kept their cattle indoors with them, as well as their drying meat, curing hides, and their less-than-daily-bathing selves. I imagine in the summertime, the smell is quite whiffy! But the midges won’t go that far from shore, so at least it’s that-kind-of-bug free… we won’t go into the unique webs we saw inside…

This crannog community reminded T. of Mrs. Wallace’s fourth grade projects on Native Americans, where the class ground acorn flour and constructed pine branch tipis. It also reminded both of us tremendously of summer camp… If anyone ever has a chance to visit Perthshire, this is a fun family place to spend an afternoon. Hopefully we’ll have more pictures to show you soon!

(Photograph of the tower at Dunkeld Cathedral by Flickr user Snaik. Photograph of the Loch Tay Crannog by Dave Morris. Both photographs licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0.)

– D & T

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