Scottish lions

The truth of course is that, like many tourists to Scotland, the couple on the train had barely scratched the surface of the country. Victorian travellers described the “must-see” sights in any region as the “lions” and the standard list of Scottish lions has barely changed in 150 years. The railway viaduct at Glenfinnan, opened only in 1898, is the newcomer to the list.

The “Western Isles” arrives at the Knoydart’s remote pier. Photo © hidden europe

Over recent decades, great tracts of the Scottish Highlands, which were once so difficult to reach, have become very much more accessible. Distance has been diminished by better roads, improved ferry connections and faster trains. The most frequently visited Scottish island — Skye — is now hardly an island at all. Since 1995, it has been connected by a road bridge to the mainland.

Routes less taken

Move away from Scotland’s principal cities and for many decades the defining characteristic of Scottish rural landscapes was their remoteness. In many cases, there is still a genuine sense of isolation and distance from civilisation. The Shetland capital at Lerwick is still more than twelve hours on the fastest boat from the mainland port of Aberdeen. If, having sailed from Aberdeen to Lerwick, you want to continue on the direct boat from Lerwick to tiny Fair Isle (which runs only on alternate Thursdays), then you are in for another longish voyage — five hours.

Even on the mainland, distances are challenging. The sole daily rail connection from Wick (in the north-east) to Stranraer (in the south-west) takes over twelve hours. Few visitors to Scotland have the appetite for such long hauls. Impatience with travel, lust to be at a destination, means that most visitors focus on easy trips to places that are quick pickings.

Five hidden gems

So you think you know Scotland? Here’s our checklist of five remote spots that well repay the effort of a strenuous journey. None of them are in the canon of accepted tourist “sights.” But each offers a taste of really rural Scotland:

1. The island of North Ronaldsay in the Orkneys, reached by twice weekly ferry from Kirkwall. Travel time 2hrs 40mins to 3hrs 35mins from Kirkwall.

2. The island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides, reached by ferry from Oban. Sailings most day, with a passage time of 5 to 7 hours.

3. The Knoydart Peninsula on the mainland. A half-hour hop on the ferry from Mallaig.

4. Kinloch Hourn — one of the remotest spots on the mainland that can be reached by car. But take time, for access is by a fragile ribbon of tarmac: a single-track road that seems to go on for ever.

5. The summit of Merrick in the Galloway Forest Park. No lofty mountain, but a chance to engage with the hills and forests of Scotland’s oft-overlooked south-west corner.

The post Exploring Europe: Really Rural Scotland appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

Visiting the Iza Valley

The Iza Valley is very special. Wood reigns supreme. Villages such as Bogdan Voda and Ieud are richly textured places that take their rhythm from the surrounding forests. There are wooden houses and wooden gateways, the latter often embellished with a wooden cross.

Wooden barns cluster in complex geometries which have as their pivot a wooden church. It is but a short step from the simple Maramures homestead to heaven. The churches, some Uniate and some Orthodox, have an almost miraculous energy, and, so we were told, are among the tallest wooden structures in the world.

Reflections of Heaven

The cosmos finds expression in Iza Valley homesteads too, with delicate symmetrical carvings on barn doors, porches and gates. Perfectly regular wooden shingles line the roofs to create powerful silhouettes against the early autumn sky. In the courtyards, cords of oak are neatly stacked, while next to one abandoned house, the unburnt winter wood of yesteryear is home to a riot of late summer clematis. If rural perfection is ever to be found in Europe, it might be in the artistic delicacy of the wooden villages of the Iza Valley.

Getting there

This region of Romania lies just south of the border with Ukraine. A daily overnight train from Bucharest takes 12 hours to reach the Iza Valley, and in our book there’s no better way to start the morning than by pulling back the curtains of a sleeping car to reveal a dewy mist over the orchards of the Iza.

About the authors: Nicky and Susanne run a Berlin-based editorial bureau that supplies text and images to media across Europe. Together they edit hidden europe magazine and write often about rail travel across Europe. You can read more of their writing in their regular e-brief and in the Notes section on their website.

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Europe’s Niagara?

And last month, we were standing by the side of the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen in Switzerland and heard a guide tell her flock of attentive followers that they were gazing at Europe’s highest waterfall. Now the falls at Schaffhausen are very pretty indeed, but this is no mighty Niagara – even at times of high water. If you want high waterfalls, northern Europe has them aplenty including several that are higher than any on the North American mainland.

Cloisters in Schaffhausen.

We also heard the travel guide advise her group that this is where the author Conan Doyle staged a fictional tussle between Sherlock Holmes and the evil Professor Moriarty. Actually that episode was not at the Rhine Falls at all, but at Reichenbach Falls though the idea that the Rhine Falls figured in Holmes’ life still pops up frequently.

Size doesn’t matter

At a height of just 23 metres (about 75 feet) the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen break no records, yet they developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries into a milestone on the itinerary of early tourists. Goethe, Rousseau and Byron all made the statutory stop at Schaffhausen to see the River Rhine tumble over the gently arcuate cascade that effectively separates the River Rhine into two quite distinct navigable waterways: the upper part of the Rhine above the falls (including Lake Constance) and the lower Rhine below the falls that eventually flows north through western Germany and the Netherlands to drain indefinably through a medley of Dutch deltas into the North Sea.

A tourism icon

Schaffhausen’s merchants were canny folk, resisting every overture by engineers who suggested methods of circumventing this modest natural barrier to navigation. “No way,” they protested at each ingenious new plan, anxious to protect the good living they made from having to shift cargo between ships on the two sections of the Rhine river.

So yes, you can see waterfalls in Europe that are more than 30 times higher than those at Schaffhausen, but that’s to miss the point. Centuries of commerce and centuries of travel history have conspired to construct the Rhine Falls as a hydrological icon, as the veritable epitome of a European waterfall. It’s a wonderful spot, so let’s just go with the flow, marvel at the myths, and agree that Schaffhausen certainly deserves a visit.

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