Alastair Fraser's Skye Fiddle Camp Week

Last year, while we were staying in Glasgow, we decided that we wanted to try to keep traveling as long as possible and we created a goal of coming back to Scotland for more music tuition in the summer of 2016. When we left the UK in January we had to wait for the tourist visa to reset, and that meant we had to stay out of the UK for six months. (Taking part in HelpX experiences in Spain and Ireland was a fun way to save our budget and it allowed time for our UK visa to reset.)

Way back in the dismal months of winter, we signed up for the Alasdair Fraser summer Scottish Fiddle Workshop on Skye as a treat to enjoy upon our return to Scotland.

The workshop is held annually at Sabhal Mor Ostaig, which is Gaelic for "The Big Stables of Ostaig." It's a Gaelic college on Skye, and originally was housed in old farm buildings. The campus has grown substantially over the years, and is now a full-time institution with classes in Gaelic language, Scottish dancing, music, history, and lots of other topics. 

This week, fiddling was the main draw!

We stayed at the Flora MacDonald Hostel, about a mile from the campus. We were in the side-house, and had two musicians for house-mates. Carolyn and Rebecca are both from Shetland, and we enjoyed hearing about their lives on the island. 

The week was filled with music:

There were several classes daily focusing on fiddle and cello technique, and well as classes in ensemble, dancing, and Gaelic singing. We were busy!

Each night there was a concert or ceilidh, followed by sessions that ran into the wee hours! The picture above is of Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, the main organizers and tutors of the camp. There were loads of other tutors, lecturers, singers, and other artists. 

Over the week we were fortunate to have several lectures on the psychology of music, the way the brain works and how it relates to playing music, and other such relevant topics. 

Learning about these things gave us both "food for thought" and inspired us to reevaluate how we learn and play music. In the picture above is Adam Sutherland, on the left, and Alasdair Fraser next to him, both fantastic fiddlers and tutors. On the right we have a physician as well as a neuroscientist, both of whom happened to be attending the fiddle camp and offered to share their research and experience. Fascinating and very interesting!

We also saw this sign ... and thought about our pending pipe tuition in Glasgow.

But let's not get too distracted just yet. There's still fiddling to do!

One night we walked a mile or two down the road to the community center Ardvassar.....

This ceilidh was a blast! The hall was too small for everyone, so the dancing moved into the street! 

And later in the week another ceilidh after dinner!

And we were entertained by the outstanding musicians who were enrolled with us in the courses. This pipe-fiddle-cello group was amazing!

Singing classes were also on offer by an amazing Gaelic singer from the outer Hebrides, Christine Primrose.

We had one afternoon free, so we took off for a wee bike ride. And, as we are wont to do, we found a nice route with lots of hills...

We wound our way to the west coast of Sleat to Tarskavaig, where we stopped in the wee community hall for tea and scones. Later we learned that the Alasdair Fraser fiddlers and cellists used to go to that hall for their ceilidhs, but the camp numbers soon outgrew the hall. 

After tea we went north to Tokavaig. 

Found the steep bit! And, for once, we got to go down it instead of up!

It was a beautiful ride, and it was nice to take a break from fiddling to get some exercise and see the scenery. Such a beautiful place...

Toward the end of the week some friends of ours arrived in their camper van - Ulrike and Wolfgang! 

And our new friend Martina, on the right in the picture below. 

We met Wolfgang and Ulrike last fall in Glasgow while we were all taking classes at the Glasgow Fiddle Workshop (GFW). They're from Germany and, like us, they took a year out of their "normal" lives to come to Scotland and study music. They've been to Scotland quite a few times and they love it here!

We stayed in touch with them over the course of the year, and, as they were planning a driving tour of Northwestern Scotland, they arranged their route to meet us on Skye. What a treat! We had dinner with them, and with Martina, in the quiet parking lot of the school. 

Below is Martina, on the left, and Agnes. 

Agnes is also a GFW relation from Glasgow. She came to Skye for the fiddle camp, too. We haven't seen Agnes since we left Glasgow in January - it's nice to see friends again!

As the week wore on we all prepared for the grand finale concert. Here we are all in the lecture hall of the college - cellos on the floor and fiddler's in the bleacher seats. What a wall of sound!

To wrap up the week, we had our big concert on Friday night. It's hard to capture the magnitude of it, but there was about thirty cellos and eighty fiddles playing for an audience of about 150, all packed into the main foyer and cafeteria.  

We were wedged together in the dining hall, and barely had enough room to swing our bows! All in all, it was a rich experience to play the tunes we'd been learning all week, and the crowd was most appreciative. 

Finally, and sadly, we packed up and left the college on Saturday...but don't be too sad... as it was on for another adventure! We had a wonderful weekend planned with Wolfgang and Ulrike!

We cycled from the college to Broadford, about 13 miles north, where we met our German friends and their camper van. 

We locked up the cycles at a friendly hotel and packed ourselves into the back of Wolfgang and Ulrike's van and drove to the ferry terminal at Sconser. It felt a bit like cheating to get into a moving vehicle but it was dry and cozy and we soon got over our guilt! Besides, we biked that road last year and once is enough!

It was kind of a miserable day at the ferry terminal...

We caught the ferry to Raasay, a small island between Skye and Applecross. We love these small ferries!

We stopped in the beautiful Raasay house for a coffee and lunch:

This 18th century mansion was once the clan house of the MacLeods of Rassay. There has been a clan house at this site since the 1500's, although the original was destroyed by government forces after the battle of Culloden in 1746. The current structure was built shortly thereafter as a replacement and was visited by Boswell and Jonshon on their famous journey through the Western Islands of Scotland in the 1770's.  The house suffered a fire in 2009, requiring extensive renovation. It's now a luxury hotel, hostel, cafe, and outdoor adventure center. We enjoyed several hours there before heading north. 

The weather cleared a little and we had stellar views of Skye...

Raasay is not very densely populated, and we felt very remote while we were there. The island is stunningly beautiful, and we were thrilled to once again be on one of the small islands that dot the western coast of Scotland. 

We drove the narrow and winding roads for an hour or so and came to our destination:

Calum's Road!

Mr. Calum MacLeod hand-built a 1.75 mile section of road to connect his village of Arnish to the end of the paved road at Brochel. He used a pick, a shovel, a wheel barrow, and an army engineering manual on how to build roads. He built this road because the Council wouldn't do it ... so he took matters into his own hands!

Over the course of ten years he laid the road bed, receiving only small amounts of outside help to blast some rock faces. Below is Calum's Road, winding away into the distance. 

It is an incredible accomplishment, and it is somewhat a surprise that he completed his road in 1974, which is very recent history. 

And a few years after he finished the road the Council adopted it and agreed to maintain it. By then he and his wife were the only inhabitants of Arnish. We walked the entire length of Calum's Road, and were gobsmacked by the amount of effort that went into the project. 

And we found this a bit baffling...!

We spent the night on Calum's Road. Wolfgang and Ulrike had their camper (and a wee break for a tune before dinner!)

And we had our tent...

And the wind was strong enough that we had to deal with no midges! 

We had a wee session in the camper that evening, and Ulrike treated us to a tune on her new Smallpipes. 

There is a tune called Calum's Road, and we played it in honor of Calum. What a character! And what a beautiful place. We tucked in for a peaceful night, sleeping along side Calum's Road. 

We caught the ferry back to Skye, and Wolfgang and Ulrike dropped us off in Broadford. We said goodbye for now, knowing that we'll see them again in October when we go to Germany. We then cycled from Broadford to Armadale. 

In the late afternoon we caught the ferry back to Mallaig. Then began the topsy-turvy train-or-bus ride back to Glasgow. (There was another train strike on, so it was back on the bus... Sigh.)

We made Glasgow late on Sunday evening, and headed back to our favorite place in Glasgow: Albert Drive!

We crashed on Jennifer's couch (thanks, Jennifer!) and then headed to Edinburgh early on Monday morning for a super-special treat! Stay tuned!!!!

A Long Over-Due Update!

Hi, gang!

Sorry that we've been so silent for so long. As usual, we've been busy! Here's a brief update, and then a wee look forward.

As we write this on the 11th of September, we're back in Glasgow, staying at the apartment where stayed last fall. It's great to be here again! We've been in Glasgow for about a month now, and we're quite busy with loads of music tuition: private fiddle and guitar lessons, lessons at the Glasgow Fiddle Workshop twice a week, fiddle workshops, and frequent visits to The College of Piping! 

And here's a wee look (and listen) at how THAT is going!  :-)

These vids are taken from our garage, about a week after we collected our pipes. Bagpipes aren't for the faint of heart or lung!

Anyway, musical interlude over and back to the news:

We're staying Glasgow until 17 October, then we're going to the continent for about a month to visit friends in Amsterdam and Germany. In mid-November we'll come back to Scotland for a short week-and-a-half for the Scots Fiddle Festival and more piping tuition and then - believe it or not - we're heading to America. We'll arrive in Seattle on the 25th of November!!

We'll stay in Seattle and Bend (Oregon) visiting friends and family, then make our way to Bozeman via Salt Lake City. After all that, we will be in Bozeman about the middle of December. We'll likely visit Melinda's family in Iowa in later December, too. 

We'll stay in Bozeman for all of January, and we'll definitely partake in Burn's Night and Wintergreen festivities!

And then at the end of the month we're moving to Salt Lake. Bob's enrolled at the Violin Making School of America - no more engineering! Melinda will work and then enroll in a music program once we've established residency. Hopefully we'll be there for about three and a half years, and then we want to come back to Bozeman. 

We are sad to be moving away from Bozeman, and we hope to make visits back as frequently as we can. Bozeman is a lovely place, and we miss all our friends there! 

Anyway, we're working on updating the blog with stories of adventure, travel, daring, music, and other such nonsense that we've endured since we left Ireland almost two months ago. As they say, "Watch This Space!"

The Journey to Skye

We left Liverpool via train and headed to Carlisle, near the border with Scotland. (We were on a fairly tight schedule to get to Skye, so we had to cheat a wee, you see.) From Carlisle we had approximafely one hundred miles to go, and two days to do it. That doesn't sound too bad, does it?  Considering that we haven't been on the bikes much, and we are not in great shape...we'll see what we can manage!

When we arrived in Carlisle we saw this curious site: loads of guys taking pictures of this particular railway engine:

We've heard the term "train-spotting" but this was the first time we'd spotted train-spotters spotting trains. This must be a specialized piece of equipment because it was pulling a maintenance train. 

Just a few miles north of Carlisle along the much-loved National Cycle Network route (NCN Route 74) we saw a beautiful site:

We're back!!! Yay!!

We came over the border at Gretna Green, which is the first town in Scotland when coming from England. 

Gretna Green has hosted thousands of runaway weddings through the years. After Lord Hardwick's marriage act of 1754, young people had to be at least 21 years of age to be married in England. But in Scotland the law was much more relaxed - the couple needed to be only over 16 years of age, be "free to marry," and the ceremony had to be witnessed by two people. 

Well, at Gretna Green there was a blacksmith shop. Kids in England would elope and sneak across the border into Scotland to be married at the smithy, and that's how the blacksmiths there came to be known as the Anvil Priests. 

We were drawn to the romantic history of the town. We had our own romantic moment when we found a random deserted bus stop, pulled out the guitar and sang the song 'Bonnie Away' which tells the story of an eloping young couple on their way to Gretna Green:

"Come with me up to old Dumfries,
For to meet there the Anvil Priest,
Now the two of us are sixteen,
We’ll be headed for Gretna Green

In a book I did read it so,
Lovers do to this village go,
We’ll be gone in the dead of night,
Wednesday we will be man and wife

Come away Bonny come my love, Bonny away

We wont rest on our journey north,
In the footsteps of those before,
There our travel will be complete,
Where old England and Scotland meet

God speed us there
Even if the storm does break
Let your young heart lead the way
Let your young heart lead the way"

There's still a booming wedding business at Gretna Green, as well as tourist shops and cafes. (We split a pretty decent mac-and-cheese because that sounded better than the cold hummus wrap we were carrying. And the coffee was pretty good, too.) While we eating our biking fuel on the patio we witnessed one wedding party leave and another one file into the venue. Busy place! Romance, in a queue.

There was a piper, in full kilted attire, in the courtyard who smiled and posed more than he played.  He would play a tune or two, and then stand there smiling while everyone in the wedding party sidled up to him for a photo. It was funny to watch.

Then it was onward north on NCN74...

Past a lonely red phone box:

Which was accompanied by a post box. 

We settled into two days of what can only be called "grudging utility cycling." The scenery wasn't too great, we were on secondary roads along the motorway for much of the journey, and it was pretty boring. We were spoiled on our cycle tour last year; our high expectations of beautiful scenery and quiet roads with no traffic were left unmet this time around! But we had fun anyhow. 

We camped about halfway to Glasgow, and were reminded of the joys of communing with nature in Scotland: bumpy-boggy fields and midges! Yay!

It wasn't all bad, honestly. And we even had the opportunity to visit our first ever Scottish truck stop and enjoyed a wee pickle toastie as well as pretty good (well, decent) coffee! 

In Hamilton we found the Chaterherault County Park: 

It was built in 1732 for the Duke of Hamilton to use as a summer garden and hunting residence. Now it's a wee museum and cafe, so we stopped for a coffee just as it was starting to drizzle. 

We slogged onward from there toward Glasgow. It was tedious riding, and in places the NCN route was very poorly marked and we got lost a few times. That's par for the course with the NCN routes. 

Except in some cases it was worse: the signs were obviously rotated on the posts so they were pointing us in the wrong direction! (Some teenage prankster was probably doubled over in laughter!)

We fell for this trick a couple times, and once rode about two miles through winding forest paths only to end up on the opposite side of a street we had been on fifteen minutes before! 

We cheated once or twice and switched on the phone to determine our location, but otherwise we slogged along. 

We came into Glasgow from the south-east, and after winding our way along the NCN75 from Uddingston we came into Glasgow Green, the huge park on the north side of the Clyde. And then....

The Peoples' Palace! In just an instant we were transported back to the wonderful times we had last fall, exploring Glasgow and taking in all the exciting sites the city has to offer. Yay! We're back!

A short while later we made our way home...

To Albert Drive! (Hm... must be blue- and purple-bin day.) 

This is where we stayed last fall, and where we had stored a few treasures (aka junk) in the garage loft. We let ourselves into the garage, sorted out through luggage that we'd need for Skye, and later met up with Jennifer & two of her children for a mellow dinner at home together. It's hard to convey how nice it felt to come back to Albert Drive, and to see Jennifer again. It felt like we were home!

The next morning we were up early and to the train station to head to Skye.

Our route took us to Mallaig, but because of a train strike we ended up on buses for a good bit of the journey. 

At first we were disappointed not to be taking the train the entire way. But in the end, it worked out well to take the bus - they had room for our bikes (thank goodness) and we took a different route than the train would have run. This meant that we ended up driving through Glen Coe on the way to Fort William, an incredible area that we were not able to explore on cycle tour last year. (The road is not suitable for bikes as it has no shoulder whatsoever and sees tons of traffic.)

Glen Coe was an inspiring sight! We are thrilled to know that we would be be coming back through with our friend Lance in just a few weeks to explore it in depth!

We had a wonderfully informative bus driver who narrated the journey. He told us that the mountain on the right (below) is know as the Shepard, as he watches over the valley:

After Fort William we headed west for the final leg of the journey, through Glenfinnan.  (You may recall that we stayed in a train car that had been converted to a wee bunk house in this area last year, and that's where we spent the night in the museum storeroom when Melinda fell ill. Oh, the memories!)

After half a day of bussing, we were in Mallaig. 

We took a picture in exactly this same spot last year when we came through on cycle tour! This time it wasn't raining, and there were loads of tourists all over the place. (Last year we were in Mallaig at the very end of the tourist season, and we practically had the place to ourselves.)

And here comes the ferry to Skye...

And then we're loaded and headed across the Sound of Sleat ...

Here we are with our friend Abby, a music student from Minnesota.

We met Abby in Limerick, Ireland, at the Blas Festival in June. Then we saw her again at Willie Clancy in Miltown-Malbay. While we were in Liverpool she went to Norway to learn Norwegian fiddle technique, and then we met again on the ferry to Skye for the Alasdair Fraser fiddle week. It was fun swapping stories of fiddle adventures - what a fantastic summer!

The ferry ride to Skye was short and before we knew it we were landed at Armadale. 

Next stop Sabhal Mor Ostaig for the fiddle camp!